ABSTRACT

Title of Document: HISTORY, IDENTITY AND THE STRUGGLE

FOR LAND IN NORTHEASTERN BRAZIL,
1955 - 1985

Sarah R. Sarzynski, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008

Directed By: Barbara Weinstein,

Department of History, New York University
University of Maryland, College Park

Drawing from Edward Said, Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Junior has argued that

through a repetition of texts and images, Northeastern Brazil was “nordestinizado,” or

turned into an imagined area of misery, violence, folklore, fanaticism, and rebellion

that became the Other of the modern, urban center-south of Brazil. My research

builds on Albuquerque’s arguments about the construction of o Nordeste in the

twentieth century by situating them in the milieu of political and cultural debates that

attempted to redefine Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. Rural social

movements (associated with the Catholic Church, the Communist Party, and the

Ligas Camponesas), large landowners, filmmakers and intellectuals, popular poets,

U.S. and Brazilian politicians and journalists, and Brazilian military officers proposed

projects to change the structures that they saw as perpetuating regional inequalities.

To gain support for their political projects, these social, political and cultural

movements appropriated regional historical symbols and narratives, imbuing them

with new meanings. In doing so, they sought to redefine regional identity, and to a

certain extent, also looked to redefine national and Third World identity.

During the Cold War, identity expanded to becoming a product of local,

national and transnational discussions, facilitated by the expansion of film as a

medium of mass culture. The debates over the meaning of regional historical symbols

and regional identity in Northeastern Brazil are at once an exaggerated and exemplary

microcosm of Cold War political and cultural struggles in Latin America and in the

Third World. The characters in the story had counterparts in other countries, and the

setting was one of the most socially unequal areas in the world espousing all of the

problems and possibilities of impoverished areas during the Cold War. The struggles

also occurred at a key moment in Cold War history in Latin America: the era of the

Cuban Revolution. But, the Northeast was not a blank slate for Cold War policies; in

fact, the region had entrenched cultural symbols and historical narratives that

composed the framework for the debates over regional identity.

HISTORY, IDENTITY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IN NORTHEASTERN
BRAZIL, 1955 – 1985

By

Sarah R. Sarzynski

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2008

Advisory Committee:
Professor Barbara Weinstein, Chair
Professor Mary Kay Vaughan
Professor Daryle Williams
Professor Saverio Giovacchini
Professor Phylis Peres
 © Copyright by
Sarah R. Sarzynski
2008
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I want to thank my advisor, Barbara Weinstein, who mentored by

offering her advice and expertise but allowed me to develop my own ideas and

struggle with the sources and methodologies. She encouraged my creativity and

intellectual exploration throughout this process, and read and edited my chapters,

helping me to figure out my issues in writing and clarity. If she was entirely as tired

of reading the multiple versions of the introduction as I was, she never let on and

encouraged me on those last painful revisions. Also, thanks to Mary Kay Vaughan

for her warm support and critical commentary, to Saverio Giovacchini, Daryle

Williams and David Gordon who all guided me to the theoretical questions of my

dissertation. Also, friends at Maryland: Patricia Acerbi, Leandro Bermegui, Susanne

Eineigel, Paula Halperín, Laura Lenci, Giacomo Mazzei, Linda Noel, Shari Orisich,

David Sartorius.

I also want to thank Bowdoin College for giving me the opportunity to teach

while ABD and providing me with a reason to finish, and Mount Holyoke College for

a dream job in 2008-2009. Thanks to Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research

Abroad program for funding my field research, the University of Maryland for

multiple grants for research and writing, and the Latin American Studies programs at

Michigan State University and the University of Florida for funding my language

training in Brazil through FLAS summer language programs.

In Brazil, professors Eduardo Morretín (USP), Antonio Montenegro (UFPE), ,

and Cliff Welch provided feedback and suggested archives and sources important to

my dissertation. Meus queridos amigos, Adilson, Fabio, e Ricardo, e a galera da

ii
cinemateca…um grande abraço! In São Paulo, thanks to the archivists at CEDEM at

Unesp, the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth at UNICAMP, the Seminario Acadêmico

Audiovisual e História at USP, the Cinemateca Nacional, the Arquivo do Estado de

São Paulo (DOPS), and the Banco e Itau Centro Cultural. In Rio, I want to thank the

staff and archivists at Museu de Arte Moderna, FUNARTE, CPDOC at the Fundação

Getúlio Vargas, and the Biblioteca Nacional. In Pernambuco, thanks to the Fundação

Joaquim Nabuco and especially Anatailde de Paulo Crespo and the staff at

CEHIBRA, the library and administration at UNICAP who gave me “student”

permission while in Recife to use their (air-conditioned) library resources, UFPE and

UFRPE, the Arquivo Estadual and the Biblioteca Estadual de Pernambuco.

I also want to thank a few other friends who helped me through this process:

Nadia Celis, Karen Lindo, Cesare Cuttica, Pat Scallian, Bryna Keenan Subherwal,

Lisa Schwartz, Son Tran, Rebecca Sager. And, remembering my own sense of

regional identity, a big thank you to my Oregon friends for reminding me of life

outside of academia: Rocket and Santi y familia, Jackie, Sandy, Tom, Cesar.

Thanks to Bert Barickman, who provoked my interest in Brazilian history, my

dissertation topic and who has always been there as a mentor and friend throughout

the years. When writing got tough I remembered those sleepless nights of frantically

trying to learn enough Portuguese to read scholarly articles and books with enough

comprehension to write a paper and “raise issues” for discussion, and recognized that

all of this is a process of learning and facing new challenges.

I want to thank my mom who supported me emotionally and financially even

though she had no idea what I was doing. She believed I could finish when I was

iii
skeptical. I saw Brazil from an entirely different perspective when she came to visit

me. Without speaking a word of Portuguese, I was continually surprised to find her

engaged in a conversation about the suntanned star of the current telenovela, giggling

about a bump on an elevator ride, laughing after being passed a cow hoof filled with

cachaça on a bus, being surrounded by teenage girls in transit to a passion play who

thought she was a movie star, or having a street vendor showing her pictures of his

family. Brazilians could just read her positive energy – language wasn’t important –

and this is something I will always hold close to remind me of the positive forces that

connect us to one another on this earth.

And to Shervin, who I coerced on those many long bus rides, on neck

crunching truck rides, and on moto-taxis throughout the sertão and the Northeast in

pursuit of Lampião and religious fanatics. He listened and fought, laughed and told

me when I was wrong (and when I was right), and read drafts again and again. From

being Señor (and Saddam) Chocolate to being “o negro” in the sertão, Shervs, you

were always there for me.

iv
 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements....................................................................................................... ii
Table of Contents.......................................................................................................... v
List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………... vi
Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 2: O Nordeste: Regionalism, Nationalism and Third Worldism During the
Cold War..................................................................................................................... 30
Chapter 3: “Evolution or Revolution”: The Battle Against Underdevelopment ...... 103
Chapter 4: Slavery, Abolition, and Quilombos: Racialized Narratives of Resistance
................................................................................................................................... 177
Chapter 5: The Return of Lampião to the Terra do Sol, 1955-1965......................... 244
Chapter 6: From the Memory of Messianic Wars to a Radical Jesus...................... 289
Chapter 7: Conclusion............................................................................................... 362
Chapter 8: Epilogue: Re-membering the Ligas Camponesas in the Transition to
Democracy, 1978-1985............................................................................................. 373
Appendices ………………………………………………………………………... 460
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 458

v
 List of Illustrations

Figure Page

1. Drawing in LIGA 13 November 1962, p.3 …………………………...... 195

2. Cartoon in LIGA 6 November 1963, p.6……………………………….. 218

3. Photograph: “Da Casa-Grande Massangana” Diario de Pernambuco,

31 July 1963, p.3…………………………………………….…. 235

4. Glauber Rocha, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, 1964……….………… 300

5. Fernando de Barros, Riacho de Sangue, 1967 ………………………… 305

6. Sérgio Ricardo, A noite de espantalho, 1974 …………………………... 306

7. Anselmo Duarte, O pagador de promessas, 1962 …………………….. 311

vi
Chapter 1: Introduction

When the [Peasant] Leagues aroused worldwide interest in the early

1960s, foreign observers…were quick to assume that “revolution” in
the Northeast could ignite upheaval in the rest of the country, to view
the Leagues in Cold War terms, and to stress comparisons with the
Cuban Revolution. But despite its sugar monoculture, the Northeast is
not Cuba. And the relevant question at the time was not whether
Francisco Julião was another Castro, but whether he could become
another Padre Cicero or Antonio Conselheiro.
Joseph Page, The Revolution That Never Was, 1972

I was drawn to the story of the Ligas Camponesas or Peasant Leagues after happening

upon Joseph Page’s exciting tale, The Revolution That Never Was. Page’s version of

the story was almost too fantastic to imagine that it could be history. I turned the

pages with astonishment and laughter, disbelief and incredulity. At the time, I felt

fairly well informed about the history of Latin America during the Cold War. I had

taken many university classes on Latin America, worked with Guatemalan survivors

of torture, and celebrated in the Plaza Italia when Pinochet was arrested in England.

But, the “revolution that never was” seemed to be the quintessential story of Cold

War revolutionary hope and repressive reality. All of the Cold War actors and more

were piled into the pages: On the left, revolutionary peasants and a Castro-like leader,

Communists and radical Catholics, and a governor who smoked American cigarettes

to the tune of “Americans are for burning.” On the right, gun-toting landowners, US

officials who seemed ignorant and imperialistic with their poorly executed Alliance

for Progress programs, and the U.S.-backed Brazilian armed forces that arrested,

tortured and killed. This was all set against the backdrop of an area painted to be one

of the most inequitable areas of the world, “the next Cuba,” the Sicily of Latin

1
America, a locale filled with religious fanatics, backlands bandits and roaming

troubadours. And yet, I had never heard of any of this before. I had read novels of

the Northeast and seen all the Cinema Novo films, but this “revolution” remained a

mystery. So the story provoked my curiosity.

The history of rural social movements in Northeastern Brazil is a relatively

well-researched topic in the field of Northeastern Brazilian studies. Scholars have

examined the organizational structure of the different movements, the involvement of

the U.S. government, the material successes and failures of the movements, the

stories of the dictatorship from leaders and the political objectives of the rural social

movements.1 But, a number of issues complicate the historiography. For one, much

1
Joseph Page, The Revolution That Never Was (New York: Grossman Publishers,
1972); Gerrit Huizer, The Revolutionary Potential of Peasants in Latin America
(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1972); Cynthia Hewitt, “Brazil: The Peasant
Movement of Pernambuco, 1961-1964,” in Latin American Peasant Movements, ed.
Henry A. Landsberger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969); Bailby, Brésil: Pays
clef; Jamil Almansur Haddard, Revolução cubana e revolução brasileira (Rio de
Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1961); Antônio Callado, Os Industriais da
seca e os “Galileus” de Pernambuco. (Aspectos da luta pela reforma agária no
Brasil.) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1960); Florencia Mallon, “Peasants
and Rural Laborers in Pernambuco, 1955-1964,” Latin American Perspectives 5, no.
4 (Autumn,1978): 49-70; Clodomir Moraes, “Peasant Leagues in Brazil,” in Agrarian
Problems and Peasant Movements in Latin America. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, ed. (New
York: Doubleday, 1970): 453-501; Caio Prado Júnior, A revolução brasileira (São
Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1966); Aspásia Alcântara de Camargo, “Brésil nord-est:
Mouvements paysans et crise populiste” Thesis: University of Paris, 1973; Peter
Flynn, Brazil: A Political Analysis (London: Ernest Benn, 1978); Francisco de Assis
Lemos Souza, Nordeste: O vietnã que não houve. Ligas Camponesas e o golpe de
64. (João Pessoa: Universidade Federal de Paraíba, 1996); Luciana de Barros
Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais e crise política em Pernambuco, 1955-1968 (Recife:
Editora Massangana, 1990); Bernadete Wrubleski Aued, A vítoria dos vencidos:
Partido Comunista Brasileiro e Ligas Camponesas, 1955-1964 (Florianópolis:
Editora da UFSC, 1985); Fernando Antônio Azevedo, As Ligas Camponesas (São
Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1982); Elide de Rugai Bastos, As Ligas Camponesas (Petrópolis:
Editora Vozes, 1984); Vandeck Santiago, Francisco Julião: Perfil parlamentar
século XX (Recife: Assembléia Legislativa do Estado de Pernambuco, 2001); Paulo

2
of the historiography is strongly influenced by Cold War politics. Scant empirical

data exists and this information is oftentimes flawed and contradictory because of the

politically charged atmosphere in the early 1960s and because of the violence and

repression of Ligas leaders and members after the 1964 coup. Second, the

historiography on rural social activism in Brazil often privileges the position of the

Brazilian Communist Party and particularly the movements of ULTAB and

CONTAG in the South. And, third, the two main works on the Ligas Camponesas

cited by most scholars – Fernando Antônio Azevedo’s As Ligas Camponesas Elide de

Rugai Bastos’s As Ligas Camponesas –were published in the early 1980s. Both

books present narratives of the Ligas and the other rural social movements but much

of what these authors accept as “fact” deserves to be questioned and analyzed.

When I first considered doing a historical study of rural workers in

Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War, I became increasingly skeptical of the

feasibility of such a project because of limitations of the existent sources as well as

the difficulties in interviewing former Ligas members. As the oral histories

conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s show, the experience of the coup and the

years of the dictatorship influenced people’s perceptions and memories of the Ligas.

Likewise, conducting archival research on the Ligas also revealed the politically

charged atmosphere: the accounts of events could be completely different depending

on who crafted and disseminated the report. Furthermore, the Ligas members

Menezes, Sindicalismo X repressão (Recife: Nordestal, 1983); Anthony Pereira, The

End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961-1988
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997); Antonio Torres Montenegro,
“Ligas Camponesas e sindicatos rurais em tempo de revolução,” O Brasil
Republicano: 241-271.

3
themselves rarely appeared in any of the sources I could locate. Most of the archival

material focused on leaders, on armed conflicts, court cases, political discourse, and

ephemeral cultural material. But instead of dismissing the research project as

unworkable, I found a way to analyze the struggles of the Cold War in Northeastern

Brazil without necessarily having to judge what was accurate or erroneous in the

sources, a task that I had come to regard as impossible.

Instead, I put the stories in the sources together to illustrate the dialogic

process of how a diverse network of social, cultural and political actors tried to

reshape regional identity from 1955 to 1964. And, to do this I examined a broad set

of sources, including mainstream and alternative media publications, secret police

files, film and archival information about films on the Northeast, literatura de cordel

(popular pamphlet poetry), theater productions, novels and scientific reports, theses

and published conference reports, rural museum libraries and archives, oral histories,

political speeches, US media and films on the Northeast, US consular and diplomatic

reports, and Brazilian and US congressional reports. To explore how the struggle for

land influenced people’s understanding of regional identity, I looked far and wide

into multiple sources looking at how such documentation defined Northeastern Brazil

and Nordestinos. And, in the course of conducting research, a few key themes and

symbols repeatedly surfaced: the narrative of slavery and abolition, cangaceiros or

backlands bandits, Northeastern religion and fanaticism, and poverty and

modernization.

What I discovered in the course of my research was that the story of the Ligas

fit into a broader trope of regional identity. The Northeast has often been depicted as

4
a feudal area where subaltern struggles have been destined to fail, doomed to

continually repeat the tragic history of short-lived conflict suffocated by violent acts

of state repression. Rural men and women have been portrayed as passive, messianic,

irrational, and animal-like in their constant struggle for survival. As Durval Muniz de

Albuquerque Júnior has argued, through a repetition of texts and images, the

Brazilian Northeast was “nordestinizado,” or turned into an imagined area of misery,

violence, folklore, fanaticism, and rebellion that became the Other of the modern,

urban center-south of Brazil.2 The tragic plotline seemed to fit somewhere between

what Eviatar Zerubavel describes as a deterministic historical narrative and a “circles

and rhymes” narrative, which “envisions things as being trapped, like in Groundhog

Day, in some eternal present.”3 And even though the tragic story seems determined

to repeat itself perpetually in the Northeast, the other characteristic of the plot is that

the struggles are “forgotten” after being violently repressed, entombed in an

unmarked grave somewhere in the vast backlands (sertão), with no survivors

remaining to continue the struggle.

My work examines a key example of the Northeastern trope to show how the

story line could function as a narrative of resistance and a narrative of the status quo.

To gain support for their political projects in the 1950s and 1960s, a diverse group of

social actors appropriated regional historical symbols and narratives, imbuing them

with new meanings. On the one hand, the Ligas Camponesas used stories and images

about slavery and abolition to bolster their demands for agrarian reform and their
2
Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção do Nordeste e outras artes
(Recife: Cortez Editora; Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editora Massangana, 1996).
3
Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 17.

5
fight against rural violence. Brazilian military officials and large landowners, on the

other hand, effectively compared Francisco Julião, the leader of the Ligas

Camponesas, to Antonio Conselheiro, the leader of Canudos, to legitimize the need to

repress the rural social movements for the sake of national security. Through the

battles that took place over the symbols, it is possible to see the struggle for power

over the dominant ideas of the Northeast, popular notions of the Northeast, and all the

hybridities in-between. By examining the struggles over the symbols of regional

identity in Brazil it is also possible to understand the limitations of historical

reconstruction. This is to say, as Stuart Hall argues about what he calls “trans-

coding,” appropriating the meaning of a symbol does not necessarily displace

previously held meanings.

My understanding of identity derives from Stuart Hall, among others, as Hall

has argued that, “Identity [is] a ‘movable feast’ – formed and transformed constantly

in how we are represented or interpreted in the cultural systems that surround us. It is

defined historically, not biologically. The subject takes on different identities at

different times.”4 While identities are never fixed, at the same time, a push exists to

naturalize identities, such as those related to sexuality, race, nationalism, or

regionalism. These processes are “constructed on the back of a recognition of some

common identification or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with

an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity and allegiance established on this

foundation.”5 In the 1950s and 60s, the Ligas Camponesas entered a struggle for

4
Stuart Hall, A identidade cultural na pós-modernidade (Rio: DP & A, 2004), 12.
5
Stuart Hall, “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?” in Questions of Cultural Identity,
eds. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay (London: Sage Publications, 1996), 2.

6
redefining regional and national identity. In addition to facing the challenge of the

“fragmented” identities present in any society, Julião and the Ligas had to deal with

the entrenched constructions of Northeastern Brazil. These naturalized assumptions

defined o Nordeste by its traditions and its adversity to change, by its “contrasts” or

inequalities and its coronéis (rural political bosses), by religious fanaticism and

violence, by poverty, misery, and backwardness. What is clear is that Francisco

Julião, the Ligas, and other groups and individuals were involved in the political

processes to change the meanings of this regional identity and to construct a new

regional and national culture, placing the rural population at the center. But, in this

process, Julião and many other social actors also reinforced certain representations of

regional identity, making it possible for the Ligas to be depicted historically as a

regional movement.

The first five chapters of this study discuss the major historic symbols and

narratives used by the principal social actors in Northeastern Brazil from the 1950s to

the 1970s: poverty and modernization, slavery and abolition, the cangaceiro, and

messianic movements. Although my analysis focuses more heavily on how the Ligas

Camponesas appropriated these symbols and narratives, the chapters also address

how other actors used or contested these symbols. For the obvious reason that many

of the social movements did not survive the 1964 coup, these chapters concentrate

more heavily on the pre-1964 era, but when possible, I extend the discussion to what

happens to these representations after the coup. Chapter Two examines the issue of

regionalism in greater detail describing the conventional understanding of o Nordeste

as well as the ways that the major social actors recreated Nordestino identity during

7
the Cold War. This chapter engages with the historiography and theoretical debates

on regionalism versus nationalism to show how and why “Third World” regions

became key areas for Cold War political struggles. The third chapter looks at the

issue of modernization and poverty, describing how plans and projects for “evolution

or revolution” created and strengthened certain ideas of the Nordeste. Discourses and

policies associated with Modernization theory influenced policies, discourses and

strategies for combating the problems associated with Third World regions,

underdevelopment broadly defined. In this chapter, I show how politicians and

intellectuals located an exemplary figure of modernity in Northeastern history as a

model for development projects.

Chapter Four examines how social movements, popular poets, and filmmakers

used the narrative of slavery, abolition, and run-away slave communities (quilombos)

to justify the struggle for land and to depict Nordestinos. This chapter examines

racial identities and politics in Brazil, raising issues of how these groups dealt with

the dominant belief in racial democracy in the Northeast. Chapter Five looks at the

symbol of the cangaceiro, or backlands bandit, and how this historical figure was

appropriated as a guerilla warrior, an autochthonous rebel and martyr of Northeastern

Brazil, and a figure that was also associated with criminality, feudalism and violence.

The sixth chapter examines religion and specifically the place of the historical

narratives of messianic movements as a method both to mobilize and de-legitimize

the struggle for land. This chapter also looks at how Catholic priests entered into the

struggle for land, before and after the 1964 coup. The final chapter, or epilogue,

jumps forward to the point at which the Ligas Camponesas became a memory and a

8
historical symbol of struggle. Since this historical construction of the Ligas

oftentimes contrasts greatly with the sources on the Ligas from the 1950s and 60s, I

have chosen to use these narratives and representations to show how a new political

era imbues the history and memory of the Ligas with different meanings. By

examining scholarship on the Ligas, regionally-based films, and oral histories, this

chapter explains how the Ligas were re-conceived as a regional and national symbol

and narrative.

The question guiding my dissertation is not whether the Ligas failed or

succeeded in their quest to create a new vision of the Nordeste or the Brazilian nation

and its povo. The Ligas may have been deemed illegal after the coup of 1964, but

this does not mean that they “failed” in all of their objectives. The point of my

dissertation is to examine this period of contestation in Northeastern Brazil. Through

the key historic symbols and narratives used by these actors, it is possible to discuss

the battles that took place during this period to reshape national and regional identity.

A study of the struggles of the 1950s and 60s explodes the narrative of Northeastern

Brazil as a region chained to its past, unable to change. At the same time, it elucidates

the political positions of the major social actors in these struggles, providing a

historical analysis of this period. Such a focus also explains why the Ligas were

construed and historicized as a regional – and not a national – struggle. An analysis

of these battles over identity sheds light on Brazilian national politics during the Cold

War, helping to explain the major changes of this period such as the military coup of

1964. It also shows how these battles were re-enacted in the final years of the

9
dictatorship (1979-1985) and in more recent local efforts to construct an official

history of the Ligas Camponesas from the position of the participants.

Political Map of Brazil and o Nordeste During the Cold War

President Juscelino Kubitschek’s 1955 presidential campaign promise of “fifty years

of progress in five,” produced a politics of development, largely concentrated on

industry in urban areas.6 Brasília, the so-called “Capital of Hope” was the symbol of

the newly modernized, urban Brazil. A federal politics of industrial development was

reflected locally, as in the 1958 election of industrialist Cid Sampaio as governor of

the state of Pernambuco. Sampaio was elected without the usual support of the

Pernambucan landowning elite,7 whose main economic base – sugarcane production

– was contracting in the face of declining international prices for sugar. While the

landowning class remained the regional ruling elite, their position had been weakened

by the national focus on the development of industry, and in relation to more modern

sugar production in the Center-South states, such as São Paulo.8 Many Northeastern

landowners made up for their lost profits by raising the rent they collected from their

6 Peter Flynn, Brazil: A Political Analysis (London: Westview Press, 1978), 190-191.
The most flagrant symbol of this policy was the construction of Brasília. The first
stage of development or modernization of Brazil focused on industrialization in urban
centers and the second stage was supposed to prioritize rural development.
7 According to Joseph Page, Cid Sampaio wanted to raise the standard of living of the

poor in Pernambuco in order to create a consumer market. Page, 55.

8 Sugar exports dropped from 462,000 ttons in 1955 to 184,000 tons in 1956. United

States: Department of Agriculture. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign

Agricultural Service. Sugar: World Supply and Distribution 1954/55 – 1973/74.
Statistical Bulletin no. 562, (Washington D.C.: General Printing Office, October
1976). Most of the sugar production in the Northeast was for export according to
legislation of the Instituto de Álcool e do Açúcar (IAA) in order to create greater
equity between the Northeastern and Center-South economies.

10
foreiros (subsistence farmers who paid rent and a certain amount of unpaid labor to

the landowner).9

In 1958, a drought struck the Northeast, creating a new surge in migration to

the coastal cities and to other regions of Brazil.10 This migration of Northeasterners

to the cities and the southern states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro caused politicians

to worry about how best to control this migration. Studies on the “drought industry”

found DNOCS (Departamento nacional das obras contra as secas; National

Department of Works Against Droughts) was incapable of solving the problems

related to droughts in the Northeast.11 In 1959, SUDENE (Superintendência do

desenvolvimento do Nordeste; Superintendency for the Development of the

Northeast) was created both to address the problems of the droughts and to stimulate

industrial development in the Northeast. Directed by the eminent economist Celso

Furtado, SUDENE was seen as the “hope” for the Northeast: a program that would

modernize the Northeast by bringing industrial development and jobs to its poverty-

stricken inhabitants. This poverty could be seen in both urban and rural areas, and by

the late 1950s, Northeast Brazil had the worst rural inequality in Brazil and in the

9 Interview with Zezé de Galiléia in O Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo) 8 August
1961. “All of a sudden the landowner raised our rent. We couldn’t pay more. We
refused to pay more.”
10 The drought of 1958 affected most of the regions of Northeast Brazil. Another

drought affected the area in 1961/62. In between periods of drought, floods often
damaged crops and houses.
11 DNOCS and the “drought industry” found that the money spent to prevent the

misery caused by droughts in the Northeast was used to support politicians and
projects to benefit the land-owning elite instead of projects that benefited the lower-
class who the droughts effected more drastically. The large landowners also
benefited monetarily through irrigation programs since they were funded to
implement the systems on their own lands. Antônio Callado, Os industriais da seca e
os “Galileus” de Pernambuco (Aspectos da luta pela reforma agrária no Brasil.
(Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1960).

11
Americas. Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, was labeled the fourth-worst city in the

world, outranked only by three African cities, in terms of poverty and inequality. The

ownership of land was highly unequal, with very few wealthy landowners owning

most of the land and the majority of the impoverished population owning little or no

land.12

In terms of world politics, the Cuban Revolution in 1959 marked the

beginning of a shift in the focus of the Cold War to Latin America.13 By mid-1960,

the United States threatened Cuba with economic embargoes the elimination of sugar

import quotas for the coming year. And, after the John F. Kennedy administration

broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961, other Latin American

republics were drawn into the Cold War with increased pressure to support US policy

towards Cuba. In the face of diplomatic pressure and as an ally of the United States,

Brazil chose to adopt an “independent” foreign policy. President Jânio Quadros,

elected to office in 1960 on the center-right UDN ticket, reinstated relations with the

Soviet Bloc countries that had been severed during the Dutra administration (1946-

12 In a report prepared from the 1960 census in Pernambuco, 200,103 small

landowners (owning 0 to 9 hectares of land) owned 587,848 hectares compared to
567 large landowners (1,000 hectares or more) who owned 1,444,500 hectares. In the
form of a percentage (in terms of the total number of establishments for zone and
state): small landowners (0 to 9 hectares) made up 76.6% of the landowners but only
possessed 9.2% of the total lands; small to mid-sized landowners (10 to 99 hectares)
made up 19.3% of landowners and owned 24.4% of the total lands; and large
landowners (100 to 999 hectares and those owning over 1,000 hectares) made up only
4% of the landowners but owned 66.4% of the total lands. From Mary Wilkie, “A
Report on Rural Syndicates in Pernambuco” (Rio de Janeiro: Latin American Center
for Research in the Social Sciences, 1964), p. 4, cited in Cynthia Hewitt, “Brazil: The
Peasant Movement,” pp. 375-376. It is unclear whether these statistics include the
landless majority.
13 Even though the U.S.-supported overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in

Guatemala in 1954 displayed characteristics of Cold-War politics, Latin America was

not considered a major threat to US security until after the Cuban Revolution.

12
1951), while attempting to maintain positive but less “dependent” relations with the

United States.14 As a reflection of its “independent” policy, the short-lived Quandros

government Brazil denounced both the US and the Soviet Union for foreign

aggression in Cuba.15 However, the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in April of 1961

solidified Brazil’s stance against US imperialism.16

Although the Kennedy administration did not agree with or fully trust Jânio

Quadros, relations with Brazil became more difficult following his surprise

resignation in August 1961, which seemed to leave the political system in Brazil in a

state of chaos.17 Jânio resigned while Vice-President João Goulart, the seasoned PTB

(Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, Brazilian Labor Party) politician known as Jango, was

in China working on re-establishing relations between China and Brazil. Goulart

returned and took office, but immediately encountered hostility from the military, and

before he was sworn in, Congress passed an amendment creating a parliamentary

system to limit Goulart’s power as President. Jango’s government adopted

14 Keith Larry Storrs argues that supporters of independent policy believed that US
military and economic interests were more of a threat than communism. This is
based on the perceived need for development, which according to independent policy,
is impeded by Cold War politics because the US and the Soviet goals are not for
development but for domination. Keith Larry Storrs, “Brazil’s Independent Foreign
Policy, 1961-1964: Background, Tenets, Linkage to Domestic Politics and
Aftermath” (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1973), 228-230.
15 Jânio, for instance, awarded Ché Guevara the highest medal of honor for foreigners

in August 1961. Thomas Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 50.
16 Upon hearing of the invasion, Jânio contacted the Brazilian representative to the

United Nations about the need for a continent-wide rejection of this type of
aggression. Moniz Bandeira, Presença dos Estados Unidos no Brasil (Dois séculos
de história) (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1973), p. 409.
17 Fidel Castro blamed Jânio’s resignation on the US and the “treacherous stroke of

imperialism’s paw.” “Moscow Assails U.S. on Quadros,” New York Times, 27 August
1961, p. 33.

13
“independent” policies similar to Quadros’, using the slogan, “Cuba sí, Yanquis sí,

Imperialismo no.”(Cuba Yes, Yankees Yes, Imperialism No.)18 In the meantime,

inflationary pressures on the rise at the end of Kubitschek’s term in office, rapidly

escalated as foreign loans taken out to finance development projects and import-

substitution industrialization during the Kubitschek years began to come due in the

early 1960s, exacerbating imbalances in federal finances and monetary supply. From

January 1963 to March 31, 1964, social activism in Brazil increased, as a variety of

social groups voiced demands for an aggressive program of education, labor, electoral

and agrarian reforms. These social movements emerged in almost every region of

Brazil, but the activism in the Northeast region received the lion’s share of national

and international attention.

Although prior to the mid-1950s the U.S. government did not consider Brazil

an area of priority, this shifted dramatically in 1960 with the “discovery” of the Ligas

Camponesas in Northeastern Brazil. The U.S. government quickly came to regard the

social movement as a more significant threat to national security than Castro’s Cuba.

In response, the Kennedy administration identified the Northeast as one of the

primary targets of the Alliance for Progress; U.S.-based sources of direct and indirect

aid soon started to supply the Northeast with economic and technical assistance,

largely coordinated out of the US AID (Agency for International Development)

mission in Recife, which was the largest US AID office in the world.19 By 1962,

18 Louis Wiznitzer, “Which Revolution for Brazil?” New Republic, March 19, 1962.
Note the strange spelling of the slogan for Brazil which in Portuguese would read,
“Cuba sim, ianqui sim, imperialismo não.”
19 Joseph Page, The Revolution that Never Was (New York: Grossman Publishers,

1972), 12.

14
under the aegis of the Alliance for Progress, the U.S. and Brazil pledged $276 million

to create development programs in Northeastern Brazil including projects in

electrification, schools, public health programs, and irrigation. Conflicts soon arose

between US AID and SUDENE (founded prior to U.S. involvement) since the two

agencies had different priorities but had to coordinate their projects because they were

both funded with Alliance for Progress money. At the same time that the Northeast

was a target for US aid programs, it also became a focus of pro-Cuba and anti-US

imperialism movements. Many of the Northeastern social movements and state

governments were labeled as being “communist-infiltrated,” or “Fidelistas.” Local

political leaders, such as mayor/governor Miguel Arraes, took an anti-US imperialism

stance and enforced policies that extended labor legislation to the rural poor.

Education programs and Catholic activism prioritized the needs of the poor and

fought for the extension of the franchise, especially among the majority of the rural

population barred from voting by laws requiring literacy. The rural poor of the

Northeast became a national and international priority amidst these Cold War

political struggles.

In the arena of cultural and intellectual life, a group of radical filmmakers

turned their camera lenses on the Northeast. The “fundamental trilogy” of Cinema

Novo - Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas secas (Barren Lives, 1963); Ruy Guerra’s

Os fuzís (The Guns, 1963); and Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol

(Black God, White Devil, 1964) – all depicted the Northeast, or a certain version of it,

in an attempt to provoke a revolutionary response from their audiences and to counter

15
the “exotic” aesthetic of Hollywood’s depictions of the Third World.20 For

filmmakers associated with the Cinema Novo movement, film was seen as a medium

that needed to be appropriated from elite and foreign For the most part, these films

used well-known themes associated with Northeastern Brazil including epic stories

such as Canudos and Palmares, religious fanaticism, drought, misery and poverty, and

exploitation of rural workers by the landed elite.

Again, the rural poor in Northeast Brazil, who constituted one-third of

Brazil’s total population in 1960, lived in a highly inequitable society, and in the late

1950s and early 1960s, Northeastern Brazil was the country’s poorest region. Per

capita income in the Northeast averaged just above half of the national average.21

The unequal distribution of land, resources, and services such as education and health

facilities meant that the majority of Northeasterners were landless, illiterate, and

malnourished. Death among infants and premature death among adults were

fundamental aspects of the region’s demographic indicators.22 The rural workforce

enjoyed few of the protections extended to urban industrial workers, and often

confronted capangas and grilheiros, the hired thugs routinely used by large

landowners to threaten rural workers with physical violence. Even with high rates of

malnutrition, foodstuff production did not have a priority on most of the arable land.

20
Related to Frantz Fanon’s call for violent revolution against colonialism, Glauber
Rocha defined the objective of Cinema Novo as provoking violent revolutionary
action against the colonizers.
21 Kim Sims Taylor, Sugar and the Underdevelopment of Northeastern Brazil: 1500-

1970, (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1978), p.5.

22 One of the US AID reports on the Northeast listed life expectancy at 35 years,

infant mortality at 33%, and 70% of the population suffering from parasite infections.
Only 32% of school age children attended school compared to 43% in Brazil. U.S.
Agency for International Development Mission to Brazil. The Alliance for Progress
in Northeast Brazil. April 29, 1963, p. 16.

16
Instead, most of the fertile land in the humid costal area (zona da mata) was dedicated

to the export crop of sugar cane, a crop that had been grown in the Northeast since the

sixteenth century. Most of the rural social movements had their strength in the mata

or the agreste, a transitional area where cotton plantations, foodstuff production and

ranching are more common. The third geographic zone in the Northeast is the

hinterland known as the sertão, the largest area and a semi-arid zone where the main

products of cattle, cotton, sisal and corn. While some of the rural social movements

attempted to establish leagues or unions in the sertão, both the history and memory of

this is almost impossible to trace.23

It is against this political and social background that various rural social

movements – the Ligas Camponesas, the Communist Party Rural Syndicates, and the

Catholic Federations of Rural Workers – arose. The Ligas Camponesas, or Peasant

Leagues, became the most important political movement, and the one that led

Northeastern Brazil to be considered, in the words of JFK, “the most dangerous area

in world.” Although no consensus exists on the actual date of the formation of the

organization, the most common date cited is 1954, the year when Oscar de Arruda

Beltrão, owner of a defunct sugar plantation called the Engenho Galiléia, was named

the first president (Presidente de Honra) of the SAPPP (Agricultural and Cattle

Raising Society of Pernambuco). Some accounts describe Beltrão’s initial

enthusiasm for the Sociedade but if this enthusiasm ever existed, it was short-lived.

Soon after the Association was officially founded, Beltrão started to worry that its

existence threatened his authority. This may have been because the rural workers

used the Association to discuss labor/land agreements such as rent prices or unpaid

17
labor practices. Other accounts explain Beltrão’s concerns as being due to his

connections with other landowners who warned him about the dangers of having such

an association on his property because of the laborers’ ability to organize or because

of the supposed threat of communist infiltration. Still others claim that Beltrão had

decided to sell the engenho and needed an excuse to expel the workers from his lands.

In any case, Beltrão demanded the extinction of the SAPPP and threatened to throw

the rural workers off his land. And, this is where Francisco Julião entered the story.

Led by the ex-administrator of the Engenho Galiléia, José Francisco de Souza,

or “o velho Zezé,” and José dos Prazeres, a group of rural workers traveled to Recife

in early January 1955. They had heard of a lawyer and state deputy who had the

reputation of defending the rights of rural people. These rural workers – soon to be

known as “Galileus” – went to Francisco Julião’s home in Caxangá, just outside of

Recife, where he agreed to take up their legal claims, the case of Galiléia. While

most of the accounts of the Ligas Camponesas flash forward to 1959 and the legal

victory for the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia, a few of the incidents and

struggles that took place from 1955 to 1959 influenced the way the story was

conceptualized.

From 1955 to 1959, state deputy Francisco Julião (PSB, Brazilian Socialist

Party) became aware of the three tools that he had for organizing the Ligas

Camponesas: the civil code, the Bible and literatura de cordel (popular pamphlet

poetry).24 But, he also realized that he had to figure out a way to counter the type of

24
In 1959, Julião claims that from 1955 to 1959, thousands of folhetos or pamphlets
were published and distributed with titles such as, “Foreiro de Pernambuco,” “A guia
do camponês,” “O ABC do camponês,” and “Meu recado ao camponês.” These

18
violence that limited the organization of rural unions, or a way to question the

legitimacy of the use of force by the state police and the large landowner’s hired

thugs (capangas or grilheiros). If the Ligas Camponesas were to function as a

coherent rural social movement, they had to address concerns faced by the majority of

rural people, regardless of their labor conditions (i.e., peasants, cane laborers,

squatters, parceiros, posseiros, foreiros, cambeeiros, meeiros, etc.). The issue of

agrarian reform had to be taken up at the national level in order to be effective, so

Julião had to devise a way to turn a very local or at most a regional movement into a

national struggle. Furthermore, the Ligas Camponesas needed to be seen as non-

communist or they needed to redefine the way communism was viewed in the rural

areas.

Francisco Julião first concerned himself with turning the SAPPP into a legal

rural association, with an elected council, membership cards and dues. Rural unions

were illegal at the time, although mutual-aid associations had existed from the time of

slavery. The first step Julião took in 1955 was to notarize and legalize the documents

that established the SAPPP. From here, he started the legal process of filing for the

right to expropriate, first presented to the Assembléia Legislativa in July 1957. Under

the Brazilian Civil Code, if landowners were not using their land or were

underutilizing their land, it was stipulated that the land could be expropriated by the

state with fair compensation (Art. 155, “o uso da propriedade será condicionado ao

folhetos functioned as a way to spread the news about the Ligas Camponesas. “Dep.
Julião Desmente o Caráter Subversivo das Ligas Camponesas” Diario de
Pernambuco 16 May 1959, 12.

19
bem-estar social”). Although this had never occurred before the case of Galiléia, it

was a legal avenue that could be pursued by Julião and other lawyers.

During this period, as a state deputy, Julião also started to change the

language used to describe the rural population. In a speech in 1955 in the Assembléia

Legislativa, Julião introduced the term “camponês” (peasant) when discussing an

issue related to agriculture. Julião was interrupted during his speech by deputada

Maria Elisa Viegas de Medeiros, a schoolteacher, who asked if he could use a word

less politically charged to describe the rural population, and suggested the term

“rurícola.”25 Rurícola was the official word used by the elite to describe the rural

population, but it was not a term rural people used to describe themselves. For

instance, no Brazilian would say “I am a rurícola,” but instead 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.”). In fact, it is difficult to find “rurícola” in Portuguese

dictionaries, since it is more commonly associated with Latin (i.e., country-dweller)

or binomial nomenclature (e.g., Clytus ruricola, Gecarcinus ruricola). In the

Assembléia Legislativa, Julião defended his use of the term “camponês” since rural

people came from the “campo” (countryside) and they did not know the term

“rurícola.” Julião also claimed to have used the term camponês because it classified a

group that opposed the latifundiarios.

On September 3, 1955, the first Congresso Camponês de Pernambuco was

held in Recife bringing together around 3,000 participants, and with federal deputy

25
This incident was described in detail in 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.

20
Josué de Castro presiding. After the conference, the participants took to the streets,

marching in what was declared to be the first organized protest in Pernambuco by

rural workers.26 The success of this march and the need to create broader visibility

for the struggle of rural workers in Northeastern Brazil led to more organized

marches, occurring frequently from 1955 to 1959.27 By 1959, when the question of

the expropriation was being debated, reports in the conservative press claimed that

the state felt threatened by the presence and visibility of the thousands of rural men

and women who gathered in the capital to hear the decision. According to some

sources, over 3,000 rural workers had converged on the capital accompanied by

another 3,000 urban supporters.

The story of origin culminates in 1959 with the expropriation of the Engenho

Galiléia and the proliferation of peasant leagues that had already begun to organize in

rural communities throughout Northeastern Brazil. State deputy Carlos Luíz de

Andrade (PSB) and lawyer Djacy Magalhães put forth the claim for the expropriation

of Engenho Galiléia. By many accounts, it was the first time in history that a large

landowner (senhor de engenho) was forced to stand in court next to a camponês. The

expropriation was listed as one of the ten most important events of 1959 in the Diario

de Pernambuco.28 By late November, the numerous trials and delays of the final

sentence finally ended with the decision that Galiléia was to be expropriated and its

owner properly reimbursed.

26
Ibid., 71-72.
27
Supposedly 80 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).
28
“Os Dez Acontecimentos Mais Importantes em Pernambuco,” Diario de
Pernambuco 1 January 1960, 1.

21
 The Ligas fought for the civil rights of rural men and women, which they

believed included the right to own property, “the land they worked.” They also

mobilized for the extension of public services, such as electricity, water, schools and

health care facilities. Since the requirements for voting were based on literacy, it is

significant that one of the reasons for the organization of the SAPPP was to found a

school and hire a teacher. Enfranchisement and an extension of civil rights in the

rural areas was seen as a way to fight the traditional power wielded by the large

landowners and coroneis (rural political bosses). Perhaps most of all, many rural

workers joined Ligas or formed similar organizations because they saw this as a way

to improve their precarious living conditions in some way. The specific motives vary

from having the ability to fight against the rising land rental prices, to fighting against

their expulsion from the landowner’s property, to increasing their wages and improve

their working conditions, to declaring illegal the corvée or system of unpaid labor

days, to decreasing the landowner’s power over their personal lives (e.g., many rural

men complained about the landowners raping wives and daughters). Studies of the

Ligas Camponesas have concentrated on identifying the main reasons for the

emergence of the Ligas, but it seems safe to say that this diverse group of rural

workers had many different reasons and motivations, but they saw the Ligas and other

rural social movements as a way to improve their living conditions, or in other words,

to be recognized as citizens of the modern nation and have national laws and norms

extended to include rural men and women.

After the initial legal victory in 1959, the Ligas expanded into many rural

communities throughout the Northeast with their central headquarters in Recife.

22
While the majority of new Ligas were located in Pernambuco, the Liga of Sapé in

Paraíba turned into the largest peasant league. By 1962, Ligas had been established

throughout the Northeastern states, although their numbers remained small outside of

Pernambuco and Paraíba. Ligas also existed throughout Brazil: there were at least

four Ligas in Bahia, a handful in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and a few in Paraná and

Santa Catarina in the South. These Ligas eventually merged with other rural social

movements that enjoyed a greater presence in areas outside the Northeast, such as

MASTER in Rio Grande do Sul.

The historiography claims that the Ligas lost significant support throughout

Brazil after the November 1961 National Peasant’s Congress in Belo Horizonte. The

meeting was led by the Communist Party-backed organization, the Union of Farmers

and Agricultural Workers of Brazil (ULTAB; União de Lavradores e Trabalhadores

Agrícolas do Brasil), and in the meeting President João Goulart and PCB leader Luís

Carlos Prestes tried to make an agreement with Julião to incorporate the Ligas into a

National Rural Worker’s Union, established a few years later in 1963 as the National

Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG). Julião refused both the offer by

Goulart and the PCB, based on his concern that the Ligas would lose their

commitment to rural Nordestinos and their independence as a social movement.

Many scholars have interpreted this decision as guided by Julião’s fear of losing

control and power, and regarded his discord with the PCB and Goulart as signs that

he wanted to remain the leader of a social movement more than to “help” push

forward a national program of agrarian reform. Scholars have also linked the

decision to his insistence on “radical agrarian reform” and his commitment to the

23
“messianic” traditions of the rural Northeast. But, as mentioned earlier, historians

have made certain judgments about the Ligas based on a series of political

assumptions. For instance, it is not clear how scholars deduced that the Ligas “lost

support” other than the fact that by 1961 a number of competing rural social

movements had emerged. But, even this does not necessarily mean that the Ligas had

lost support; it just means that other groups were also active in organizing rural

people and the Ligas lost their monopoly on rural organizing in the Northeast. In

fact, the same information might be interpreted as an indication of the success of the

Ligas, which made the Northeast fertile terrain for other social movements. The sheer

number of police and newspaper reports on Ligas land invasions and conflicts in

Pernambuco and Paraíba until 31 March 1964 suggests that the Ligas maintained

strength and support in the countryside.

It must be noted that even though the historiography has often tried to draw

distinctions between the three main rural social movements in Northeastern Brazil –

the Ligas Camponesas, the PCB rural unions and the Catholic Church Federation of

Rural Workers – this division is problematic since many people were involved in

more than one of these movements.29 Members of the PCB and Catholic priests

participated in the Ligas Camponesas, and at times the local movements overlapped

and combined their efforts. However, the three movements were different in terms of

their discourse and goals. One of the differences between the Ligas and the

29
For instance, Luciana de Barros Jaccoud, Movimentos sociais e crise política em
Pernambuco, 1955-1968 (Recife: Editora Massangana, 1990); Bernadete Wrubleski
Aued, A vítoria dos vencidos: Partido Comunista Brasileiro e Ligas Camponesas,
1955-1964 (Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 1985); Fernando Antônio Azevedo, As
Ligas Camponesas (São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1982); Elide de Rugai Bastos, As Ligas
Camponesas (Petropolis: Editora Vozes, 1984).

24
Communist Party rural unions was the influence of the Communist Party as a central

organizing unit. The PCB had two national newspapers for rural struggles, Novos

Rumos, published in Rio de Janeiro, and Terra Livre, published in São Paulo, that

started in the mid-1940s and had an on-again off-again run through 1964. While

many reports about Julião’s Ligas appeared in these papers, written mostly by

Clodomir Morais de Santos, a Ligas leader who was also in the PCB, these

periodicals mainly concentrated on the struggles for land in the south. Thus, it follows

that in conceiving the story of origin of the PCB rural unions, their leaders harked

back to previous attempts to organize Ligas in the south as well as in Pernambuco

that predated the rise of the Ligas Camponesas associated with Julião.30

According to the PCB, the Galileus first approached the PCB with their

problem following the formation of the SAPPP and the threat of being thrown off the

engenho. The PCB suggested that they go to deputado Francisco Julião, who the

PCB thought could handle this situation with greater efficacy. What they did not

expect was that he would use the 1955 Galiléia episode to form a large rural social

movement that did not follow the Party line. The PCB argues that key rural leaders,

such as José dos Prazeres, were affiliated with the Communist Party. José dos

Prazeres had supposedly been involved in the PCB Ligas of the 1940s and had been a

staunch radical for many years, even organizing a group to participate in the Mexican

Revolution. The PCB claimed “ownership” so to speak of the Ligas Camponesas, but

later started their own rural unions when Julião refused to follow the Party line. The

30
In 1945, with the fall of the Estado Novo, the PCB was declared a legal party until
1947 and in these years, a number of Ligas Camponesas were organized throughout
Brazil (e.g., the Liga Camponesa de Dumont in São Paulo, the Liga Camponesa de
Boa Idéia in Iputinga, Pernambuco).

25
PCB rural unions also became most closely identified with organizing the cane

workers, who the PCB saw as the most revolutionary force in the countryside. As a

result, these PCB-linked organizations were concentrated more on cane workers, they

were more interested in struggles for workers’ rights than radical agrarian reform.

Gregório Bezerra was the Communist leader most frequently associated with

the PCB rural unions, and the areas where the PCB held the most strength were in the

towns of Palmares, along the southern coast of Pernambuco, and Jaboatão, close to

Recife. The unions supported Governor Miguel Arraes, and received support from

the Arraes administration. The PCB rural unions in Palmares coordinated one of the

largest and most successful strikes in the history of the cane industry in November

1963. Over 200,000 workers, both cane cutters and mill workers, paralyzed the sugar

industry for four days in Pernambuco, demanding the right to the minimum wage, one

day off a week, and the right to paid national and religious holidays. The strike was

successful in part because of the timing – if the sugar cane was not processed quickly

the entire crop would spoil – and because of support from Arraes. The agreement

reached allowed for an eight-hour work day, a limit on the number of pieces a worker

could be required to cut or plant in an eight-hour day, and a very significant increase

in wages, from 12 cents a day to 72 cents.31 Following the 1964 coup, the PCB

leaders were arrested and subjected to particularly public and brutal violence by the

military authorities.

Similar to the PCB in the sense that regional movements were connected to a

larger centralized infrastructure, the Catholic Church also began organizing

31
Gregorio Bezerra, Memorias, 177.

26
federations of rural workers in the early 1960s. According to the historiography, the

Church federations emerged as a reaction to Julião’s Ligas and the PCB rural unions.

Particularly since Julião used the bible as one of his main organizing tools, it has been

argued that this moved the Church to radicalize and focus greater attention on the

rural population. But, a number of stories from the Church about the rural social

movements in the 50s and 60s locate Church programs at the forefront of these rural

struggles. As in the case of the PCB, the Catholic rural movements were connected

to a broader infrastructure, the Catholic Church, which was increasingly progressive

during the papacy of Pope John XXIII (1958-1963). The encyclical Mateu et

Magistra (1961) called for a new focus on the “social question,” and specifically on

the poor and the Third World, and served as a starting point for what later became

known as liberation theology.

According to the Church, the new attention to the rural population in

Northeastern Brazil started with conferences organized in the mid-1950s. In August

1955, the first conference on poverty and the suffering of the Nordestino, the

“Congresso do Salvação do Nordeste,” (not to be confused with the I Congresso

Camponês de Pernambuco held in September 1955) took place in the Pernambucan

capital. This ecumenical conference involved many politicians, journalists, lawyers,

engineers, and bishops who met to discuss reforms and development projects for

Northeastern Brazil. Although the document that came out of the conference, Carta

de Salvação do Nordeste did not mention agrarian reform, many of the participants

raised the issue, including Father Leopoldo Brentana of the Ação Católica Operário.32

32
Antonio Antônio Azevedo, As Ligas Camponesas (Rio: Paz e Terra, 1982), p.65

27
In May 1956, the I Encontro dos Bispos do Nordeste took place in Campina Grande,

a city in the interior of Paraíba. The conference objectives centered on the problem

of migration, but included issues such as rural credit, colonization programs, social

services and education, and electrification. The second regional bishops’ conference

was held in May of 1959 in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, and focused on the social

and human issues related to development projects.33 What is interesting about these

conferences is how they connect the Church to national programs and projects for

development.34 Although the bishops’ conferences discussed the problem of the

Nordeste and the Nordestino, local organizing did not start until 1961.

The two main leaders associated with the Church Federations in Pernambuco

were Padre Antonio Melo and Padre Paulo Crespo. Padre Crespo led the Church

Federation of Rural Workers (sometimes referred to as the Legiões Agrárias de

Pernambuco) and SORPE (Serviço de Orientação Rural de Pernambuco) in Jaboatão,

Pernambuco, and became a leading spokesman for the movement. Padre Melo led the

Catholic rural union movement in Cabo, Pernambuco as well as the colonization and

cooperative land projects in the area.35 The key difference between the Church

Federations and the PCB unions and Ligas Camponesas is that the Church supported

colonization projects as agrarian reform, and the Church followed a line associated

with developmentalism. Furthermore, Church-affiliated peasant leaders were less

33
“Instala-se hoje o encontro de Bispos,” O Estado de São Paulo 24 May 1959, p.5.
Out of this conference came the first plans for a national program for economic
development to replace DNOCS, which came to be known as SUDENE.
34
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), p.34.
35
“Padre Melo prega a reforma agrária: É anti-Marxista,” Diario de Pernambuco 15
May 1963, 3.

28
likely to be subjected to military repression; indeed, both priests remained active in

the rural labor movement even after the dictatorship took power.

This introduction serves as a rough overview of some of the major actors,

events and issues in Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. The dissertation

chapters show how these diverse social actors drew upon regional historical symbols

to find support for their political projects. The region of Northeastern Brazil became

a focus of Cold War conflicts, as well as Brazilian and local political struggles, for a

very short period of time – from 1959 to 1964. Because of the high level of social,

political and cultural activism, the period provides an optimal window for examining

the political and cultural struggles of the region and how they connect to national and

international politics. It is a story of the Cold War, as Joseph Page’s quote at the

beginning of the chapter suggests, but also of regional and national politics. The fact

that the 1964 coup repressed these social movements has allowed the story to turn

into yet another example of the tragic Northeastern narrative. My dissertation shows

how this narrative has functioned, both as a means of resistance and a means of

legitimizing the status quo.

29
Chapter 2: O Nordeste: Regionalism, Nationalism and Third
Worldism During the Cold War

What we have to conquer each and every hour of every day, what we
have to deserve, is the future of a free and emancipated people.36

Easiness is not of our world, the world of the Northeast. We are made
of suffering and perseverance, learning from an early age that
stubbornness is the condition of our daily life.37

Miguel Arraes de Alencar

Guerreiro do povo, o Chapéu da palha38
Phrases on a flyer at his funeral, 13 August
200539

Regional identities oftentimes have their roots in topographic, ethnic, or linguistic

distinctions that mark a region as an exception to an imagined homogeneous national

identity. Instead of mountains or waterways delineating the diverse and immense

area known as o Nordeste (Northeastern Brazil), its boundaries lie in historical

narratives of inequality and poverty, violence and messianism, sugar production and

exploitive labor relations, hunger and drought, and survival and resistance.40 (for

36
O futuro do povo livre e emancipado, esse nós temos que merecer, que conquistar
a cada hora e a cada dia.
37
A facilidade não é deste nosso mundo, o Nordeste. Somos feitos de sofrimento e de
perseverance, cedo aprendemos que a teimosia é a condição de nosso viver
38
Miguel Arraes was one of the most symbolic figures of the politics of the 1960s.
The phrases used to define Arraes - “guerilla of the people” and “hat of straw” -
illustrate his popularity with the people of the Northeast.
39
Arraes played an important role in Northeastern Politics, with the exception of his
period of exile in Algeria from 1964-1979. Mayor of Recife (1958-1962); Governor
of Pernambuco (1962 – 1 April 1964); Federal deputy (1982-1986; 1990-1994; 2002-
2005); Governor of Pernambuco (1986-1990; 1994-1998).
40
In 1960, the Northeast was defined as having between 1.2 and 1.6 million square
kilometers, almost the size of France, Italy and Spain combined with 20 to 25 million
inhabitants, one-third of the Brazilian population. This population was greater than
the population of any other Spanish-speaking Latin American country.

30
map, see appendix) Multiple images of o Nordeste constitute the popular

consciousness stretching from sugar cane fields, to colonial churches, to arid desert

lands, to palm tree-lined beaches. A regional accent and vocabulary supposedly

exists, traditions and legends such as Festas Juninas41 or Lampião42 are designated as

“nordestino,” and local fairs exhibit Northeastern culture and artifacts on a weekly

basis. A number of recent scholars have denounced the notion of “o Nordeste” by

emphasizing its imagined discursive construction and showing how inequalities and

discrimination are manifested in regional identity.43 Some have argued that the idea

of the Northeast was a particular manifestation of the power of the landowning elite

who “invented” the region to maintain their dominance and to avoid being

“swallowed up” by the larger nation.44 While I agree that the Northeast is a cultural

and political construction of Otherness that can have destructive consequences, o

Nordeste is also an identity that has been used to create solidarity between social

classes, and to struggle for political action with the objective of creating a more

equitable society. Miguel Arraes’s funeral, for example, brought together hundreds

of thousands of Nordestinos, rich and poor, who shared an admiration for a leader

who believed in the Northeast and Nordestinos and fought throughout his life for this

41
Festival of São João (Saint John), Saint Peter and Saint Anthony associated
strongly with rural Northeastern Brazil in terms of cultural manifestations such as
food and dance “typical” of the region.
42
Lampião was a well-known cangaceiro (backlands bandit) who has been
transformed into a key symbol of the Northeast.
43
Frederico de Castro Neves, Imagens do Nordeste: A construção da memória
regional (Fortaleza: RCV Editoração e Artes Gráficas Ltda, 1994); Albuquerque
Júnior, A Invenção Do Nordeste.
44
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.

31
“imagined” place. The point of studying regionalism is not only to demonstrate how it

has created Northeastern Brazil as the Other, but to show how and why regionalism

exists and perseveres in Brazil, not only as an elite construction but also as a popular

tool to organize social struggle. The first part of this chapter describes some of the

cultural constructions of Northeastern Brazil in the early twentieth century and

introduces topics central to the historiography on regionalism to provide the

background to understand the political and cultural struggles that took place in the

late 1950s and early 1960s over the definition of Northeastern Brazil.

The regional identity of Northeastern Brazil owes much to Euclides da

Cunha’s Os sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands, 1903), a famous epic of the War of

Canudos (1896-97).45 The account is still considered one of the most important

works in shaping Brazilian intellectual formation.46 Da Cunha’s positivist account

was first published as a series of newspaper articles for O Estado de São Paulo that

described destruction of a millenarian community in the interior of Bahia in the early

years of the Brazilian Republic. In the book, Da Cunha divided the story into three

sections: “The Land,” “Man” and the “War of Canudos.” Through these divisions, he

argued how geographical conditions of this region and the historical legacy of

colonialism and miscegenation had intertwined to create a backwards population. He

argued that the Nordestino population threatened modern Brazilian civilization, and

45
Among others, Bernadete Beserra argues that the idea of Northeastern Brazil as a
“region” was a twentieth century invention. Beserra, “Introduction,” 5.
46
In a 1994 study of the most important works in Brazil, Os sertões was listed as
number one. Regina Abreu, O enigma de Os Sertões” (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Rocco
Ltda.; Fundação Nacional de Arte, 1998), 11. For more on Os Sertões and regional
identity, see David M. Jordan, New World Regionalism: Literature in the Americas
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).

32
its “biological evolution” was the only way to assure national preservation.47 In Os

sertões, the marginalization of the people of the sertão made them susceptible to

religious fanaticism, and they tragically fought to their death against state militias and

federal troops in defense of their community and leader.

From 1920 to 1940, regionalist authors and artists built on the model

introduced by Euclides da Cunha, depicting Northeastern Brazil as a miserable,

impoverished, and backwards region that was, at the same time, the traditional heart

of the Brazilian nation.48 Through a few key symbols – drought, religious fanaticism,

coronelismo (rural political bosses), colonial legacies, traditional culture, and the

social banditry of the cangaceiro – the regionalists created an imagined cohesive

place designated as o Nordeste. The area of this culturally constructed Nordeste

covered the states of Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba,

Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, and Bahia.49 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 “geração de 1930.” Artists such as Cícero Dias

47
“Our biological evolution demands the guarantee of social evolution. We are
condemned to civilization. Either we shall progress or we shall perish.” Euclides da
Cunha, Rebellion in the Backlands, trans. Samuel Putnam. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1944), 54.
48
The connection between regionalism and literature has been studied by scholars
such as Raymond Williams, who argued that the regional novels function as a way to
discriminate between the city and country/the modern and traditional/the metropolitan
and the provincial. Raymond Williams, “Region and Class in the Novel,” in The
Uses of Fiction: Essays on the Modern Novel in Honour of Arnold Kettle, ed. Douglas
Jefferson and Graham Martin (Milton Keynes: The Open University Press, 1982): 59-
68.
49
Bahia is sometimes considered part of the Northeast but its status as a nordestino
state is ambiguous. Reasons for this will be explained in detail later.

33
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. The diversity of topics – from

sugar or cacau plantations to drought-stricken populations in the interior sertão –

illustrated the “contrasts” of Northeastern Brazil. What tied Jorge Amado’s mulattas

to Graciliano Ramos’s sertanejos was their Otherness in comparison to the urban

center-south and their confinement to a context in which colonial and historic legacies

determined present and future society.

The cinema industry in Brazil in the early twentieth century also influenced

the cultural construction of regionalism. Before the studio system of the 1950s

developed in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Northeastern Brazil had its own regional

cinema, referred to as the “Ciclo do Recife” or “Recifewood.” From 1923 to 1931,

the cineastas produced 13 films, the best known of which were Gentil Roiz’s Aítare

de praia (1925), Tancredo Seabra’s Filho sem mãe (1925) and Jota Soares’s A filha

do advogado (1927), and Chagas Ribeiro’s Revezes (1927). Although only a few of

the Ciclo do Recife films were preserved, the general themes were focused on life and

culture of the Northeast, whether fishing communities using jangadas (small boats

typical of the region), cangaceiros, carnaval in Pernambuco, cowboy festas, or urban

Recife, Revezes developed the theme of a peasant uprising against large landowners.50

Film critics have debated the “authenticity” of the Ciclo do Recife films, some

claiming that they were copies of North American silent films and others claiming

50
Alexandre Figueirôa, Cinema Pernambucano: uma história em ciclos (Recife:
Prefeitura da Cidade do Recife; Secretaria de Cultura, Turismo e Esportes; Fundação
de Cultura, Cidade do Recife, 2000).

34
that these films represented the true national cinema.51 A recent scholar of the Ciclo

do Recife argues that the films were regional productions influenced by the Modernist

Movement of 1922, imbued with regionalist narratives and themes.52 Early silent

cinema production in other areas of Brazil depicted Northeastern Brazil through on

one particular theme: the cangaceiro. Films such as Lampião, o Banditismo do

Nordeste (1927); José Nelli’s Lampião, a Fera do Nordeste (1930) and Benjamin

Abrahão’s documentary Lampião, o Rei do Cangaço (1936) all approached the story

of the famous cangaceiros as documentary-style dramas.53

Some intellectuals and artists have drawn a distinction between the two

Nordestes, the arid sertão and the cane-growing coastal region. One of the best-

known scholars of Northeastern Brazil, Gilberto Freyre, based his work on o Nordeste

almost entirely on the sugar cane region. In Casa-Grande e Senzala (1933), Freyre

argued that through a mixture of the three “races” (Portuguese, Indian, and African),

the plantation system had allowed for the blending of religions, foods, and traditions

that constituted the essence of Brazilian identity. Other authors focus only on the

sertão, a broader geographic area that extends beyond the technical borders of the

“Northeast” into the state of Minas Gerais. This definition allows scholars to

incorporate national literary works such as João Guimarães Rosa’s Grande Sertão:

51
Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes claimed that these films were imitations of North
American narratives, and Alex Viany argued that the Ciclo do Recife films were “a
significant affirmation of genuine national cinema.” Cited in Eduardo Duarte, A
Estética do Ciclo do Recife (Recife: Editora Universtitária da UFPE, 1995), 42-44.
52
Eduardo Duarte, A Estética do Ciclo do Recife (Recife: Editora Universtitária da
UFPE, 1995), 42-44.
53
Luiz Felipe Miranda, “Cinema e Cangaço – História” Cangaço: O Nordestern no
Cinema Brasileiro org., Maria do Rosário Caetano (Brasília: Avathar Soluções
Graficas, 2005), 92-110.

35
Veredas (The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, 1956). While some argue that the sertão

intertwines with o Nordeste,54 others argue that the sertão is itself a separate region of

Brazil.55 (see appendix) The tension exists in defining inhabitants as well. At times,

the sertanejo is synonymous with Nordestino but certain groups who are Nordestino

are never considered sertanejo; for instance, coastal cane workers. While this

distinction reflects the geographic diversity of Northeastern Brazil, the distinction is

also based on imagined cultural and racial differences that define the sertanejo as

mixed race – of white and Indian descent – whereas the cane worker is associated

with African descent. What is similar about the scholars of the plantations and the

scholars of the sertão is that they all argue for the centrality of these areas to the

Brazilian nation. The image of Northeastern Brazil is broad enough to encompass

multiple stories and settings so long as these accounts reflect the key themes of

misery, violence, inequality, climatic harshness, the non-white, folk religions, or in

general terms, the non-modern.

In a comprehensive historical study of the cultural construction of

Northeastern Brazil, or o Nordeste, Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior draws from

Edward Said’s Orientalism to show how artists, novelists and other cultural actors

created Northeastern Brazil as the Other in Brazil.56 He looks at how mechanisms of

cultural production created the geographical space known as o Nordeste, by

connecting this space to a historic past through what they defined as traditional

54
Silvie Debs, Cinema et littérature au Brésil. Les mythes du Sertào: émergence
d’une identité nationale. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002); Paulo Emílio Matos Marins, A
reinvenção do Sertão (Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 2001).
55
Janaína Amado, “Região, Sertão, Nação,” Estudos Históricos, 8: 15 (1995): 145-
151.
56
Albuquerque Júnior, A Invenção Do Nordeste.

36
Northeastern culture. Through a repetition of texts and images, Northeastern Brazil

was “nordestinizado,” turned into an imagined area of misery, violence, folklore,

fanaticism, and rebellion that became the Other of the modern, urban center-south of

Brazil. In this chapter, I build on Albuquerque’s arguments about the construction of

o Nordeste in the twentieth century by situating them in the milieu of political and

cultural debates centered on Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War. I examine how

numerous social actors – the Ligas Camponesas, the US government and media, and

Northeastern intellectuals – energized these debates, redefining o Nordeste through

the appropriation of regional symbols and narratives. But, before turning to this

analysis, I want to briefly discuss historiographical debates on regionalism to show

why it is particularly important in Brazilian and in Cold War history.

In trying to understand the rise of regionalism, some scholars have argued that

regionalism emerged as a way to contest the “grand narratives” of the nation, to

locate a more “authentic” coherency between people and to refer to “marginalized

spaces” in the nation.57 The region has often symbolized the authentic past roots of a

people, a local or provincial space at odds with the modern nation. The quest for

authenticity is a struggle for power, where state and non-state actors attempt to fix

local culture, defining certain cultural artifacts as the official culture or “folklore.”58

Scholars have examined these struggles over identity in relation to gender and

57
Roberto Maria Dainotto, “ ‘All the Regions Do Smilingly Revolt’: The Literature
of Place and Region,” Critical Inquiry 22:3 (Spring 1996), 486-505.
58
In the Brazilian case, this can be seen in the literature and film but also as a part of
the Brazilian Folklore Movement that had institutional support through the Comissão
Nacional de Folclore (CNFL) and the Campanha de Defesa do Folclore Brasileiro
that started in 1958. Luís Rodolfo Vilhena, Projeto e missão: o movimento folclórico
brasileiro, 1947-1964 (Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE; Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1997).

37
race/ethnicity, and have shown how the construction of authenticity is a contested

process over what is considered regional by examining how larger narratives – such

as racial and sexual discourses - frame definitions of region culture.59 As Dianotto

argues, the similarities between regionalism and nationalism are greater than the

differences; they “speak the same language and foster the same desires (…) of purity

and authenticity.”60

While some of the same types of representations and beliefs form national and

regional identity (i.e., creating an imagined community), according to Pierre

Bourdieu, the idea of regionalism rests on “di-vision” or “the power to make people

see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate

definition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake

groups.”61 Bourdieu argues that the way to understand regional identity is by trying

to 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.” Bourdieu’s arguments on the connection between

representation and reality are similar to Stuart Hall’s claim that “how things are

represented and the ‘machineries’ and regimes of representation in a culture play a

59
For instance, Margaret Jacobs examined how white women (female moral
reformers and anti-modern feminists) defined Pueblo Indian culture of the Southwest
through their political projects to preserve or save the Indian Other. Margaret Jacobs,
Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879-1934 (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
60
Dainotto, “ ‘All the Regions,’” 505.
61
Pierre Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation: Elements for a Critical Reflection
on the Idea of Region.” In Language and Symbolic Power. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1991), 221.

38
constitutive, and not merely a reflexive, after-the-event role.”62 Both Bourdieu and

Hall argue that the discursive or the representational realm is not an innate or real

distinction, but at the same time, in Bourdieu’s words, the representations are the

means through which “social agents imagine the divisions of reality and which

contribute to the reality of the divisions.”63 The key issue then becomes the need to

examine the contestations and struggles in the process of shaping and forming

regional identities to demonstrate the power relations framing these identities. Such

analyses show the broader power relations and politics within the nation in

distinguishing the National from the Other.64

During the development of modern Latin American nations, the regional has

been stigmatized as provincial and traditional, while also condensing the material and

social problems that afflict the Third World. Numerous scholars have approached the

topic of regionalism in Latin America, showing the processes of regional construction

as linked to colonial legacies, ethnicities, and geographical distinctions (i.e.,

serra/costa).65 Regional differences in Latin America have been racialized,

62
Stuart Hall,“New Ethnicities” in Black Film/British Cinema. Ed., Kobena Mercer.
(London: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1988).
63
Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation,” 226.
64
Celia Applegate argues that “the most promising historical work is moving toward
an understanding of regional politics that sees them everywhere(…) as constitutive –
not imitative – of the politics of the nation-state, in effect the infrastructure of the
political process altogether.” Celia Applegate, “A Europe of Regions: Reflections on
the Historiography of Sub-National Places in Modern Times,” The American
Historical Review 104:4 (Oct., 1999), 1172.
65
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: Duke University Press, 2003); Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous
Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham:

39
distinguishing black and Indian regions as backwards and the Other in relation to

areas portrayed as white and modern.66 Brazilian regionalism holds a distinct

resonance in the study of regionalism. As Barbara Weinstein has argued,

“Regionalism is still a very lively issue in Brazil not simply because of lingering

emotional loyalties, or residual administrative decentralization, but because of the

nation’s glaring and seemingly ineradicable regional economic inequalities.”67

Bernadete Beserra makes a similar economic argument claiming that the image of the

Northeast and the Nordestino was created during the “nationalization of capital in

Brazil, characterized by the concentration of resources of the different regions in that

of the Central South under the dominance of São Paulo.”68 Beserra claims that

Nordestinos hold an “inferior” position in Brazilian society not because of any

“inherent characteristic” but based on the fact that Nordestinos occupy an inferior

position as exploited laborers in the urban centers of the Central South.

Recent scholarship on regionalism in Brazil has focused on the early part of

the twentieth century when ideas about the modern nation were highly contested,

politically, economically and culturally. Urbanization, industrialization and

modernism challenged the previous dictum of Brazil being “an essentially agrarian

Duke University Press, 2000); Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: La Violencia in
Antioquia, Colombia, 1946-1953 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).
66
Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt,
“Introduction: Racial Nations,” Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, eds.
Nancy P. Appelbaum, Anne S. Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 10.
67
Barbara Weinstein, “Brazilian Regionalism,” Latin American Research Review
17:2 (1982), 262-276.
68
Beserra, “Introduction,” 6. See also, Francisco de Oliveira, Elegia para uma
re(li)gião: Sudene, Nordeste Planejamento e Conflitos de Classes. (Rio: Paz e Terra,
1977).

40
country,”69 but as scholars have argued, many nineteenth century ideologies – such as

scientific racism – were carried over into the first half of the twentieth century and

influenced the construction of regional identity within the modern nation. For

instance, Barbara Weinstein examines the elite construction of São Paulo in the

1930s, arguing that Paulistas approached the national narrative of racial democracy

by constructing São Paulo as the white, modern center of Brazil, by marginalizing the

role of Afro-Brazilians in the construction of the nation, and by Othering

Northeastern Brazil as backwards and non-civilized.70

Stanley Blake also looks at regional identity formation in the early twentieth

century by examining how Northeastern Brazil was defined in relation to the

Brazilian nation.71 Blake argues that by the 1930s, “Nordestino” was a separate

racialized category in Brazil that allowed social scientists, politicians and intellectuals

to make racialized distinctions without referring to a specific ethnicity. This was

evident in the types of social reform programs initiated in Northeastern Brazil in the

1930s. For instance, politicians and social scientists blamed the region’s high infant

mortality rates and malnutrition rates on the inherent incapacity of Northeastern

69
This common statement probably arose during the Old Republic (1889-1930),
related to Liberal planter groups arguing for government funding to be allotted to the
agrarian sector versus industrial development. The idea was also commonly invoked
by Juscelino Kubitschek (1956 – 1961) who stated that Brazil was no longer an
essentially agrarian country to support projects for rapid industrialization.
70
Barbara Weinstein, “Racializing Regional Difference: São Paulo versus Brazil,
1932,” Race and Nation in Modern Latin America, eds. Nancy Appelbaum, Anne
Macpherson, and Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003), 235-262. In terms of cultural production, Durval Muniz de
Albuquerque Júnior also sees the “invention” of the Northeast as being in a dialectical
relationship with São Paulo and the urban center-south.
71
Stanley Earl Blake, “The Invention of the Nordestino: Race, Region, and Identity in
Northeastern Brazil, 1889-1945” (Ph.D. diss., SUNY-Stony Brook, 2001).

41
mothers to raise and care for their children instead of on political and economic

inequalities.72 While such characterizations of Nordestinos in the 1930s reflect

positivist legacies and racialized nationalist assumptions of the 1930s such as racial

democracy, what is interesting is that such depictions do not disappear from the

definition of o Nordeste. In fact, with the privileged place of social science as a way

to understand and solve the problem of “poverty” during the Cold War, allowed

social indicators and statistics to flourish as the way to describe Northeastern Brazil

and Nordestinos.73

While the idea of the Northeast as the impoverished and backwards Other

resonates throughout the scholarship on the region,74 one of the other key themes of

Northeastern identity is resistance. This is to say, many scholars also focus on

discussing the long history of resistance in the Northeast that forms a part of the

imagined landscape and people. Hamilton de Mattos Monteiro, for instance, argues

that the Northeast is a product of a long history of rebellions and resistance

movements, especially in the nineteenth century when the region was on the “banks

72
Ibid., 184-186.
73
As Arturo Escobar argued, developmentalism prioritized descriptions of the “Third
World” as “statistical figures” and dehumanizing abstract representations. Arturo
Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 42-44.
74
For instance, Carlos Garcia, O que é o Nordeste Brasileiro (São Paulo: Editora
Brasiliense, 1984); Laércio Souto Maior, São os nordestinos uma minoria racial?
(Londrina, 1985); Maura Penna, O que faz ser Nordestino: Identidades sociais,
interesses e o “escândolo” Erundina. (São Paulo: Cortez Editora, 1992);
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in
Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Iná Elias de Castro, O mito
da necessidade: Discurso e prática do regionalismo nordestino (Rio de Janeiro:
Bertrand Brasil, 1992); Tobias Hecht, At Home on the Street: Street Children of
Northeast Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

42
of revolutionary effervescence” with the Praieira Rebellion (1848-1850).75 Biorn

Maybury-Lewis argues that a significant rural labor movement was able to develop

during the military regime in the Northeast because of what he defined as a “culture

of resistance” that had developed in the region throughout the colonial period and in

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While Beserra argues that this type of “re-

invention” of the Northeast has been a more recent trend to promote tourism, the

ways in which social movements elaborated upon this facet of Nordestino identity in

the 1950s and 1960s shows how the notion of resistance and rebellion attempted to

radically transform the region.76

The topic of how regionalism fits into the paradigm of modernization theory is

one of the key themes in understanding Cold War history. Celia Applegate argues

that according to modernization theory, regions should have disappeared as political

and economic areas when the region became integrated into national markets and

when state institutions developed, ceding greater power to national institutions,

national political parties and electoral processes.77 As nations developed, a sense of

nationalism should have also expanded, fostered by state-led initiatives for the

development of industry and the development of national culture, “expressed in a

75
Hamilton de Mattos Monteiro, Nordeste insurgente (1850-1890) (São Paulo:
Brasiliense, 1981).
76
Beserra, “Introduction,” 8. Beserra argues that the “new” stereotypes of the
Northeast further ideas of the Northeast as “exotic,” “wild” and “backwards.” As she
claims, “the memory and practice of day-to-day resistance and protest are dissolved
in a submissive pasteurization that hinders the feeding of any dream of a more radical
transformation.” What is missing from Beserra’s argument is the historical analysis
of how and why this version of Northeastern resistance exists. To understand this, it
is necessary to understand the transformation of regional identity by the rural social
movements of the 1950s and 1960s and the military government’s reaction to these
social movements.
77
Applegate, “A Europe of Regions,” 1157-1182.

43
common language, disseminated through educational and artistic institutions, and

represented in all manner of central monuments, rituals and common experiences.”78

After World War II, social science methodologies changed how history was

produced, thematically and methodologically.79 This led to a proliferation of studies

on urban history, the place in the nation where modernity could most easily be

located. Meanwhile, challenges to modernization theory claimed that

underdevelopment was not simply a state of transition but an integrated part of

modern society, and the persistence of regionalist loyalties and regional uprisings

indicated that regionalism was still a crucial subject of historical inquiry. While

Applegate’s arguments show the relation between the production of history,

modernization theory and regionalism in Europe, the persistence of regionalism

during the Cold War has a different significance in the context of the Third World.80

It is important to rethink the historiography on regionalism during the Cold War by

looking at the Third World to understand the connection between regionalism,

nationalism, modernization theory and Cold War history.

Modernization theory played a significant role in shaping policies and state

development institutions in Brazil. Regional development was key to

developmentalist policies and programs since regions were seen as enclaves of

78
Ibid., 1163.
79
Applegate draws from the work by Sidney Pollard, Peaceful Conquest: The
Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970 (New York, 1981) in how his work uses
Alexander Gerschenkron, W.W. Rostow and Simon Kuznets; and, John Agnew and
James Duncan, The Power of Place: Bringing Together Geographical and
Sociological Imaginations (Winchester, Mass., 1989). Applegate, “A Europe of
Regions,” 1163.
80
Although the term “Third World” suggests an Othering in itself, I choose to use the
word because it was the term used during this period to refer to “developing” nations
and because many movements themselves used this term to declare solidarity.

44
underdevelopment that needed to develop to fit into the modern nation.81 As Nils

Gilman argues in Mandarins of the Future, by the late 1950s, modernization theorists

such as Lucian Pye constructed arguments about why underdeveloped countries were

at risk for Communism.82 In “traditional” societies embarking upon the transition to

modernization, people supposedly felt unsure about the future, materially and

psychologically. Modernization theorists argued that the Communist Party took

advantage of this unstable transitory period. W.W. Rostow and other modernization

theorists argued that the only way to prevent the threat of a Communist “take-over”

was to provide immediate economic aid and development to underdeveloped

countries and regions, making the passage to modern society as rapid and safe as

possible.83

At the same time that Modernization theorists depicted regional culture as a

manifestation of the traditional past and swept up in a process of inevitable

transformation to modernity, this was not the only explanation or reason for the

increased significance of the regional during the Cold War. A number of scholars and

journalists in Northeastern Brazil started discussing the limits to modernization,

evolution and development in Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s, suggesting

that Northeastern Brazil was a product of “internal colonization.”84 As Regina Reyes

81
Chapter Four further details the influence of modernization theory in shaping the
policies and programs for Northeastern development.
82
Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War
America, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 167-168.
83
Ibid., 12.
84
In a conversation, Governor Gilberto Mestrinho stated that “there is much talk of
foreign colonialism, but in Brazil there is a Brazilian colonialism reaching from the
South [into the North].” Cited in L.A. Costa Pinto and Waldemiro Bazzanella,
“Economic Development, Social Change, and Population Problems in Brazil,” in

45
Novaes argues, toward the end of the 1950s and with the drought of 1958, “all of

Brazil started to consider the Northeast as a plundered region, underdeveloped,

colonized, an Other Brazil.”85 Social scientists such as Fernando Enrique Cardoso

worked gathering data on Northeastern Brazil in the early 1960s, even conducting

research at the Engenho Galiléia, developing arguments later elaborated on in Enzo

Faletto and Fernando Enrique Cardoso’s Development and Dependency in Latin

America (1969). Other arguments portrayed the regional as containing authentic

nationalism and social actors used such depictions to mobilize people against what

was seen as foreign imperialism or left-over manifestations of colonialism.

A historical examination of how modernization theories and dependency

theories conceptualized ideas of the region of Northeastern Brazil provides a way to

understand the connection between the development and implementation of theory

and regional identity in Brazil during the Cold War. But, as Peter Sinclair has argued,

these theories lack the depth to explain regionalism and to understand regional

disparities.86 Whereas the study of nations and nationalism has produced a wealth of

theories, the study of regionalism still lacks this type of analysis. In part this is due to

the vagueness of regions, which do not have the same connection to a central state or

even strictly defined borders as nations. But, in its fluidity, similar to studies of the

Irving Louis Horowitz, Revolution in Brazil: Politics and Society in a Developing

Nation (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc., 1964), 260.
85
“o Brasil inteiro passa a pensar o Nordeste como região espolida, subdesenvolvida,
colonizada, um outro Brasil,” Regina Reyes Novaes, De Corpo e Alma: Catolicismo,
classes sociais e conflitos no campo (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 1997), 31.
86
Peter R. Sinclair, “Poor Regions, Poor Theory: Toward Improved Understanding of
Regional Inequality,” Appalachia in an International Context: Cross-National
Comparisons of Developing Regions, eds., Phillip Obermiller and William Philliber
(Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994), 187-207. Sinclair argues: “Poor regions are
ill served by poor theory.”

46
frontier or borderlands, it is possible to locate meanings and definitions of identity

and power, related to the region, the nation, and in the case of Northeastern Brazil,

the Third World. To do this, we need to eschew the routine separation of questions

about culture, political power and economic inequality. A broader study that

combines the cultural, political and economic ways in which Northeastern Brazil was

constructed during the Cold War will show how all of these factors created new ideas

of Northeastern Brazil and Nordestinos and of Brazilian national identity.

Such an analysis requires not only an examination of how social scientists and

social movements define the region of the Northeast but also how mass culture

created an immediately attainable visual narrative of the Northeast for local, national

and global consumption. Filmmakers drew up on previously established

representations of the Northeast in film, literature and popular culture, while also

adopting new aesthetics and techniques for manufacturing what they called a

“realistic” and “non-exotic” depiction of the Third World. The political and

commercial filmmakers of the Cold War era in Brazil departed from the recently

defunct studio system and created films – many focused on the Northeast – that also

defined Brazilian national cinema during this period. These films reproduced

regional historical symbols and narratives, relying on common stereotypes or

“markings” that immediately identified the region as the Northeast. A study of the

dialectical process of regional and national identity formation in Brazil in the late

1950s and 1960s must evaluate the ways in which regional symbols were

appropriated in popular culture as well as in the political culture.

47
 The remainder of this chapter looks at how the Northeast was designated as a

key region of the Third World by actors as diverse as the U.S. government, the Ligas

Camponesas, the Communist Party, and Cinema Novo directors. Following this, I

describe the relationship of Northeastern Brazil with the Brazilian nation during this

period, and finally I examine how certain ideas of the Northeast developed during the

early 1960s and influenced the definitions of the Northeast during the military

regime. I discuss how the Ligas Camponesas, the Pernambucan mainstream

newspaper O Diário de Pernambuco, and US agencies and journalists defined

Northeastern Brazil. Also crucial for understanding the definition of o Nordeste is the

development agency SUDENE and the Instituto de Pesquisas Sociais Joaquim

Nabuco, a social science research foundation established in 1948 in Recife directed

by Gilberto Freyre. Through an examination of the topics and projects supported by

these institutions, it is possible to see how social scientists and policymakers defined

Northeastern Brazil. I look at the major themes that came out of these definitions that

reflect larger political debates and how Northeastern Brazil was central to these

debates. These include the issue of authenticity and who has the right to define

Northeastern Brazil; foreign imperialism or anti-Americanism, nationalism, and Third

World transnationalism; how history was used to define Northeastern identity; and,

issues related to modernization theory such as backwardness, feudalism, and poverty.

A Third World Region of the Cold War – The U.S. and Northeastern Brazil

It is not necessary to repeat here how often the Brazilian Northeast has
been alleged to constitute a “danger zone,” a seat of “communist
revolutionary ferment,” a fervid locus of fidelismo, or even the
possible site of “another progressive socialist revolution” in Latin

48
 America. The Northeast is, in newspaper, journal, and magazine,
virtually identified with Brazil, the axiom appearing to be, “As the
Northeast goes, so goes Brazil.”87

And yet it is necessary to “repeat here” the common perceptions of Northeastern

Brazil held by the US government and by foreign journalists in the early 1960s

because the socialist revolution never occurred and the period of revolutionary

ferment simply faded into obscurity after the military coup of 1964, along with the

importance of Northeastern Brazil as a key site of international Cold War politics.

Anthropologist Anthony Leeds wrote this article in 1964 with the intention of

countering commonly held perceptions of Northeastern Brazil. He argued that the

Ligas Camponesas were not a significant national movement and the Northeast itself

held much less importance in national politics than the foreign media and politicians

claimed that it held.88 Similarly Ruth Leacock argued, “most Brazilians, unlike the

87
Anthony Leeds, “Brazil and the Myth of Francisco Julião,” Politics of Change in
Latin America ed., Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead (Prager Publishing
Company, 1964), 190.
88
As a graduate student, Anthony Leeds was one of four graduate students involved
in Charles Wagley’s UNESCO race studies in Brazil in the early 1950s. Leeds lived
in Uraçuca, Bahia, a small town in the Cacau region where the Communist Party was
weak. This may have influenced his perspective of the Ligas Camponesas and why
he saw them as being disconnected from the rural workers. He thought the
Communist Party was “pitiful” in that it had a great opportunity to organize the rural
workers but failed to execute any meaningful political plan. According to Leeds, the
Communist Party was “lacking in vision, in discipline, in organization, and in
common sense.” As he wrote in a report on the Communist Party in 1951, “The CP
here is unaware of the issues it should be fighting for, it has no program except
AGAINST, it has, as far as I have been able to find out, no activity worthy of it, and
no organizational or, above all, educational program, the most important thing for
Brazil in general, for any program of action in general and for the CP in particular. If
they had such a program and could convince the people of its use which would not be
hard, they would shoot ahead (at least on the education front).” Anthony Leeds
Papers – Cacau Zone of Brazil, Box 24. Folder: “Relatorios, Brazil, 1951” Relatorio
on Brazilian Communists, July 15, 1951, National Anthropological Archives,
Suitland, MD. At the time of writing this article, Leeds was involved in a study of the

49
Americans, simply did not consider the solution of the problems of the drought-

stricken, agrarian Northeast as the most pressing set of problems facing their

country.”89 The question remains as to why the U.S. perceived Northeastern Brazil as

generating or constituting Brazilian politics and the trajectory of the Brazilian nation

in the early 1960s. I argue that this can only be answered by examining the

importance of regionalism in the Third World during the Cold War.

U.S. government policies during the late 1950s and early 1960s were

premised on certain assumptions that led policymakers to the conclusion that

Northeastern Brazil was a key area of concern. In a condensed version, these

premises were: 1. Poverty and “traditional” societies are the breeding ground for

socialist revolution; 2. Anti-Americanism means pro-Communism; 3. Latin American

governments are incapable of handling such problems adequately and the U.S. knows

best. Although the U.S. government started development and aid programs, their

main concern was how to win the hearts and minds of Nordestinos to prevent the

spread of Communism. While this was an overarching goal of most foreign missions

favelas in Rio de Janeiro, and may have been influenced by Governor Carlos
Lacerda’s claims that the “real” communist threat was not the Northeast, but the
urban slums, a political argument which enabled Lacerda to obtain greater funding
from the Alliance for Progress.
89
Ruth Leacock, Requiem for Revolution: The United States and Brazil, 1961-1969
(Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1990), 64-65. This opinion was also
stated in: Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of
the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. “The Brazilian Northeast: A
Status Report on Politico-Economic Conditions,” Foreign Service of the U.S.
Government Confidential Dispatch from the American Embassy of Rio de Janeiro to
the Department of State, 19 December 1961, RG 84, Box 126, Folder: Northeast
1961, p.13. National Archives.“Most Brazilians do not believe that such a mass
revolution could occur. The normally pacific and lazy nature of the Nordestino is
always cited. Even the point that the Nordestino is much too busy avoiding starvation
to worry about revolution is frequently stressed.”

50
and policies during the 1950s and 1960s, the approach differed depending on the

region of the world and the country. In this section, I briefly describe how these

premises influenced U.S. depictions of Northeastern Brazil in the U.S. media, policies

and in the documented perceptions of U.S. officials in Recife during the 1950s and

1960s.

Even though numerous scholars and journalists have claimed that

Northeastern Brazil was only “rediscovered” by the United States in October of 1960

with the first reports in The New York Times about the Ligas Camponesas, a number

of development and aid programs had been established in the mid-1950s, including

the United Nation’s Bank of the Northeast (BNB) in June 1954, and aid programs for

drought relief in 1958. A 1960 report, “Northeast Brazil Revisited” about the Bank of

the Northeast stated that regional thinking on the problems of Northeastern Brazil had

changed since the establishment of the Bank. Before 1954, “the economic thinking of

the region was the complete monopoly of the poets and politicians, and all of the

public discussion was in emotional and negative terms.”90 In the six years between

the establishment of the bank and the filing of the report, “the Northeast has seen a

revolution in regional thinking on economic development.”91 This was attributed to

the newer ideas about development such as training technical workers and investing

in human resources, plans for financing small industries, and the establishment and

coordination between regional and state development agencies. Robock explained

that:

90
Stefan H. Robock, “Northeast Brazil Revisited: Report on the Technical Mission of
Stefan Robock,” July 1960, 6.
91
Ibid., 7.

51
 The political representatives of Northeast Brazil continue to emphasize
the poverty and misery in the region to secure increased federal funds
for the area. But I was most impressed with the remarkable progress
achieved in the Northeast since 1956. Northeast Brazil, with its
population of twenty million, is still the major underdeveloped region
in the Western Hemisphere but the Northeast is now on the move.
In the capital cities people are much better dressed,
transportation by donkeys has given way largely to trucks and motor
scooters, retail stores have been modernized and even the number of
beggars seems to have declined. These visual impressions, in my
opinion, are even more reliable than the precarious official statistics.

The shining optimism manifested throughout the report praising the possibility for

certain types of development and progress in Northeastern Brazil is heavily laden

with ideas of modernization theory and a vision of modernity connected to the

American way of life. What is interesting about the above statement is the fact that

Robock, an economist and proponent of modernization theory, chose to portray

modernization culturally and not rely upon the social science indicators, which

continued to reflect the extreme poverty of the area. This apparent contradiction

forms the core of modernization theory in practice: social “science” ideology based

on cultural assumptions and stereotypes of “traditional” Third World societies. The

premise found in the Robock report is similar to the premise of the Alliance for

Progress in that if the symbols of modernity (or the American Way of Life) are

introduced, this will bring democracy and thwart the spread of communism.

At the same time, a few different reports from the American Consul General

in Recife expressed the concern about the presence of Americans in Northeastern

Brazil as strengthening regional identity and anti-American sentiment. In a letter to

Ambassador Lincoln Gordon from one of the sixteen Vice Consuls at the American

Consul General in Recife, Lowell Kilday expressed his concerns about the

52
establishment of the largest U.S. AID office in the world in Recife because of the

presence of Americans (and the “American Way of Life”) in Recife. As he wrote:

Northeasterners generally, including natives of Recife, tend to view

foreigners with a certain amount of distrust and suspicion in a way rather
reminiscent of some of our own provincial cities and towns in an earlier
age. The rapid expansion of the official American family in Recife – it
has more than tripled within the past year – has not occurred unnoticed
and is frequently the source of caustic comment and raised eyebrow. It
is also the cause of some suspicion even among those who would be our
friends. To continue with this expansion, or to increase it suddenly or
sharply, I fear, will severely strain the narrow tolerance of Recife’s
provincialism. Further, I think it possible that a sudden sizeable increase
in the number of official American families – each understandably
enjoying the comfort of a new automobile and a standard of living,
which by local comparisons is extremely high and rather glaringly sets
us apart – could serve to stir and sharpen the resentments of the
impoverished classes. In this connection, I think it important to point
out that of the fifty or sixty 1962 model American cars in Recife, only
two or three belong to Brazilians. Finally the creation of a huge AID
mission in Recife, it seems to me, will present a very easy target for
effective attack by the new state government, which is likely to be quite
hostile, and by other extreme leftist, anti-American elements.92 (1)
Similar reports were filed with the U.S. Embassy expressing a concern about the

show of wealth and the strong American presence.93 U.S. consular officials

understood the difference between American access to symbols of the American way

of life and Nordestinos access to these material symbols. In the expanding milieu of

92
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Letter to Lincoln Gordon from
Lowell C. Kilday, American Vice Consul. Dec 3, 1962. RG 84, Box 136, Folder 500
A.I.D. National Archives.
93
“The presense of numerous well-fed and well-housed Americans has given a
natural impetus to anti-American sentiments. The presence of American commercial
activities and the preponderance of American brand names on the local market have
given the Nordestino a complex (fed by the leftists) about American economic
‘imperialism.’” Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963.
Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service of
the U.S. Government Confidential Dispatch, from the American Embassy of Rio de
Janeiro to the Department of State, “The Brazilian Northeast: A Status Report on
Politico-Economic Conditions,” 19 December 1961. RG 84; Box 126, Folder:
Northeast 1961, p.12. National Archives.

53
anti-imperialist or anti-colonialist discourse, consular officials realized the danger of

being perceived as “imperialists,” and the danger of linking imperialism to the

traditional elite. Such a perception was understood as threatening “positive” efforts

to bring modernity and development projects to the Northeast. These perceptions

also exemplify the other main objective of U.S. officials in the Northeast: preventing

the spread of communism. Regional identity and regional poverty were seen as

dangerous and unstable areas that had to be resolved to prevent a Cuban-style

revolution.

Descriptions of Northeastern Brazil in the U.S. media linked its poverty to the

threat of social revolution. The first article on the Ligas Camponesas that appeared in

The New York Times is representative of the type of coverage that followed. The

article, by Tad Szulc, starts:

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 people live on average
annual incomes of less than $100. Racked by cronic malnutrition and
rampaging disease, they seldom live much beyond the age of thirty.
The misery is exploited by the 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 Tse-tung, Communist
China’s party chairman, are being presented as heroes to be imitated
by the Northeast’s peasants, workers and students.94

94
Tad Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt,” The New York
Times, 31 October 1961, 1. Szulc met with Brazilian journalist Antônio Callado in
Rio before going to Northeastern Brazil and in a meeting with Callado and Philip
Raine, Political Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Rio, Szulc said he was sent by the
New York Times to write an article on “Fidelismo” in Latin America and had decided
to focus on the Ligas Camponesas. Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records,
1941-1963. Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State.
Confidential Memorandum to Files. 17 October 1960. RG 84, Box 126, Folder
350.21 Communism 1960. National Archives.

54
The article continues to discuss the development projects initiated by the Brazilian

government, raising questions about the precariousness of the projects because of the

growing revolutionary ferment and widespread poverty. Szulc listed the social

indicators – 75 percent of the population is illiterate, average daily caloric intake is

1,644 calories, life expectancy is 28 for men and 32 for women, half the population

dies before the age of thirty, and hookworm, schistomatosis (water-borne parasitic

disease) and tuberculosis flourish in the Northeast. He quoted a top official in Recife

who warned: “If the Brazilian Northeast is lost to you Americans, the Cuban

Revolution will have been a picnic by comparison.” Julião also was quoted as

engaging with US foreign policy in Northeastern Brazil, quoted as saying, “The big

landowners backed by United States imperialism are sucking our blood.”

Northeastern Brazil and the Ligas Camponesas suddenly became a

newsworthy topic after this initial report, with lengthy articles in The New York

Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and

U.S. News and World Report, to name a few. In most of the articles, Northeastern

Brazil is characterized as extremely poor and seething in revolutionary sentiment

because of the poverty and because of the history of Communism and rebellion.

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 such officials observed: “In one mud-walled

mocambo, 14 persons were assembled including spindle-legged stunted children with

55
protruding abdomens.”95 Numerous articles tied the poverty to regional unrest by

securing the knot in the history of Northeastern Brazil. These articles spoke of the

long history of rebellion, mysticism and Communism in the region.96

As U.S. journalists and politicians turned toward the enclaves of

underdevelopment and poverty in the Third World, they criticized national

governments of the Third World for not paying enough attention to regional

problems. In 1961, after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy Administration

launched the Alliance for Progress, a development program allocating resources, aid,

and loans to Latin America to promote development and to fight communism. The

U.S. and Brazil signed the Alliance for Progress agreements on 13 April 1962,

committing $276,000,000 to development projects in Northeastern Brazil. The U.S.

Agency for International Development (U.S. AID) stated that this funding and these

development projects were “an alternative to violent change” in the region.97 But,

this funding had a number of problems from its inception. One such problem was

how the U.S. understood political alternatives in Latin America. The Kennedy

Administration saw only three possibilities for Latin American countries in 1961: a

95
Robert H. Estabrook, “Brazil Misery Stuns Visitors,” The Washington Post 20
February 1961, 6.
96
For example, “The Brazilian Northeast has a tradition of rebellion and of a special
kind of mysticism. In the past it has made folk heroes of Father Cícero, a priest who
fought for peasants’ rights and of Lampião, a local Robin Hood who defied whole
army regiments as he galloped up and down the region thirty years ago, robbing from
the rich and sometimes giving to the poor. It is from this tradition that Julião and his
league, using the peasant’s hoe as their symbol, draw their strength.” Tad Szulc,
“Castro Tries to Export ‘Fidelismo’” The New York Times Magazine, 27 November
1960, 19.
In other articles the history of Communism is emphasized: “Pernambuco is
known for political unrest and endemic Communist activity.” Robert H. Estabrook,
“Brazil Misery Stuns Visitors,” The Washington Post 20 February 1961, 6.
97
“Brazil Signs Pact for Alliance Aid,” The New York Times 14 April 1962, 3.

56
Cuban-style revolution, dictatorship or authoritarian regimes, or democratic regimes.

A Cuban-style revolution was considered the option to avoid at all costs, which

limited the options to either democracy or dictatorship. As Howard Wiarda argues,

this dichotomous view of options for Latin American countries hindered the ability

for Latin American leaders to find their own solutions, and led to the repressive

military regimes in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.98

Another major connected problem with the Alliance for Progress was the

United States’ perspective of Latin America as backwards, irrational, unstable and

incompetent. As Wiarda argues, the Alliance for Progress was based on the idea that

“it was we [U.S.] who knew best and who would presumably bring the benefits of our

civilization to Latin America.”99 In 1961, Brazilian president Jânio Quadros tried to

follow a political line of “independence,” establishing relations with Cuba, the Soviet

Union, China and the United States. The U.S. interpreted Quadros’s unexpected

98
Howard J. Wiarda, “Did the Alliance ‘Lose Its Way,’ or Were Its Assumptions All
Wrong from the Beginning and Are Those Assumptions Still with Us?” The Alliance
for Progress: A Retrospective, ed. L. Ronald Scheman (New York, Praeger, 1988),
107-108.
Greg Grandin also points out that this polarity defined US-Latin American
relations during the Cold War. As he writes in the preface to The Last Colonial
Massacre, “terror had the effect of, first, radicalizing society to produce febrile
political polarization and, second, destroying the more capacious, social
understandings of democracy that prevailed in the years around World War II.” Greg
Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004), xv.
99
Wiarda, “Did the Alliance ‘Lose Its Way,’ 104.
Another example of the U.S. government’s mistrust of the ability of Brazilians
to elect officials that best represented the country is in the fact that the U.S.
government helped to fund campaigns of the preferred officials. According to
Michael Weis, the CIA helped to fund campaigns of 15 federal Senate seats, 8 state
governorships, 250 federal deputy seats, and over 600 seats for state legislatures
through the front of IPES/IBAD. W. Michael Weis, Cold Warriors and Coups
D’Etat: Brazilian-American Relations, 1945-1964 (Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press, 1993), 156.

57
resignation in August 1961, as a clear sign of Brazil’s incompetence, political

immaturity, and irrationality. After Quadros’s resignation, U.S. journalists labeled

him “emotionally unbalanced,” as “someone giving an imitation of Charlie Chaplin

giving an imitation of Hitler,” and a manic-depressed leader “obsessed with power

and sex.”100 While Quadros may indeed have not been stable psychologically, the

representations deserve attention since he was depicted as a combination of the

symbols of comedy and evil, along with the frequently employed description of Latin

American leaders being “obsessed with power and sex,” a phrase used to describe

everyone from Salvador Allende to Manuel Noriega. Even the well-respected

economist and director of SUDENE, Celso Furtado, was alluded to being a

Communist or Marxist-influenced economist,101 and SUDENE faced criticism by US

AID officials who argued that the agency housed communists and was inefficient in

executing the AID projects. U.S. politicians and journalist justified the need for U.S.

sponsored development projects and studies, described as superior to any similar

projects and studies coming from Brazil.102 This also validated why the U.S. could

100
Louis L. Wiznitzer, “Which Revolution for Brazil? Quadros Returns to a Country
in Chaos,” The New Republic 19 March 1962, 19.
101
Newspaper reports often associated Furtado with Miguel Arraes and the “leftist”
politicians in Northeastern Brazil. As stated in Foreign Service of the U.S. Governent
Confidential Dispatch, from the American Embassy of Rio de Janeiro to the
Department of State, “The Brazilian Northeast: A Status Report on Politico-
Economic Conditions,” 19 December 1961: “Many believe that Celso Furtado will –
when the moment is opportune – reveal his true and continuing allegiance to the
communist cause. These persons believe that SUDENE is a well designed vehicle for
the planned Communist takeover of the Northeast.” Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified
General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department
of State. RG 84; Box 126, Folder: Northeast 1961, p.12. National Archives.
102
In a series of reports by Ralph Nader for the Christian Science Monitor in 1963,
Nader described the Brazilian reaction to U.S. training and aid programs, listing
among the failures the lack of communication between SUDENE and US AID

58
see Northeastern Brazil as the crucial issue in Brazilian politics, even though

Brazilians seemed focused elsewhere: Brazilian politicians were too “irrational” to

see the problems of the Northeast as the major source of concern.

As the “major underdeveloped region in the Western Hemisphere,”

Northeastern Brazil became a focus for US developmental policies and programs,

which started in the 1950s but took off in the early 1960s. The solutions proposed

were based on 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.”103 Such programs included continued

development projects sponsored by the United Nations, loans from the Inter-

American Development Bank, the U.S. Food for Peace program, the United Nations

Children’s Fund, and the Alliance for Progress.104 Cooperative training and research

programs took place between a number of U.S. universities in Northeastern Brazil,

including a UCLA study in Ceará on economic development (1961-five year

program) funded by the Organization of American States, the Bank of Northeastern

Brazil, the Ford Foundation and the University of California. Many U.S. government

officials (language barrier, 90 percent of AID lack Portuguese skills), AID workers
sitting around their office watching the time pass, and quoted Gilberto Freyre as
criticizing the AID workers who he felt had “an appalling ignorance of objective
conditions and prevailing psychologies.” Ralph Nader, “US Agency Under Fire:
Brazil Aid Effort Rapped,” The Christian Science Monitor 7 September 1963.
103
“The ‘Fidelistas’ of Brazil” The New York Times, 1 November 1960, 38.
104
In April 1962, Brazil and the United States entered into a discussion about the
allocation of Alliance for Progress funds. The U.S. offered $276,000,000, rejected at
first by Brazil because of U.S. restrictions placed on this money, but an agreement
was signed on 13 April 1962. The funds were slated for developing “Brazil’s
perennially depressed and politically unstable Northeast section” and the U.S.
contributed $131,000,000 and Brazil $145,000,000. “Brazil Signs Pact for Alliance
Aid,” The New York Times 14 April 1962, 3.

59
studies on the social and economic problems of Northeastern Brazil took place in the

early 1960s, including the Merwin Bohan report (January 1962). Other studies were

sponsored by private foundations, such as the three-year study on social and

economic problems sponsored by the Korvette Foundation (Woolworths) and led by

Charles Wagley of Columbia University’s Latin American Studies Center. As

Margaret Boardman argues, the U.S. government turned to private institutions to fund

projects for Latin American development and the expansion of US capitalism, a

policy initiative started during the Truman Administration.105 AIA, the American

International Association for Economic and Social Development, was one such

program that started in 1946 in Brazil and Venezuela with funding from the

Rockefeller Institution to promote rural development. In general, these research

studies and development projects drew from a simplistic vision of Brazil as a

“traditional” society that needed development and modernization to transform, but

failed to engage with the depth of the problems or take into consideration the

difficulties in implementing solutions.

The shortcomings of the Alliance for Progress in Northeastern Brazil are most

evident when examining the issue of agrarian reform, perhaps the most heated but

also most difficult issue to resolve in Latin America during the Cold War. The

inequitable land tenure system was viewed as one of the most pressing issues in Latin

America, linked to associated problems of rural illiteracy, the lack of technical

training for small farmers, and the threat of a Cuban-style revolution. Northeastern

Brazil was the most inequitable area in Latin America, a place where a few landlords
105
Margaret C. Boardman, “ ‘The Man, The Girl and the Jeep’ AIA: Nelson Rockefeller's
Precursor Non-Profit Model for Private U.S. Foreign Aid,”
http://www.isop.ucla.edu/profmex/volume6/1winter01/01boardman1.htm

60
owned most of land and the majority of rural people had no property. In August

1961, a meeting of the OAS took place in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in which all

American nations except Cuba signed a charter for the Alliance for Progress that

made the following statement about agrarian reform:

To encourage (…) programs of comprehensive agrarian reform leading

to the effective transformation, where required, of unjust structures
and systems of land tenure and use, with a view to replace latifundia
and dwarf-holdings by an equitable system of land tenure so that, with
the help of timely and adequate credit, technical assistance and
facilities for the marketing and distribution of products, the land will
become for the man who works it the basis of his economic stability,
the foundation of his increasing welfare, and the guarantee of his
freedom and dignity.

Declarations for land reform were hopeful but naïve, lacking solid plans and projects

and not considering the great infrastructural barriers and financial resources needed

for the execution of agrarian reform programs.

In a 1962 Congressional hearing, Peter Nehemkis Jr. (Latin America: Myth

and Reality, 1964) ranked Brazil as one of the key 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.”106 Nehemkis suggested that current attempts to bring the symbols of

modernity, such as putting drinking fountains in town squares, were not the best form

of fighting communism. Instead, he proposed massive literacy campaigns and

programs of land redistribution similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority. But, as

106
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 Congress, 2nd Session.
10-11 May, 1962, 58-59.

61
Nehemkis argued in his book, a type of 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, with the possible

exception of Venezuela because of oil revenues.

The difficulties of instituting a top-down comprehensive land reform in Brazil

were coupled with the growing enthusiasm for Cuba’s style of revolutionary agrarian

reform. Instead of colonization projects and redistribution cases, the option for land

invasions and overthrowing the land tenure system seemed the quickest and easiest

way to construct a more equitable society. The only countries in Latin America that

had programs of agrarian reform were countries that had experienced revolutions:

Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba.

But, the threat of communism during the Cold War made this, as the Kennedy

Administration declared, the option to be avoided at all costs. In many congressional

hearings and publications about the Alliance for Progress, US government officials

based their understanding of the unrest on poverty and ignorance, stating that people

had access to Ché Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare handbook, but not the Declaration of

Independence. While this is a valid observation, what is missing from the analysis is

that people were reading “Guerrilla Warfare” not because it was readily available but

because Latin Americans harbored skepticism of the United States’ interests in Latin

America, seeing it as a part of an imperialist project and because “Guerrilla Warfare”

presented a viable option for agrarian reform that made sense to people who lived in

areas of the Third World with unequal land tenure and limited financial and political

resources.

62
 The Communist threat linked to a Cuban-style revolution and agrarian reform

influenced the perception of the Ligas Camponesas and their project for agrarian

reform. US journalists drew connections between the Ligas Camponesas, Cuba,

China, and even Africa throughout this period. Julião’s trips to Cuba, Moscow, and

China were frequently reported upon, and Julião was described as a Brazilian Mao

Tse-Tung, Lenin, and most frequently, a Brazilian Fidel Castro. For example,

drawing from the depiction of the politics of Cuba as Fidelismo, Julião’s politics were

labeled “Juliãoismo.” Frequent reports on the trips to China and Cuba of Ligas

participants and leaders appeared in the stories about Northeastern Brazil.107 In one

article in Newsweek, Northeastern Brazil was described 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.”108 According to another source,

guerrilla training was underway in Northeastern Brazil, and Czech-manufactured

arms were found wrapped in Havana newspapers.109 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.”110 And, even though the

Nordestinos supposedly only wanted land security and a way to support their

107
For example, “Among those present was a certain ‘Nega Fuba’ as he was referred
to by other league members. He was a young man in a green shirt who said he as a
cobbler. He had returned recently from a trip to Communist China made under
circumstances he would not disclose.” Juan de Onis, “Brazil Studying Rise of
Peasant Leagues as Concern is Aroused Over Violence in Northeast Region,” The
New York Times 10 April 1962, 17.
108
“Brazil’s Goulart: Power For the Sake of What?” Newsweek 61:55, 11 March
1963, 55.
109
Kathleen Walker Seeger, “Brazil’s Big Dust Bowl,” The Reader’s Digest 83 (July
1963), 215.
110
Ibid., 212.

63
families, the “communists” were doing their best to light the fuse of a “social

explosion unequaled since the Russian Revolution.”111

The idea of a communist threat in Brazil was discussed at a Senate Hearing on

“The Communist Threat to the U.S. through the Caribbean” in 1959. According to

testimony by Joseph Jack Kornfeder, an ex-member of the U.S. Communist Party, the

Soviet Communist Party and the Colombian and Venezuelan Communist Parties,

Latin American countries were starting a Leninist revolution under the guise of what

was entitled a “New Deal Revolution,” which was actually an Anti-American,

communist-inspired revolution. Kornfeder argued that since 1954 the Communist

Party in Brazil had been involved in a two-stage revolution: first, a “so-called new

deal revolution manipulated for their purposes and after they ride into power and

succeed to entrench themselves, then the Soviet type of revolution.”112 Discussions

111
Ibid., 218.
112
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., 51.
This view was also stated in Foreign Service of the U.S. Governent
Confidential Dispatch, from the American Embassy of Rio de Janeiro to the
Department of State, “The Brazilian Northeast: A Status Report on Politico-
Economic Conditions,” 19 December 1961: “All of the ingredients necessary for a
revolution are present in the NE; large poverty stricken urban and rural masses,
oppressive social conditions, harsh econ and natural conditions, limited opportunities,
and a convenient target- the latifundia with its ostentatious elite. But all of these
elements have been present during the entire twentieth century history of the area.
The one new element (the fuse) is the type of dedicated revolutionary leadership and
spirit now present and being developed in the NE. All that is now lacking –
theoretically – is the spark to ignite the fuse to detonate the explosive mass. If
conditions remain relatively unchanged while the population, social, and economic
pressures increase, the explosion will eventually result from some time of
spontaneous combustion.” Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-
1963. Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. RG 84, Box
126, Folder: Northeast 1961, p.12-13. National Archives.

64
of the communist or Cuban threat only intensified after the Cuban Revolution, with a

focus placed on the urban slums and the rural Northeast. The next part of this chapter

describes how the Ligas Camponesas drew connections between the struggle for land

in Northeastern Brazil and Third World and anti-colonial struggles, positioning

Northeastern Brazil as a key region engaged in the fight against U.S. imperialism.

The Transnational Connections of the Ligas Camponesas

By 1962, the Ligas Camponesas had taken a decidedly anti-American stance,

declaring the United States an enemy of Brazil and of Latin America in their

newspaper LIGA. The Ligas used cases of U.S. imperialist tactics in Latin America,

referring to U.S. actions in Guatemala in 1954 and Puerto Rico. For example, the

entry for “Americano” in a series in LIGA called “Pequeno Dicionario Prático da

Revolução Brasileira, the definition for Americano is those who were born in the

Americas, “not to be confused with “ianque,” those born in the United States.113

According to this dictionary, the Monroe Doctrine had established the theory of

“America para os Americanos do Norte” that meant that the U.S. used all means

possible to “sink their claws” into Latin America, with exploitation, theft, and piracy.

In the name of American solidarity, the Ligas claimed that the United States had

continually invaded Latin America, establishing Puerto Rico as a colony, starting

internal wars, and overthrowing presidents and replacing them with dictators.

In the case of Brazil and Northeastern Brazil specifically, the Ligas saw the

Alliance for Progress and IBAD as manifestations of U.S. imperialism that was

113
“Pequeno Dicionario Prático da Revolução Brasileira,” LIGA 23 January 1963, 2.

65
supported by the latifundiarios (large landowners) and usineiros (sugar mill owners).

The Ligas claimed the Alliance for Progress was a tool to throw Governor Miguel

Arraes out of office by way of a coup, and compared this to the situation in Iraq with

Kassem.114 The Ligas connected the Alliance for Progress with the US embassy’s

IBAD (Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action) and a movement to remove Arraes

from office.115 Reports discussed how multinational corporations such as SANBRA

and Anderson Clayton were taking over Northeastern industries of cotton, agave, and

sisal. Food for Peace and the Alliance for Progress were depicted as “charity”

organizations that did little to develop or solve the major problems of Northeastern

Brazil. In a political cartoon in LIGA, the image showed a small Latin American man

giving a piggyback ride to an overweight man labeled “Ajuda Ianque” (U.S. help)

with an overstuffed bag of loot.116 As one article stated: “The main target of North

American politics, through their various nuances, is not to raise the standard of living

of the Nordestino, but to promote the North-American civilization, to disrupt our

industrialization, to corrupt our governments and political parties, to further the

imposition of their politics of exploitation.”117 In the state of Paraíba, when US

114
Kassem or Abd al-Karim Qasim was Prime Minister of Iraq (1958-1963), who
declared himself against British and American military intervention in the Middle
East. Qasim was known as the leader of the common Iraqi people, instituting
agrarian reform, granting Kurds political freedom, and legalizing the Communist
Party. He was killed in 1963, after numerous assassination attempts supposedly
supported by the CIA and the British military.
115
“O povo deve estar pronto para tudo: IBAD e Usineiros de Pernambuco preparam
o golpe contra o povo,” LIGA 10 April 1963, 6.
116
“Perigoso Aliança,” LIGA 21 September 1963, 2.
117
“O que visa principalmente a politica norte-americana, através de suas várias
nuances, não é o elevantamento do modo de vida do nordestino, mas fazer apologia
da civilização norte-americana, desviar nossa industrialização, corrumper governos e
partidos politicos, para melhor aplicação de sua politica de exploração,” Manoel de

66
Ambassador Lincoln Gordon visited to speak about the Alliance for Progress, he was

“welcomed” by protests and signs reading: “Get out Gordon!”118 And, in a

memorandum about a visit U.S. journalist Charles Keely, Jr. of Copley News Service

made to the Engenho Galiléia in 1962 to meet with the Ligas Camponesas of Galiléia,

Keely said that when he asked his three escorts about what they thought of the United

States, they replied with a song “about a giant who slept for 200 years and then

awoke to discover that he was really only a dwarf drinking Coca-cola made by the

giant in whose backyard he found himself.”119

Besides the examples of U.S. imperialist policies and programs in Brazil, the

Ligas Camponesas also denounced what they saw as U.S. imperialism in other

countries, questioning the type of “Christian Democracy” the U.S. claimed to be

exporting. The Ligas declared this was clear in the case of Cuba. Besides

international issues, the Ligas also published many articles on the situation of

African-Americans in the United States and the Civil Rights Movement. The Ligas

related the struggle of the Third World to the place of African-Americans in U.S.

society. The argument was that if the U.S. government subjects African-Americans

Jesus, o reporter-camponês, “Penetração imperialista no Nordeste (II) – Os norte-

americanos,” LIGA 29 May 1963, 3.
118
“Povo paraíbano pixou parede contra visita do embaixador ianque,” LIGA 5 June
1963, 3.
119
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, 1962-1963. Memorandum for the
files (official use only) Subject: American Newspaper man Attends meeting of Ligas
Camponesas. RG 84, Box 136, Folder 500 Northeast. National Archives.

67
to segregation and places limits on their citizenship, then it was impossible for the

U.S. to treat Third World countries with mixed-race populations as equals.120

The history of the U.S. military bases in Northeastern Brazil during World

War II and the base established on the archipelago off the coast of Northeastern

Brazil, Fernando de Noronha, from 1957 to 1962, also influenced the way the Ligas

and other Nordestinos understood the United States. With these military bases,

people in Northeastern Brazil had personal contact and experience with the U.S.

military, creating certain ideas about U.S. power. In 1958, reports came out in the

Diario de Pernambuco about the “Top Secret” missile base constructed by the US

military on Fernando de Noronha, supposedly implementing a system called

“MILOS, Missile Impact System Localization.” 121 According to the Diario de

Pernambuco, three atomic bombs exploded off the coast of Northeastern Brazil in

November of 1958, part of “Operation Angus.” Travelers reported seeing explosions

that looked like nuclear explosions, fish were dying and Northeastern intellectuals

started to question the health of people who lived on the coast due to the effect of

radiation. Josué de Castro declared, “We must energetically protest the abusive

attitude of the U.S. to use free territories like ours for their macabre experiments with

120
The issue of racism in the U.S. became a Cold War issue abroad and domestically.
Renee Romano shows how racism in Washington D.C. effected African diplomats
and became a foreign policy issue in the early 1960s because of the discrepancy
between segregationist domestic policies and the objective of foreign policy to foster
U.S. support in the Third World. Renee Romano, “No Diplomatic Immunity: African
Diplomats, the State Department, and Civil Rights, 1961-1964,” The Journal of
American History 87, no. 2 (Sept 2000): 546-579. Frank Füredi argues that the two
policies were compatible in that the Cold War period led to a “silencing” of the racial
question which led to what he calls “covert” racism. Frank Füredi, The Silent War,
121
Diario de Pernambuco 6 August 1958, 4.

68
weapons of mass destruction.”122 Since this allegedly was a “secret” testing, it was

difficult to prove and remains murky, but the issue itself shows the skepticism that

many Nordestinos felt for the U.S. military and the abuse of power in Northeastern

Brazil.

The Ligas Camponesas actively sought connections with other struggles

throughout the world including China, the Soviet Union, independence struggles in

Africa and Cuba, and other Latin American peasant movements. Reports on

international peasant conferences frequently appeared in the newspaper LIGA,

drawing connections between Latin American, African, and Asian peasants and rural

workers. These comparisons addressed issues of imperialism and colonialism and

conditions of slavery and feudalism still afflicting peasants in these regions.123

Francisco Julião and representatives of the Ligas Camponesas participated in pan-

American peasant conferences as well, building relations with other Latin American

countries. For instance, in March 1963, Julião and Ligas participants traveled by

invitation from the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile (CUT, Chile’s National

Labor Center) to Santiago, Chile, giving speeches and meeting with labor unions,

including a party in the San Miguel (a working-class neighborhood of Santiago)

organized by the Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP, Front for Popular Action), which

later turned into one of the Allende strongholds and areas most repressed by the

122
“Devemos protestar energeticamente contra a atitude abusive dos Estados Unidos
de usar territories livres como o nosso para suas macabres experiencias com armas de
destruição maciça.”Diario de Pernambuco, 8 April 1959, 1; Diario de Pernambuco 9
Abril 1959, 1.
123
“Êxito no encontro camponêses da Bulgária,” LIGA 16 January 1963, 3.

69
Chilean military.124 On this trip, Julião met with Salvador Allende, the future

Socialist president of Chile, representing the connections being made among Socialist

Party leaders in Latin America during these years. Other peasant movements in Latin

America sought support from the Ligas in their struggles; for instance, a number of

published letters were sent between the Ligas and the Confederación Campesina del

Perú, the Central dos Trabalhadores Agricolas do Peru, and the Frente de Liberação

Nacional do Peru. These letters discussed the collaboration between Latin American

countries in the struggle for land, the struggle against imperialism, and discussed the

release of imprisoned peasants in Peru in the “El Frontón” prison.125 Many of

Julião’s books on the Ligas Camponesas were published in Spanish in the 1960s.126

The Ligas Camponesas and the Brazilian Communist Party actively sought

connections to Cuba throughout this period. The newspaper LIGA ran articles on

Cuba in almost every edition, commemorating the successes of the revolution,

publishing speeches by Fidel Castro, and stories about how the US threatened Cuban

sovereignty. Advertisements read: “Peasant: The Cuban Agrarian Reform gave the

land to those who work it. For this, the large landowners across the continent

conspire against Cuba. Your answer is to participate in the National Meeting and in

124
“Julião desenvolveu intenso programa no Chile: prometeu regressar de volta de
Havana,” LIGA 6 March 1963, 3.
125
“Confederação camponêsa do Peru exige liberdade de seus líderes presos pelos
‘Gorilas’ militares,” LIGA 6 March 1963, 3; “Mensagens dos presos politicos
peruanos e do padre Bolo Hidalgo,” LIGA 27 March 1963, 4.
126
For example, Campesinos a mi!! (Buenos Aires: Cia. Argentina de Editores,
1963); Brasil, antes y despues (Mexico: Editorial Nuestro Tempo, 1968); Qué son las
Ligas Campesinas? (Montevideo: Arca, 1963); Escucha, campesino (Montevideo:
Ediciones Presente, 1962); Cambão: la otra cara de Brasil (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno
Editores, 1968); Hasta el miercoles, Isabela! (Mexico: Editoral Cultura, 1967); Ligas
Camponesas, outubro 1962-abril 1964 (Cuernavaca, Mexico: Centro Intercultural de
Documentación, 1969).

70
the Congress in Support of the Cuban Revolution that will take place this year in

Brazil.”127 Participants in protests often carried placards with Fidel Castro’s image,

and with slogans declaring “Ianques no! Cuba sim!” Many Ligas members and

leaders also took trips to Cuba for training missions and conferences.128 For example,

in 1963, António José Dantas and Elizabete Teixeira (Paraíba Ligas leaders) spent

one month in Cuba, invited by the Cuban Government.129 Dantas’s impression was,

“we want to inform you that in Cuba, illiteracy does not exist, there is no prostitution

or crime. The people are happy and satisfied with their government, a regime that

gives them freedom, work, school, justice and bread.”130 The campaign for Solidarity

with Cuba was strong in Pernambuco, supported by students, urban and rural workers

and intellectuals.131 Francisco Julião, faced by numerous death threats, sent his four

children to live in Cuba for their protection.

127
“Camponês: A reforma agrária Cubana deu a terra ao que nela trabalha. Por isso
os latifundiários do continente conspiram contra Cuba. Tua resposta é participar do
Encontro Nacional e do Congresso de Apoio à Revolução Cubana que se realizarão
este ano no Brasil.” LIGA 20 February 1963, 3.
128
For example, Julião and the best-known Brazilian Communist, Luis Carlos
Prestes, gave speeches in Cuba about the connection between Brazil and Cuba.
“Íntegras das entrevistas concedidas em Havana,” LIGA 20 March 1963, 2. The
editor of the Jornal do Bancário (PCB), Flávio Tiné, spent one month in Cuba in
1962, reporting back on the wonders of the Cuban Revolution. “Cuba: Regressa
Gerente do Jornal do Bancário. O Confrade Flávio Tiné Fala Acerca de sua Visita à
Perola das Antilhas,” Jornal do Bancário 15 February 1962, 6.
129
“Líders camponeses visitam Cuba,” LIGA 28 August 1963, 1.
130
“queremos informar que em Cuba não existem analfabetos, não há prostituição,
não há roubo. O povo está contente e satisfeito com o seu Governo e com o regime
que lhes deu liberdade, trabalho, escola, justiça e pão,” “Líderes camponeses visitam
Cuba e mostram-se impressionados com a Revolução,” LIGA 28 August 1963, 3.
131
In June 1960, Francisco Julião brought to the Assembleia Legislativa of
Pernambuco a measure with 43 signatures (of 65 deputados) declaring support for the
Cuban Revolution by the Pernambucan population. “Líder das Ligas Camponesas diz
que a solução é desapropriar engenhos,” Diario de Pernambuco 12 June 1960, 13.

71
 Three noteworthy visitors to Pernambuco – Célia Guevara and Jean-Paul Sarte

and Simone de Beauvior – also showed the connections established between Cuba

and Northeastern Brazil. The mother of Ché Guevara, Célia Guevara, traveled to

Recife in May 1961 to give a speech, invited by the Sociedade Pernambucano de

Defesa da Mulher e da Criança.132 Guevara claimed that her son was not a

Communist; he was a man of the Left but not affiliated with any particular political

party. Anibal Fernandes, editor of the Diario de Pernambuco, criticized the visit in

light of the “communist massacres” in Laos and Hungary, as well as the political

executions in Cuba.133 Fernandes claimed that it was irresponsible and “un-

Brazilian” to support the Revolutionary government of Cuba, because Recife was a

liberal city in favor of democracy and against bloodshed. A bomb exploded at the

location where Célia Guevara was speaking, injuring two people, and was declared a

“true scene of terrorism” in Recife.134

In 1960, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir traveled from Cuba to

Brazil and then returned to Cuba. They toured many regions of Brazil, oftentimes

with author Jorge Amado as their guide, and participated in numerous conferences.

Sartre lectured on colonialism and “anti-imperialist” revolutions, speaking about

pressing political questions such as the Algerian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution,

132
“Mãe de ‘Che’ Guevara está no Recife e fez conferência,” Diario de Pernambuco
18 May 1961,12.
133
Anibal Fernandes, “Brasil, Sim; ‘Barbudos’, Não!” Diario de Pernambuco, 19
May 1961, 4.
134
“Bomba explodiu na conferência da mãe de ‘Che’ Guevara: Duas vítimas no
HPS,” Diario de Pernambuco 23 May 1961, 7.

72
and the Ligas Camponesas in Brazil.135 In his final interview in Brazil, Sartre said

that even though his trip was too short to speak with any authority about the problems

in Brazil, two things were evident. First, that the working class in the industrialized

South of Brazil was “reformist,” and second that the “camponês nordestino is

revolutionary, in the sense that their ‘situation’ is revolutionary.”136 According to

Sartre, people in Northeastern Brazil faced the same problems as Cubans and

Algerians. “Although unconscious, the rural nordestino will perceive that only land

redistribution will allow for the continuation of his life, but that this redistribution

must be done by the camponeses themselves.”137

The other transnational connection that the Ligas Camponesas tried to

establish was between the Ligas and the struggles for independence in Africa. In

May of 1963, a column first appeared entitled “Voz da África,” which provided

details on the struggles in Africa, such as in the Congo, Angola, and Algeria. One

extensive article in LIGA published poems from the revolutionary poets of Angola,

denouncing racism in the United States and declaring Angolan independence. The

poems appeared with a cartoon depicting black Angolan soldiers marching with guns

135Luís Antônio Contartori Romano, A passagem de Sartre e Simone de Beauvior

pelo Brasil em 1960 (Campinas: Mercado de Letras; São Paulo: FAPESP, 2002): 190.
Specifically, this is illustrated by the conferences held in early September in
Araraquara.
136 Romano, A passagem de Sartre, 246. Quoted from “Sartre volta à Revolução:

‘Cuba depende da dignidade dos países da América Latina’” in Jornal do Brasil. Rio
de Janeiro, 22 October 1960. In an intereresting coincidence, Sartre and Simone de
Beauvior depart from Brazil only ten days before the first, groundbreaking article by
Tad Szulc was published in The New York Times. The coincidence illustrates how
ideas and movements gained importance among a wide variety of groups throughout
the world during this period.
137 Romano, A passagem de Sartre, 246.

73
and a flag on top of a reclining giant white Portuguese soldier.138 Francisco Julião

also read Frantz Fanon’s publications about the Algerian revolution, which influenced

his perceptions of the struggles in Northeastern Brazil.

In addition to the speeches by Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara published in the

Ligas newspaper and in the Communist Party newspapers, frequent speeches by Mao

appeared in these papers. These speeches discussed the need for agrarian reform and

peasant revolution and also the ideals of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Mao’s

writings, such as the “Proclamation of Emancipation” and his declaration to African-

Americans appeared in the Ligas newspaper, published in full.139 Julião also traveled

to the Soviet Union and to China on a number of occasions, meeting with Mao and

giving classes on Brazilian politics and culture in the Soviet Union.140 The Ligas also

published articles in a column entitled, “Revolutionary Consciousness,” explaining

Leninism. While this was enough to label the Ligas Camponesas as “communist”

during the Cold War, in retrospect and in the context of Third World independence

struggles, the Ligas seemed to be looking for ways and means to fight what they saw

as US imperialism or neo-colonialism. The Ligas did not adopt a strict Leninist or

Maoist line, but they looked far and wide for possible answers to building a

movement with the strength and means to restructure the landholding system in

Brazil. The Ligas concentrated on constructing a common dual enemy – the

138
“Poetas Angolanos lutam pela independencia,” LIGA 6 November 1963, 3.
139
“A proclamação da emancipação dos Afro-Americanos de Mao,” LIGA 21
September 1963 (no.49), 3;7.
140
“Julião: A China dará, em breve, lições à União Soviética,” Diario de Pernambuco
15 December 1960, 11.

74
latifundio and the U.S. – that allowed the Ligas to form connections with other Third

World struggles in the early 1960s.

Cultural Representations of the Northeast as Third World

Sharing some of the same images and ideas as the Ligas Camponesas and the

Communist Party, a group of filmmakers started the cultural movement known as

Cinema Novo (CN) in the early 1960s that presupposed a pan-American or Third

World revolutionary movement. The cinemanovistas helped to create the New Latin

American Cinema Movement, participating in conferences and film festivals that tied

together filmmakers in Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Mexico. first

wave cinemanovistas concentrated on two main themes: the urban slums and the rural

Northeast. Glauber Rocha, one of the principal CN directors, wrote a manifestation,

the Aesthetic of Hunger, in which he declared the need for a new “grammar” of Third

World cinema, an aesthetic that incorporated the non-exotic poverty and hunger of

the Third World. Similar to the Ligas Camponesas, the cinemanovistas also took a

stance against what they considered U.S. imperialism or neo-colonialism, although

their projects were based in the medium of cinema and a rejection of the Hollywood

aesthetic.141 Rocha borrowed from Frantz Fanon’s call for Third World liberation in

that he argued that the aesthetic of hunger and violence were supposed to create the

141
Ana M. López argues, “Always conceived of as a challenge to the hegemony of
the Hollywood import and foreign control of cinematic institutions and as an active
agent in the process of cultural decolonization, the New Latin American Cinema is
not just a filmmaking movement; it is a social practice intimately related to other
movements struggling for the sociocultural, political and economic autonomy of
Latin America.” Ana M. López, “An ‘Other’ History: The New Latin American
Cinema,” 311.

75
moment that the colonized becomes aware of the violence of colonization, and acts

upon this realization, and forms a revolutionary movement. Rocha’s early films -

Barravento (1960) and Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964) – connected the

regional culture of the Northeast to the anti-colonial struggles of the Third World. He

used regional themes of messianism, cangaço, rural poverty, and Afro-Brazilian

religion with the objective of connecting the Northeast to the struggles in Algeria and

Africa.142

Three influential films focused on the rural Northeast are commonly cited as

creating this aesthetic and the CN movement: Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na

terra do sol (1964); Ruy Guerra’s Os Fuzis (1964); and, Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s

Vidas Secas (1962).143 All three films depict impoverished Nordestinos who react

violently to their situation, unable to change the established structures and culture that

contribute to their downward spiraling impoverishment and misery. Deus e o diabo

na terra do sol tells the story of a rural couple, who proceed through historical

narratives of resistance – messianism and the cangaço – after Manuel reacts violently,

killing the large landowner who exploits him. In Os Fuzís, the rural population is

depicted as mute and passive, figures in a small town in the sertão statically existing

like cattle while the main characters, soldiers and the truck driver Gaúcho, struggle

over the issue of protecting the food storage from being sacked by the starving

population. Vidas Secas depicts a family in the sertão who are powerless against their

142
About Barravento, Rocha said “Não me interesse o fato regional, logo pensei nas
lutas da África e da Argélia.” In Marta Campos, Colonialismo, cultura interno, o
caso Nordeste (Fortaleza, 1986), 83.
143
Eduardo Coutinho’s Cabra marcado para morrer (1984) would have been
included in this trilogy, but the filming was interrupted by the 1964 coup and
Coutinho only returned to the film in the early 1980s.

76
environment and the power structures of the rural Northeast, exploited and mistreated

by the large landowners and the soldiers.

At the same time that these films were released, a non-CN movement film,

based in Northeastern Brazil won at Cannes. Anselmo Duarte’s O pagador de

promessas (1962) employed well-known actors, many of whom were not Nordestino,

and used more standard aesthetics to tell a politically conservative story of rebellion

in Northeastern Brazil. Zê de Burro travels by foot for days carrying a large wooden

cross on his back to fulfill a promise to Santa Barbara/Iansã to ensure the health of his

burro. Once he reaches the Church of Santa Barbara, he is refused entrance because

his promise was made to Iansã in a candomblé ceremony instead of at a Catholic

Church. Suddenly, politicians and journalists turn Zê into a rebel, declaring that he is

leading a revolutionary movement for agrarian reform while the only thing poor,

ignorant Zê is interested in doing is entering the Church with his cross to fulfill his

promise.

The commercially popular productions of Nordesterns, or Brazilian Westerns

based on the stories of cangaceiros, also influenced the representations of

Northeastern Brazil. These films adopted a narrative that was in part Northeastern –

based on culture, traditions and stories of o Nordeste – but were also influenced by

the narratives and styles of the Italian Spaghetti Westerns and Hollywood Westerns.

Nordestern films reinforced traditional narratives of the Western, telling the story of

how masculinity and violence connected to ideas of civilization in the modern nation.

Heroes and villains struggled in the “wild west” of the sertão, an area depicted as

feudal and lacking the influence of the modern state. Some films ended with the

77
triumph of the hero in the end, but more often than not, films ended in a bloody fight

with the annihilation of the actors.

A fourth school of film production in Brazil connected to representations of

Northeastern Brazil in the early 1960s was the Paraíban Documentary school. These

documentaries never received the international recognition of the other film

movements, but influenced the cinemanovistas in their use of non-professional actors

and the aesthetics of creating a Third World cinema. The filmmakers were amateurs

who produced films that were “imperfect,” with direct sound, hand-held shots, drastic

lighting, and non-linear narratives and editing. After the screening of the first of

these films, Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda, cinemanovistas drew inspiration, seeing

the imperfections of the documentaries as the symbol and aesthetic of what type of

film could come from the impoverished Third World: raw, ugly productions that

depicted local culture in a realistic, non-exotic or non-studio style.

Besides the Brazilian filmmakers, other filmmakers from Latin America, the

United States and Italy went to Northeastern Brazil to make films and documentaries

in the early 1960s. Some of these films were never completed. Roberto Rossellini,

for example, was invited to Pernambuco to film Josué de Castro’s books on

Northeastern Brazil, O homen e os caranguejos and Documentário do Nordeste.

Rosselini visited Pernambuco but never completed the film. At the time of the

military coup, Cuban filmmakers were on location at the Engenho Galiléia, but never

finished the film on the struggle of the Ligas Camponesas. Fernando Birri, the

Argentine director associated with the Santa Fé School, visited Pernambuco in April

78
1963, with the plan to direct a co-production in Pernambuco.144 An ABC news team

produced a film on Northeastern Brazil and the Ligas Camponesas in 1962, telling the

story of a poor peasant who wandered barefoot in Recife, through the streets lined

with the symbols of modernity such as television stores. Severino had supposedly

been abandoned by the State, and sought alternatives to his impoverished situation by

going to the headquarters of the Ligas Camponesas and meeting with Francisco Julião

who promised to help the peasants. The documentary’s most remarked upon scene

was one of a large landowner showing off his American pistol, shooting it numerous

times in front of the casa-grande. The film used Abelardo da Hora’s murals of the

Ligas, of Julião and of Fidel Castro, suggesting the connections between the unrest in

Northeastern Brazil and the Cuban Revolution.

Although all of these films were drastically different, with an array of political

and commercial objectives, they built upon an imagined idea of the region known as

o Nordeste. The number of films produced during these years suggests how central

Northeastern Brazil was to the Cold War struggles, culturally and politically. While

the films established a connection between Northeastern Brazil and the Third World,

they also “coded” Northeastern Brazil within the national imagination. This coding

created a version of Northeastern Brazil as impoverished, trapped by its history,

populated by backwards men and women who lacked all forms of agency, even the

ability to communicate with one another. Oftentimes, the images were of certain

areas of the sertão, the driest, harshest topography where the pointed caatinga and the

relentless sun inhibited modern life. Fanatics, cangaceiros, and violent landlords

144
“Fernando Birri: Virá da Argentina para rodar filme e ensinar cinema,” Diario de
Pernambuco 28 Arpil 1963, (2nd cad), 8.

79
ruled the area, isolating it from anything that people living in Rio or São Paulo

understood as Brazilian.

Coding in film creates an imagined place and people that may never exist but

that becomes the way in which a region or a population is represented in films. Even

when a director tries to subvert the meaning of the codes, the power of the entrenched

representation often locks the associated meaning in place. Coding has been used to

explain how representations created the Other(s) in the United States; for example, in

representations of “hillbillies” of Appalachia, Native Americans, and African-

Americas. As James Snead argued about blacks in Hollywood film, “stereotypes and

codes insulate themselves from historical change, or actual counterexamples in the

real world. Caricatures breed more caricatures, or metamorphose into other, but still

remain in place.”145 Similarly, Horace Newcomb has looked at the stereotypes and

constructions of the fictitious place known as Appalachia that television programs

such as The Dukes of Hazard and The Beverly Hillbillies created.146 The cultural

production of Northeastern Brazil and Nordestinos is similar to the Other(s) created in

U.S. popular culture, which suggests how common it is to create the Other in cinema

because the medium requires a certain level of stereotyping to produce a story that is

coherent to the public.

145
James A. Snead, “Spectatorship and Capture in King Kong,” in Representing
Blackness: Issues in Film and Video, ed., Valerie Smith (London: The Athlone Press,
1997), 27.
146
Horace Newcomb, “Appalachia on Television: Region as Symbol in American
Popular Culture,” Appalachian Images in Folk and Popular Culture, ed., W.K.
McNeil (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995), 315-329.

80
Northeastern Brazil and the Nation

Those who live in Rio have the impression that the Northeast is
something like Afghanistan.147

Benedict Anderson’s widely accepted definition of the nation as an “imagined

community” provides the platform for asking questions about inclusion and

exclusion, and why and how national communities are imagined and how these ideas

change. Among other issues, scholars have looked at national definitions in terms of

race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, regionalism, and struggles over defining the

nation. By and large, the widely accepted belief about the place of Northeastern

Brazil within the nation is that it is the backwards, non-modern Other and it is the

location of the heart of the “authentic” Brazil. The other chapters of my dissertation

explore more specifically the contested constructions of Northeastern Brazil within

the nation by focusing on specific symbols and the struggles used by regional actors

to change or reaffirm their meanings. In this section, I briefly lay out some of the

commonly held assumptions about o Nordeste and its place within the nation.

As the above quotation suggests, for those who live in Rio, the Northeast was

a place like Afghanistan.148 The major newspapers in Rio and São Paulo published

articles on the Northeast and the Ligas Camponesas, including extensive special

147
“Para quem vive no Rio, tem-se a impressão de uma coisa assim como o
Afganistão.” Anibal Fernandes, “A vida numa zona sertanejo do Nordeste,” Diario
de Pernambuco 7 March 1959, 4.
148
It is impossible to fully grasp what is meant by the comparison between the
Northeast and Afghanistan, but what is important is the portrayal of the region as
exotic and foreign for Brazilians living in the urban center-south.

81
publications in O Estado de São Paulo and multiple reports later published as a book

(Os Industriais da Seca e os “Galileus” de Pernambuco: Aspectos da luta pela

reforma agrária no Brasil, 1960) in the Correio da Manhã (Rio) by Antonio Callado.

I will briefly describe the coverage of the Northeast in these two papers in the early

1960s, to show how it is consistent in many ways with the coverage in the U.S.

mainstream press. Similar types of descriptions of the Northeast, of Nordestinos, and

of regional problems could be found in the press coverage in the south, illustrating the

process of Othering within the nation that occurred during this period. The major

difference was in the transnationalization of the Ligas and their struggles. In the

Brazilian papers, few references were made to Fidel Castro and Cuba, China, the

Soviet Union. The communist threat was seen as tied to the Brazilian Communist

Party or the Brazilian Socialist Party, not foreign communists. Also, the narrative of

Os sertões plays out much more in the Brazilian perception of the region: The fanatic

leader Julião has been organizing the ignorant peasants and the solution is in national

programs for development and repression of the communist threat.

A special edition of O Estado de São Paulo in May 1963 reported on the

Northeast, the Ligas Camponesas and SUDENE. Articles in this special edition relied

on social indicators and statistics to define the Northeastern population and its

problems, emphasizing the inadequate caloric intake, infant mortality rate,

malnutrition, illiteracy, low per capita income, among others. Survival of a

Nordestino was described as “a miracle.” The photographs printed in the special

edition were remarkable in the ways that they depicted the Nordestino and the Ligas

Camponesas for the Paulista public. Many of them showed scenes of rural male

82
workers, dressed in white clothes with straw hats that fit the definition of a peasant

mass in scenes that were replicated in most of the Cinema Novo films from this

period. One photograph depicted a “barracão do engenho” or the plantation store

with a well-fed man calmly standing behind a counter, framed by the food and goods

for sale. On the other side of the counter are the peasant masses, leaning over the

counter, pointing at the food in what can be described as desperation. The caption

explains the situation, stating, “the worker often suffers the atrocious martyrdom of

the father who returns to his hungry children with empty hands.”149

The report labeled the Ligas as Communist, stating that Francisco Julião

masked his affiliation with the Communist Party by saying he was “Marxist-

Leninist.” It blamed the infiltration of communists in Northeastern Brazil on the

poverty level that was perpetuated by the plantation system and the greed of the

latifundiarios. This reflects the debates going on in 1963 in Brazil about who should

benefit from the U.S. sugar quota after the Cuban quota had been cut to zero: Paulista

planters or Northeastern planters. Photographs of old engenhos carried the caption

that explained, “the barely evolved mentality of the engenho owner and the

proselytism of Leftist groups are the main components driving the unrest

disseminating throughout the Northeast.”150 Another photograph depicts a group of

male rural workers involved in a discussion, labeled as Ligas Camponesas

149
“o trabalhador sofre muitas vezes o martírio atroz do pai que volta de mãos vazias
para os filhos esfomeados.” Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a
revolução nordestina,” special edition of O Estado de São Paulo 28 April to 7 May
1963, 4.
150
“a mentalidade pouco evoluída do dono de engenho e o proselitismo de elementos
de esquerda são os components principais da inquietude que se alastra pelo
Nordeste.” Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,”
special edition of O Estado de São Paulo 28 April to 7 May 1963, 3.

83
participants. The caption is particularly dehumanizing or Nordestino-izing, stating:

“Workers without any education, semi-politicized by Leftist groups, express their

opinions about the problems of the cane-growing region in the Northeast, deciding

what attitude to adopt in issues involving the engenho owners.”151

The solution according to the article is SUDENE and the Alliance for

Progress. But the article argues that these two programs for development may be

moving in the wrong direction and the focus should be on raising the standard of

living of the Nordestino by creating better employment conditions in the rural areas

instead of focusing on infrastructure and major development projects such as

irrigation. The feudal, traditional society needed to be brought into the modern

capitalist world, replacing the oligarchies with liberal leadership. The economic

policies the region required were listed as fighting inflation and creating a free-trade

economy in the Northeast. Politically, the communists needed to be repressed,

Miguel Arraes and his leftist coalition needed to be kept in line, politics needed to

have a social focus, and the only way to avoid a revolution was if the Republicans in

the US did not succeed in destroying Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Finally, the

article emphasized the need to build a non-Left middle class in the Northeast, to focus

on the misery of the proletariat, and the Brazilian Armed Forces, many of whom

151
“Trabalhadores se instrução alguma, semi-politizados por elementos de esquerda,
emitem opinião sobre problemas da zona canavieira do Nordeste, decidindo qual a
attitude a adotar em questões com os donos de engenho.”Rubens Rodrigues dos
Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,” special edition of O Estado de São
Paulo 28 April to 7 May 1963, 7.

84
came from the Northeast, needed to place more attention on this region and to

become better organized to control the social unrest.152

Antonio Callado, journalist, novelist and playwright, published a series of

articles in the main newspaper of the era in Rio, the Correio da Manhã. Callado

visited the Engenho Galiléia on numerous occasions, and participated in the

celebrations for the expropriation of the Engenho in February 1960. His reports

painted a more positive picture of the Ligas Camponesas and were influential in their

criticism of the federal government program for drought relief, commonly known as

the “drought industry” because it was known to be used by the landowning elite to

secure their power rather than to help the poor rural workers who suffered the worst

consequences of droughts. Callado’s criticism helped support the development

agency SUDENE and also explained why social movements such as the Ligas

Camponesas were necessary in the region. Similar to O Estado de São Paulo,

Callado’s reports strongly criticized the landowning elite and the type of “feudal”

structures that were seen to exist in Northeastern Brazil. Change was necessary for

Northeastern Brazil.

Even though Callado’s reports saw the Ligas Camponesas as a viable solution,

or at least a necessary manifestation of the neglected and feudal society, the focus

was strongly on the work of Francisco Julião and his role in organizing the Ligas

Camponesas. This produced a similar effect of stripping the agency from the rural

workers as leaders and instigators of social struggle. Callado published a novel

shortly after the coup that described how he understood the Ligas Camponesas and

152
Rubens Rodrigues dos Santos, “A SUDENE e a revolução nordestina,” special
edition of O Estado de São Paulo 28 April to 7 May 1963, 10-11.

85
the other rural struggles. Quarup told of a priest who became conscientizado to the

problems of the rural workers and helped organize a rural social movement to fight

for the right to land. After the military coup in the novel, the priest and the rural

members of the social movement were arrested and brutally tortured. The priest ends

up disillusioned with the struggle and fails to make any real change in the Northeast,

or follow through with the revolution that he had initiated. While it is a fictional

account, Callado’s descriptions of the struggle show how he understood the Ligas

Camponesas: a regional struggle led by one leader who swayed the masses of rural

workers to support his political projects that failed in the end, falling prey to military

repression.

Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior has argued that the idea of o Nordeste is

heavily connected to the state of Pernambuco. Pernambuco has the largest population

of any state in the Northeast and Recife is arguably the most important capital city.

In part, the importance of Pernambuco in the Northeast has been based on the power

of the elite to create a Pernambucano-centered Nordeste. In 1924, the “Centro

Regionalista” was formed in Recife with the goal of uniting Northeastern leaders and

creating a regional space to discuss its needs and hopes.153 But, the rural elite and

intellectuals did not limit Pernambuco’s importance only to the Northeast. As

Gilberto Freyre argued in 1959, “What exists is a superiority of Pernambuco in the

cultural life of Brazil as a whole that comes from a large concentration of cultural

values (in the sociological sense of culture) in existence since the sixteenth century in

153
Gilberto Freyre, “Pernambuco e o Nordeste” Diario de Pernambuco 28 January
1959, 4.

86
its people and at its core, also known as being a noble and distinct regional

civilization. It is impossible to diminish or to deny this superiority.”154

Intellectuals and political leaders in Northeastern Brazil made connections

with the nation through what can be seen as “internal colonialism” or proto-

dependency theory. José Joffily, state deputy, claimed in 1959 that Brazil could not

be a developed country with the Northeast still underdeveloped.155 The editor of the

Diario de Pernambuco commented in early 1960 on the issue of separatism in Brazil,

stating that the only way to solve the problems in Brazil would be to institute a more

equal distribution of things since the shocking disparity in Brazil creates “a lack of

understanding, resentment and hate.”156 While some argued against idea of internal

colonialism, based on the premise that Paulistas would not want an impoverished

Northeast because they needed to enlarge the Brazilian market for their industrial

goods, the counter-argument also existed: the Paulistas became wealthier because of

their exploitation of the Northeast.157

154
“O que existe é uma superioridade de Pernambuco na vida cultural do país – e não
apenas da região – que vem de uma maior concentração desde o século XVI de
valores de cultura – cultura no sentido sociologico – entre sua gente, nucleo, aliás de
toda uma nobre e nítida civilização regional. Impossível apagar-se ou repudiar-se
essa superioridade.”Gilberto Freyre, “Pernambuco e o Nordeste” Diario de
Pernambuco 28 January 1959, 4.
155
“Não há Brasil desenvolvido com o Nordeste sub-desenvolvido,” Diario de
Pernambuco 3 February 1959, 1.
156
Anibal Fernandes, “O separatismo e a miséria,” Diario de Pernambucoi 27
January 1960, 4.
157
Anibal Fernandes, “A logica nas coisas,” Diario de Pernambuco 21 September
1960, 4; Anibal Fernandes, “Revalidação Nordestina,” Diario de Pernambuco 28
September 1960, 4. Fernandes made a solid economic argument in this editorial but
his argument also reflect the counter-argument being made about the exploitation of
the Northeast by the industrialized Southeast.

87
 In contrast to the developmentalist arguments, the rural elite and traditional

intellectuals emphasized the importance of retaining the traditional culture of the

Northeast. They claimed that the introduction of modern industry or agricultural

practices would destroy the culture of Northeastern Brazil. For instance, modern

fishing techniques would destroy the culture of the jangada and the jangadeiro.158

Following similar logic, the Ligas were referred to as “foreign” agitators and

communists who threatened the lifestyle of the traditional Northeast. The legitimacy

of the rural movements were attacked by the rural elite because they were seen to be

the product of outside influences who little to do with traditional Northeastern culture

and society.

Northeastern Brazil was not only defined in the 1950s and 1960s as feudal and

traditional but also as patriarchal and as a masculine space. As Durval Muniz de

Albuquerque Júnior has argued, the casa-grande and the senhor do engenho have

been described in regionalist literature as the established patriarchal figures of the

state, culture, and society for centuries in Northeastern Brazil.159 One example of a

change to this system was the election of Cid Sampaio as governor of Pernambuco in

1958, who was not a part of the landowning elite. Also, the continued attacks from

all sides on the latifundio as a feudal system that hindered the modernity and progress

shook the patriarchal authority. But, this threat was not accepted without a challenge.

Numerous articles and editorials described the value of the traditional culture of the

158
Gilberto Freyre, “Um tema para Jorge Amado,” Diario de Pernambuco 15
February 1959, 4.
159
Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, “Limites do mando, limites do mundo: a
relação entre identidades espaciais no nordeste do começo do século,” História,
questões e debates: Revista aõ Paranaense de História 13: 34 (2001): 89-103.

88
Northeast, oftentimes referring to folk culture and the role of the latifundio in

preserving order. A number of folhetos, or literatura de cordel, described the changes

in women’s clothing and the fact that women rode bicycles as negative forces of

modernity seeping into and threatening the traditional society.

Military Dictatorship and Northeastern Brazil

Antes de tudo, o sertanejo é um forte.
- Severino Cavalcanti, ex-Pernambucan Federal
Deputy of the Partido Progressista who rose to
political power during the military regime.
Upon his resignation as the President of House
for issues of corruption (mensalão scandal) in
September 2006, Cavalcanti quoted from
Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões to make a claim
about the injustices Nordestinos face in
Brazilian politics.

The Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (IJNPS, Joaquim Nabuco

Institute of Social Research) was founded in 1949 through an initiative of then

Federal Deputy Gilberto Freyre. According to an article in the Diario de

Pernambuco in January 1949, the Institute was to focus on research into the social

problems of the Northeast to help Recife return to its “former splendor as the center

of social and intellectual renovation of Brazil.”160 The IJNPS funded a wide variety of

research projects and conferences throughout the 1950s and 60s, on topics such as

agricultural practices in Northeastern Brazil, drought, religion in small towns, and

cultural studies on cangaceiros and literatura de cordel, often framed around ideas

160
http://www.fundaj.gov.br/50/histo.html

89
from Euclides da Cunha’s Os Sertões.161 The IJNPS also funded documentary

projects, such as Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda, and it also attracted foreign scholars

from its inception.162 Many of the key scholars of the IJNPS such as Estêvão Pinto,

Gonçalves Fernandes, and Gilberto Freyre contributed to the Diario de Pernambuco

on a regular basis. The studies tended to merge social science studies and statistics

with long-held assumptions about the Northeast as the center of Brazilian traditions.

The IJNPS had a connection to the Brazilian military from the start, sponsoring a

number of conferences for the armed forces and the Escola Superior da Guerra (ESP)

in the late 1950s and early 1960s to instruct military leaders on the problems and

issues facing the Northeast.

One example of these training programs was a conference held at the IJNPS

on May 13 to 18, 1963 entitled, Transformação Regional e Ciência Ecológica, that

had the goal of understanding problems of the people from agrarian regions in the

Northeast and the North of Brazil from an objective and scientific perspective.163

This conference drew together debates over agrarian reform, including panels with

participants from the Ligas Camponesas, the Catholic Church, researchers from the

IJNPS, and regional politicians who led the colonization programs. One of the key

figures at this conference was Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco, the first military

161
For instance, in 1955, Gilberto Freyre led a research course entitled, “Homen,
cultura, e região” that looked at different aspects of the resistance to using modern
agricultural practices in the Northeast. “Homen, cultura, e região,” Diario de
Pernambuco, 6 March 1955, 19.
162
Some of the universities that developed relations with the IJNPS included
Colombia University, the Sorbonne, Heidelbeg, Gant, and others.
163
Gilberto Freyre, Estevão Pinto, Renato Campos, Francisco Julião, Pe. Antonio
Melo, Cana e Reforma Agrária, (Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas
Sociais, 1970), 59.

90
officer to take power after the 1964 coup, and the general in charge of the VI Army

Division in Recife from July 1962 to July 1963 (General Costa e Silva also was one

of the leaders of the VI Exército). During these years, Castello Branco and Gilberto

Freyre established a personal friendship, and had many discussions on Nordestino

culture.164 Through this conference, it is possible to see the development of some of

the assumptions about the Northeast that military regime later transformed into

policies, largely based on a combination of ideas associated with modernization

theory and developmentalism, and the positivist view of the Northeast and

Nordestinos espoused by Euclides da Cunha. The conference proceedings were

published in 1970 by the IJNPS as Cana e Reforma Agrária, with a forward that

discussed the triumph of the movement of 1964 and emphasized the military

participation in the conference, even publishing pictures of Castello Branco at the

conference.

In the preface to the second edition of the publication, the editor drew heavily

on the history of agriculture in Northeastern Brazil, describing the first systems of

plantation agriculture installed in the region. Much of the information came from

works by Gilberto Freyre such as Casa-Grande e Senzala, and detailed his writings

on colonial race relations based on stereotypes of the Portuguese, Africans and

Indians. But the main idea of the conference was to show that enough historical and

socio-anthropological work had been done on Northeastern Brazil. What was needed

were technical studies; for instance, studies about varieties of sugar cane and cane

164
John W.F. Dulles, Castello Branco: The Making of a Brazilian President (College
Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press, 1978), 263.

91
diseases.165 The conclusion of the conference was that many different ideas existed

about agrarian reform and that agrarian reform had become a national issue, but that it

was not enough to simply give the land to the peasants because this failed to consider

the “biological impositions.”166 Gilberto Freyre’s concluding comments referred to

the uprisings of Canudos, Pedra Bonita and the Quebra-Quilos as precedents for

understanding what was happening in the rural areas in the early 1960s. Freyre

claimed that what was needed was a “revolutionary social politics to develop Brazil

into a modern civilization in the tropics.”167

The first panel included Francisco Julião, Luís Vieira of the Universidade

Rural and the Associação Nordestina de Crédito e Assistência Rural, Francisco

Targino de Siquiera of the Instituto Nacional de Imigração e Colonização, worker

Manuel Gonçalo of the Federação dos Sindicatos Rurais, and Paulo Frederico Maciel

and Mário Lacerda Melo of the IJNPS. The topic of the panel was the problem of

land ownership in a capitalist system and explored the difference between radical

agrarian reform and the creation of cooperatives. Julião defined radical agrarian

reform as the abolishment of the latifundio system, replaced by small landholdings.

Colonization was proposed as an alternative to radical agrarian reform, focused on the

idea of changing the system of monocultural agricultural production into a more

diversified system. But, as the panelist claimed, the alternative of moving

Nordestino rural workers to other areas of Brazil, such as the Amazon, was

controversial since Nordestinos supposedly were tied to their land and the culture of

165
Gilberto Freyre, Cana e Reforma Agrária, 65.
166
Ibid., 82.
167
“política revolucionáriamente social para o desnenvolvimento do Brasil em
moderna civilização no trópico,” Ibid., 87.

92
the Northeast. Julião made the argument that it was unjust to force a man to move

from his home because of his impoverished situation; that if a rich man could decide

where he wanted to live, the poor man should also have that option.168 The other idea

proposed was the modernization of agriculture and the cane industry, which was seen

as a way to raise the salaries of rural workers by allowing Pernambucan sugar

planters to obtain a greater percentage of the US sugar quota (in light of the fact that

the Cuban sugar quota had been eliminated). The struggle for agrarian reform was

identified as a Northeastern problem that needed specific attention due to the cultural

and economic structures of the Northeast, but the panelists also argued that it was a

national issue and a Latin American issue.

The second panel included Padre Antonio Melo of Cabo and the Church

Federations of Rural Workers, Luís Gonzaga Xavier of the Associação dos

Fornecedores de Cana, Beno Dantas of the Instituto Agronomico do Nordeste, João

Alfredo of the Ligas Camponesas, Reinaldo Câmara of the Associação da Imprensa

de Pernambuco and Renato Carneiro Campos of the IJNPS. The main points debated

in this panel were about the sugar quota and its connection to the rural worker, the

unionization of rural workers, and the creation of agricultural cooperatives. Padre

Antônio Melo advocated an increase in the price of sugar and argued that the

Northeastern sugar producers should be grated a greater percentage of the sugar

quota. Melo talked about the level of protest in the rural areas that he described as

something that people were losing sleep over. Protest as a means to resolve

problems, he argued, was a “Brazilian tradition” that change only came by exerting

168
Ibid., 122-123.

93
pressure from below. Melo’s solution was the modernization of agricultural

practices, such as irrigation, in the Northeast, the establishment of cooperatives, and

the increase of the price of sugar to raise the salary of the rural worker.

Most of the panelists agreed with Padre Melo. For instance, Luís Gonzaga, of

the Fornecedores de Cana, stated that the Fornecedores wanted to find a way to calm

the situation in the Northeast to facilitate the ability to work. He agreed with rural

unionization and agreed with the Estatuto de Trabalhador Rural, which he described

as a legal way to work out the problems in the Northeast. He stated that he was

against the level of misery in the Northeast and asked for resources to develop and

modernize the agricultural structure in the Northeast. The other panelists agreed that

the problem was in the low wages paid to the workers, seen as a consequence of the

“primitive” agricultural system. Student João Alfredo of the Ligas Camponesas

countered this perspective by describing the views of another major Church leader,

this one not at the conference, Padre Paulo Crespo. According to João Alfredo, in

line with Pope John XXIII, Crespo argued against the existence of the latifundio. The

latifundio system itself was “sinful” and he described it as what led to the misery of

the rural worker. Alfredo argued that the latifundio was guilty of creating the

problems in the countryside since the peasant did not own or manage the usinas; the

peasants were only victims of the system and reacted out of their misery.

The third panel focused on how to turn what was seen as a feudal system into

a capitalist system. The head of the third panel was the economist Caio de Amorim

Pontual, with the discussants Ernesto Gonçalves Pereira Lima of the Sociedade

Auxiliadora da Agricultura do Nordeste, José Geraldo Cosa of the Associação Cristã

94
Academica, and Mário Lacerda de Melo and Alcides Nicéias of the IJNPS. The main

point debated was how to change the system from what was seen as three actors – the

consumer, the worker and the businessman – to a system of two actors where the

business and the worker became incorporated into one unit. The major problem,

according to the panelists, was in the low productivity of agriculture in the Northeast.

The situation in the Northeast was compared to the North/South division in Italy, and

the solution proposed was the modernization of the agricultural industry.

The fourth panel consisted of the usineiro Gustavo Colaço Dias, Waldemar

Borges Rodrigues Filho of the Superintendencia da Reforma Agrária, Gilberto Osório

de Oliveira Andrade of the Associação de Geógrafos Brasileiros, Luís de Melo

Amorim of the Escola Superior de Veterinária da Universidade Rural de Pernambuco,

Paulo Rangel Moreira of the Poder Legislativo of Pernambuco, and Paulo Frederico

Maciel and Cláudio Souto of the IJNPS. The main topic of debate was the legality

and constitutional reforms needed to implement agrarian reform and rural workers’

rights. The panelists emphasized the need to regulate and enforce a minimum wage

for rural workers and an eight-hour workday. They also suggested the need for

hygienic housing for rural workers, and reforms made to the educational system for

adult and rural instruction. This correlated to ideas of modernization of the Northeast

and of the agricultural system. Again, most of the panelists agreed that the price of

sugar needed to be increased for these reforms to take place, to bring the standard of

living and the standard of agricultural production in the Northeast to the same level as

in the South and rural São Paulo.

95
 The final panel was headed by Antônio Carlos Cintra do Amaral, the

Secretário-Assistente do Governo de Pernambuco, and panelists included José

Hesketh Lavareda of the Universidade de João Pessoa, Fernando de Oliveira Mota of

the Universdade de Recife, Marco Antônio Maciel of the União dos Estudantes de

Pernambuco and Antônio Carolino Gonçalves of the IJNPS. This panel focused on

the issue of popular organization and challenged the government’s idea of “order,”

looking at strikes in the cane region to make the point that struggle is necessary in

underdeveloped countries for change to happen. Amaral argued that the strikes were

a necessary part of a functioning democracy, where the new society struggled against

the old for workers’ rights and greater equality. The concluding remarks of the

conference, by Governor Miguel Arraes, discussed the inequality and “contrasts” of

the cane region, described as one of the richest and most fertile areas in the Northeast,

but where the majority of the people live in vast misery.169 Arraes argued that the

biggest obstacle the Northeast faced was in the implementation of agrarian reform

and the expropriation of sugar plantations because of the planning such reforms

required and because of current constitutional limits to expropriation. He also stated

that modernization of the agricultural system had been underway since 1945, with the

purchase of new equipment such as tractors, but the problem was larger in that would

take more than machines to modernize an agricultural system. He claimed that the

tractors existed but the Northeast did not have the financial resources or technical

know-how to keep the machines functioning. Arraes argued that the basic reforms

169
Ibid., 307.

96
needed for modernization to occur in the Northeast involved a transformation of the

landholding system and a raise in the standard of living for all Nordestinos.

What Arraes argued for was an extremely difficult step to take, one that

required money, Constitutional reforms, and a wide-ranging transformation of

Northeastern society. This was not the path selected by the leaders of the military

regime. Castello Branco’s policies toward Northeastern Brazil and the issues of

agrarian reform, though, reflected some of the main issues debated at this conference.

According to John W.F. Dulles, Castello Branco sought a “gradual, flexible solution

that would show respect for property ownership, avoid minifundio and combat

unproductive latifundio.”170 The plan pushed forward was a constitutional amendment

that allowed for expropriations with full compensation and for a land statute that

emphasized colonization. The Land Statute was passed in November of 1964, under

the direction of the Alliance for Progress clause, cited earlier in the chapter that urged

land reform. The Castello Branco government asked IBRA (Instituto Brasileiro de

Reforma Agrária) to conduct a census and to map out the inequitable land holdings,

and established INDA (Instituto Nacional de Desenvolvimento Agrário) to combat

rural poverty.171 James Rowe conducted research on this census in 1966 in the

interior of Bahia, observing how rural landowners traveled for days to get to the

municipalities to register their landholdings, part of a project known as the “Semana

170
Dulles, President Castello Branco, 92.
171
Ibid., 95.

97
da Terra,” that had the objective of registering unproductive latifundios and

minifundios to devise a system of reform.172

Castello Branco’s experience as the Commander of the VI Army in Recife led

him to believe that the problems of rural activism in Northeastern Brazil had been

sensationalized in the press and would not lead to a Cuban-style revolution in Brazil.

Castello Branco was not particularly concerned about the Communist threat in the

Northeast. According to Dulles, Castello Branco arrived at this assumption after

reading a travel account by Alceu Amoroso Lima, Visão do Nordeste. Lima argued

that Nordestinos were trapped by their “historical-social circumstances” that made

them prone to individualism and deviant religious beliefs. This made them unlikely

to fall prey to Communist or fascist movements because these movements supposed

depended on creating a homogeneous mass out of the population.173 Castello Branco

had supposedly underlined the passages in the book that made such claims,

supporting his perspective that the Northeast was an area of minor concern for

Brazilian national politics or for the battles of the Cold War.

One of the main stances on Northeastern Brazil maintained throughout the

military regime was that development was needed in the form of agro-industry. In a

1967 report, Juan de Onis, Latin American correspondent for The New York Times,

published a positive review of the changes the military regime had brought to the

Northeast, describing the Northeast as the “fastest-developing region” in Brazil.174

172
James W. Rowe, “Revolution or Counter-Revolution in Brazil,” East Coast South
America Series Vol. XII, no. 1 (February 1966).
173
Dulles, Castello Branco, 273.
174
Juan de Onis, “Developing Latin America: Brazil’s Northeast Turn Toward
Growth,” Currents (March 1967), 62.

98
According de Onis, this was due to private investment, an improved political climate

and a tax law that encouraged Brazilian and foreign corporations to invest in the

Northeast.175 Moreover, he claimed that agrarian reform was not the only answer to

the problems of unemployment and poverty. Luis Vieira claimed that “the issue of

artisan craftwork and the professional training of the “rural man” is perhaps ‘more

important than the actual issue of agrarian reform.’”176 The development of

Northeastern Brazil as the folkloric center of Brazil, a place where artisanal work

replaced agricultural work, was one of the significant changes in national policy and

cultural meaning given to Northeastern Brazil. A key example of how this functioned

was with the cultural movement known as the Movimento Armorial, a cultural

movement which emerged in the 1970s in Pernambuco, led by novelist and

playwright Ariano Suassuna. The Armorial artists studied forms of popular culture in

Northeastern Brazil, such as “classic” literatura de cordel, and borrowed from it what

they considered to be this “national essence,” and then transformed the popular into

the erudite.177 In contrast to the Cinema Novo directors and the cultural movements of

the 1960s, the Armorial artists and writers sought a “mythical” and romanticized rural

past--the historical, nostalgic roots of a Brazil that never existed but had been

175
Ibid., 63-64.
176
“o problema do artesanato e da orientação profissional do ‘homem do campo’ é
talvez, ‘mais importante que a própria reforma agrária.’”Gilberto Freyre, Cana e
Reforma Agrária, 89-90.
177 Candace Slater argues that “the artists who consider themselves part of the

Movimento Armorial all look to the cordel and/or anonymous romancs for
inspiration.” Candace Slater, “Folk Tradition and the Artist: The Northeast Brazilian
Movimento Armorial,” Luso-Brazilian Review 16, no. 2 (Winter 1979):164.

99
described before by novelists, scholars, and artists earlier in the twentieth-century.178

They called themselves “anti-modernists,” and strove to “recover” Brazil’s Iberian,

African, and Indigenous pasts as well as Brazil’s Catholic tradition.179 This served as

a counterpoint to the increasingly radical Catholic Church and politics of the

Archbishop of Recife and Olinda, Dom Helder Câmara, who fought against the

repression of the military regime from its onset.

Although Ariano Suassuna was allegedly not a “supporter” of the military

regime, he accepted positions in state institutions and ministries throughout the

dictatorship. He was a founding member of the Conselho Federal de Cultura in 1967

and in 1975 he was appointed Secretary of Education and Culture in Recife. In

addition, he served as the Director of the Departamento de Extensão Cultural (DEC)

at the Federal University of Pernambuco from 1969 to 1974.180 Suassuna’s objectives

during this period were to create a comunidade nacional based on the notion of a

homogeneous Brazilian population and expressed through this population’s popular

culture. The state had the duty, according to Suassuna, to “formulate cultural

objectives on the basis of interpretation of national aspirations, and to maintain levels

178 For more about the construction of a romanticized and mythological Nordestino
past, see Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção do Nordeste.
179 According to Maria-Odilia Leal McBride, Suassuna’s most defining aspects are

that he is a sertanejo and that he converted to Catholicism in his mid-20s. Maria-

Odilia Leal McBride, Narrativas e narradores em A Pedra do Reino: estruturas e
persepectivas cambiantes (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 6-7.
180 Mark Dinneen’s primary focus is on the Movimento Armorial in Listening to the

People’s Voice: Erudite and Popular Literature in North East Brazil (London: Kegan
Paul International, 1996).

100
of quality of cultural production and protect it from excessive innovation, which

might threaten its specifically national characteristics.”181

While Suassuna’s and the Armorial Movement may have appeared to counter

the military government’s emphasis on modernization and progress, I believe that in

the case of Northeastern Brazil, the idea of “recovering” the traditional roots of

national culture actually supported the military regime’s position toward this region.

Suassuna’s leadership role in the state government throughout the military period, and

the fact that the majority of founding artists in the Armorial Movement held

appointments at the Departamento de Extensão Cultural supports the argument that

ideas promoted by the Armorial Movement were also ideas supported by the military

government.182 The focus on the traditional culture and society, including religion,

provided a stance to fight against the major legitimate voice against the dictatorship

in Northeastern Brazil: the Catholic Church.

From these examples, it is possible to see the changes in national politics and

perspectives on Northeastern Brazil during the military regime. After the coup, the

military arrested, tortured, and forced into exile all of the important leaders of the Left

and of the rural social movements with the exception of priests (although some priests

were tortured and arrested in Northeastern Brazil during the military regime).

Through repression, the military regime quickly deposed of any “revolutionary”

threat posed by Northeastern Brazil. Agrarian reform and programs to eradicate the

extreme inequalities were institutionalized at the national level, but for the most part,

181 PolíticaNacional de Cultura, Ministério de Educação e Cultura, 1975, cited in

Dinneen, Listening to the People’s Voice, 182-183.
182 See the chart of employers in Slater, “Folk Tradition and the Artist,” 175.

101
the projects and studies seemed to have little effect on restructuring landholdings or

raising the standard of living in the Northeast. The military placed a new emphasis

on modernization of agriculture and agro-industry, as studied by Anthony Pereira. At

the same time, the cultural emphasis was rooted in the ideas of Northeastern Brazil as

the folkloric heart of Brazil, a place to find the quaint and traditional artwork and

culture. Overall, this chapter has shown how ideas about regional identity influenced

social movements, cultural production, and political policies throughout the 1950s

and 1960s. The classification of the Northeast as the backwards and non-modern

Other drew together multiple social actors in a battle over development projects, the

access to land, and the legitimacy for the right to define the problems and solutions

for the region and its people. And this also came from a new appropriation of

history, as described in an editorial in the Diario de Pernambuco in May 1964:

E os verdadeiros democratas deveriam tomar a si ir levando a

todos os recantos do país o clima de devassidão janguista, do
humanismo, no nacionalismo de operetta da mistificação desenfreada e
rendosa, mercê da qual a quase totalidade dos chamados líderes
“populistas” reeditaram no Brasil o exemplo de Verres, de que dizia
Cícero entrara pobre numa Sicília rica e saíra rico de uma Sicília
empobrecida e degradada.
Foi isso que também aconteceu entre nós e o povo precisa
conhecer a história, a vida, as façanhas do seus “salvadores” cínicos e
insinceros, para quem a Nação não passo de uma “estância” rendosa, no
roubo, nas bambochalas, nas orgías do mar de lama que foram a tônica
fundamental do governo passado.”183

183
“Revolução incompreedida,” Diario de Pernambuco 13 May 1964, 4.

102
Chapter 3: “Evolution or Revolution”: The Battle Against
Underdevelopment

“O mundo não anda para trás. Nem caranguejo anda para trás.” 184
Gondim da Fonseca, 1963

By the mid-1950s, the ideologies, assumptions, and symbols of modernization

influenced everyday life and popular thought throughout Brazil. As exemplified by

Gondim da Fonseca’s statement, the narrative of progress and moving forward toward

a modern society was widespread: Even the crab (or Nordestino) does not walk

backwards. The icon of the new modern nation materialized in the construction of

Brasília and Juscelino Kubitscheck’s famous statement proclaiming “fifty years of

progress in five” encapsulated the intensified drive for industrialization.

Developmentalist projects, missions, dreams and policies proliferated during the

1950s and 1960s throughout Brazil, and the place of the Northeast in this wave of

development is essential to understanding the contradictions, the limitations, the

challenges, and the legacies of positivism attached to the project of modernizing

Brazil. As the “traditional” heart of Brazil and a region defined as “backward” and

feudal, the Northeast seemed to be a precarious project to incorporate the region into

the new modern nation. This chapter analyzes the numerous debates and proposals

for development and modernity in Northeastern Brazil.

184
Gondim da Fonseca, Os Gorilas, o povo e a reforma agrária, (Sao Paulo: Editora
Fulgor, 1963), 23.

103
 A number of scholars have examined the type of development that

modernization brought to Northeastern Brazil and to Nordestinos, mostly focusing on

the type of modernization projects introduced by the military regime.185 These

scholars argue that modernization occurred in the Northeast along with economic

growth: the Northeast had the highest level of GNP growth in the 1960s, 1970s and

1980s.186 But, the modernization did not lead to a more equitable distribution of

wealth or land. As Araújo states, the distribution of land worsened throughout the

1970s with a higher concentration of large estates in the hands of an increasingly

smaller number of landowners.187 While agricultural production increased steadily

through this period, in certain sectors such as cane, cacao and cotton production, the

increase in production did not lead to an improvement in agricultural techniques or in

the standard of living for rural workers.188 While it is easy to conclude from these

statistics that modernization does not lead to a greater distribution of wealth, the

question remains of how and why this was the trajectory that modernization projects

followed in Northeastern Brazil. Not only is it too simplistic to argue that this was

the way that the traditional elite managed to retain and expand their power in the

Northeast, but this type of statement also too readily conforms to the entrenched

185
See Pereira, The End of the Peasantry; Maybury-Lewis, The Politics of the
Possible; and, Tânia Bacelar de Araújo, “Northeast, Northeasts: What Northeast?”
Latin American Perspectives 31, no.2 (March 2004): 16-41.
186
From 1965 to 1968 the Northeast GNP grew at 10 percent; from 1965 to 1985 the
regional GNP grew at an average of 6.3 percent per year. Araújo, “Northeast,
Northeasts,” 18.
187
In 1970, small holdings (less than 100 hectares) accounted for 30 percent of the
landholdings in the Northeast and by 1985 this percentage had decreased to 28
percent. In the same period, large land holdings (over 1000 hectares) increased from
27 percent in 1970 to 32 percent in 1985. Ibid., 25.
188
Ibid., 23.

104
narrative of regional identity: despite working class and peasant movements for

radical transformation of Northeastern society, the state and the regional elite repress

the movements and remain in control of the resources and power, exploiting rural

workers and increasing the level of poverty for the majority of the population. Even

though this occurred, it was not a natural result of what was proposed in the 1950s

and early 1960s. By analyzing projects for modernization and how modernization

was seen as a part of Northeastern Brazilian identity, it is possible to see how such

projects and movements significantly challenged certain aspects of the regional

narrative and also where such proposals fell short of suggesting a radically different

Northeast.

While discourses of modernity and developmentalism – or “evolution” – were

popular throughout the Cold War period in Brazil, they were not hegemonically

accepted as the solution for the “backwards” and impoverished Northeast. In the

early 1960s, the discourse of revolution generated strong claims as a different type of

course for the future of the Brazilian nation. Starting in 1959, the mainstream

newspaper, The Diário de Pernambuco, started publishing editorials, raising the

question of “evolution or revolution,” a theme often taken up throughout the 1960s.

Groups such as the Ligas Camponesas, the União de Estudantes de Pernambuco, and

the Brazilian Communist Party urged “revolution” in Northeastern Brazil. While the

call for revolution was in many ways connected to the Cuban Revolution, leaders of

these social movements and leftist groups also relied on regional symbols of historic

revolutions in Pernambuco to define what they meant by “revolution.” And, similar

to the competing views of “evolution” or modernization, vigorous debates took place

105
about the meaning of revolution for Northeastern Brazil. This is to say, the idea of

revolution in Northeastern Brazil, with few exceptions, did not take on the

connotation of an all-out war or even guerrilla warfare. In general, the idea of

revolution was a call to resist and push for radical agrarian reform, to support

Northeastern Socialist leaders and projects, and to resist foreign imperialism,

exploitation by the developed regions of southern Brazil, and the latifundio.

Debates of evolution versus revolution all drew upon the idea that the poverty

of Northeastern Brazil had to change, either by revolution or modernization. Poverty,

by in large, was measured by social indicators and representations of misery,

illiteracy and disease. For instance, one article in LIGA claimed that 800,000 babies

died annually in Brazil related to hunger and malnutrition. The article points out that

this is the same number of people who lived in Recife, the third largest city in

Brazil.189 The author describes the infant mortality statistics in many different towns

and areas of the Northeast, claiming that in the state of Pará, in the towns of Altamira

and Vizeu, some years all of the children died. After revealing the statistics of infant

mortality in the “developed” world, the author claims that this is a “white war”

(Guerra Branca), that “kills slowly and has no defensive barricades”, and is a

consequence of class struggle.

“O Brasil perde braços que acionariam a sua indústria e o seu

desenvolvimento e amanharia os seus campos onde escasseia a
produção. Perde cerebrs que ministraiam aulas às crianças que sobram
da Guerra analfabetas. Perde futuros técnicos profissionais liberais,
missionaries, apóstolos. Perde soldados para a defesa da Pátria. Mas
ninguém percebe a devastação. Não interessa aquelle dirigente tomar
conhecimento dela. Os filhos da classe dominante nascem fortes,

189
Osmar de Melo, “Mortalidade infante no Brasil é calamidade pior que a Guerra,”
LIGA 24 April 1963, 6.

106
 nutridos sadios, são bem alimentados. Criam-se fortes e sadios. Não
são tragados pela morte premature. Só morrem os filhos da gente
humilde, ou melhor, estes já nascem com os pés na sepultura.
Todos nós nos espantamos quando ouvimos dizer que os
desvários nazistas de Hitler exterminaram em sete anos de guerra de
1939 a 1945 cerca de 4 milhões de russos. Mas nos esquecemos de
que em cada sete anos morrem no Brasil cerca de 4 milhões e 800 mil
craianças que não conseguem atingir o primeiro ano de idade. (…)
Crime maior não pode haver do que a mortalidade infantile é um
verdadeiro genocídio. É o extermínio frio de vidas inocentes. Mas
ninguem responsiabiliza ninguém. Ninguém pune ninguém por isso,
nem belo crime de gastar a União com a manutenção de cavalos do
Exército mais recursos financeiros do que com a assistencia à
maternidade e à infância. Vivemos num regime que da mais valor a
cavalos do que a criaturas humanas. Vivemos num sistema de
Govêrno, onde as classes privilegiadas lutam encarnicadamente pela
manutenção de seus privilégios seculars que são a causa remota e atual
da mortalidade infantile. Vivemos num regime onde o direito à vida
ainda é um privilégio de minorias, onde o maior direito que têm as
classes humildes é o de morrer de fome resignadamente, nem direito a
qualquer protesto pelo menos pois é logo taxade de agitação
comunista. 190

This article illustrates the meaning of poverty for the Ligas Camponesas in the 1960s.

The article blames the latifundio, first and foremost, for the dire situation facing

Brazil. And, as Padre Alípio of the Ligas Camponesas, declared in public on 27

March 1963, “As panelas vazias dos lares do trabalhadores são hoje os tambores da

revolução.”191

Those who believed in modernization as the solution to poverty used very

similar depictions, if not the exact same statistics and stories. However, the poverty

of the Northeastern Brazil, in mainstream newspapers and in the U.S. media, was not

referred to as a “war” and usually poverty is more closely related to the threat of

190
Ibid., 6.
191
“Padre Alípio no Rio Grande: As panelas vazias dos lares são tambores da
revolução,” LIGA 27 March 1963, 2.

107
communism being able to prey upon such impoverished areas. Whereas the solution

for the Ligas Camponesas was radical agrarian reform, according to the U.S. media

and policymakers, the solution to poverty and misery was modernization.192

Representations of misery and poverty appeared in every article on Northeastern

Brazil following Tad Szulc’s front-page article on the Ligas Camponesas in late

October of 1960. The article began: “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.”193 More statistics defining poverty follow:

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 Piaui, 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.194

Similar descriptions based on statistical notions of poverty reappear in the majority of

the reports in the US media on Northeastern Brazil.

Josué de Castro, a international and local politician who also published studies

on the poverty and misery of Northeastern Brazil during these years, played a key

192
Sarah Sarzynski, “ ‘Cheaper than a Coke at a Swanky Hamburger Joint’ and
‘Other’ Discourses of Nordestinos During the Cold War, unpublished paper.
193 Tad Szulc, “Northeast Brazil Poverty Breeds Threat of a Revolt,” The New

York Times 31 October 1960, 1.

194 Ibid., 1, 4.

108
role for both “evolution” and “revolution” groups.195 His studies depicted the degree

of poverty and inequality in the region, but also constructed a narrative of this

poverty; for instance, in his story of the crab people, or infant deaths. Likewise, the

poet, João Cabral de Melo Neto, turned the poverty and inequalities of the Northeast

into verses, eventually turned into songs (i.e., Chico Buarque’s “Funeral de um

lavrador”) and films (“Morte e Vida Severino”). And, politicians and social

movement leaders used these popular representations of poverty to make claims for

the need for “evolution” or “revolution.”

This chapter describes what were seen as the solutions to this poverty by a

number of different groups and individuals in the early 1960s in Northeastern Brazil.

I show how the main social movements and intellectuals connected their solutions to

representations and historic symbols of “evolution” and “revolution” as a way to

connect their projects to Northeastern regional identity. Drawing from recent studies

on the interpretations of such Cold War battles, this chapter tries to contextualize the

debates within Northeastern Brazil. Michael Mahoney’s work on how ideas of

moderniztion and revolution were adapted and reshaped in the Mozambique context

provides an interesting comparison.196 Mahoney shows how the “New State” and

195
Publications include: Documentário do Nordeste (Rio: José Olympio, 1937);
Geografia da fome (Rio: O Cruzeiro, 1946); Geopolítica da fome (Rio: 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). Most of these books were published in
English, Spanish and other languages.
196
Michael Mahoney, “Estado Novo, Homem Novo (New State, New Man): Colonial
and Anti-Colonial Development Ideologies in Mozambique, 1930-1977,” Staging
Growth: Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War, eds. David C.
Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, Michael Latham (Amherst: University of
Massachussets Press, 2003): 165-197.

109
FRELIMO, a Marxist revolutionary group, both incorporated ideas of modernization

and revolution into their political discourse, also changing the ideas of modernity and

revolution to a Mozambique or African context. This process is a similar to the type

of adaptations and overlaps that occurred in Northeastern Brazil.

A strict division between those promoting revolution and those promoting

modernization is an artificial line since the ideas of revolution and modernization

seeped into most of the political and cultural projects in Northeastern Brazil in the

1960s. That is to say, the debate of evolution versus revolution depended on the

dialectic, and the terms themselves, “revolution” and “modernization” held multiple

meanings. Some of the cases could appear in either category, and many of those

calling for revolution, also used the discourse and even shared “modernization”

objectives and vice-versa. In this chapter, I first examine the meanings of

modernization and some of the political projects associated with modernization such

as industrialization and agrarian reform. Second, to show the ways in which

modernization constructed or was constructed by regional identity, I illustrate how the

symbol of Delmiro Gouveia was projected as a symbol of Northeastern modernity. In

other words, to challenge the notion of Northeastern Brazil as the antithesis of

modernity, intellectuals and journalists dug into the past to unearth an autochthonous

symbol of modernity. The story of Coronel Delmiro Gouveia and the factory town of

Pedra, Alagoas, demonstrated that modernity was not only possible in the

“backwards” sertão, but that modernity in Brazil had emanated from Delmiro

Gouveia and the town of Pedra.

110
 And, third, I show how cultural representations in theater and film created the

idea that the “traditional” Northeastern society was a “land of contrasts,” a place of

contradictions that presented a threat to modernization projects and a hope for

revolutionary projects. Both “evolution” and “revolution” were idealized projects in

which filmmakers and playwrights created versions of the meaning of poverty and the

possibility for change. These cultural productions presented the “Nordestino” as a

symbol of the antithesis of modernity or revolution: backwards, impoverished, feudal,

passive, uneducated and “unconscious.” But, at the same time, the cultural

productions portrayed possibilities for change for the Nordestino, through evolution

or revolution, emphasizing a narrative that such changes were precarious at best.

What is ironic about these films and plays is this focus on the questionable future for

the Northeast. At a time in which developmentalist projects proliferated and

revolutionary social movements actively demanded change, the cultural

representations of the Northeast did not present a shining optimism for change.

Instead, they resorted to slight variation on the dominant narrative of the region – an

area in which change is impossible, a traditional region chained to feudalism – by

presenting an open-ended question as the future for the Northeast. For example, in

Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964), the film ends with Manoel

and Rosa running toward the sea, but Rocha provides no clear image of what the

future holds for them, where they are going, and if they will ever leave the

“Northeast.” The uncertainty of a different future is the theme of most cultural

productions about the Northeast in the early 1960s.

111
Evolution: Modernity and Northeastern Brazil

As history has shown us, change has been a gradual, evolutionary

process rather than revolutionary. In this evolution, the little things
form the composite whole – the economy expands as the farmer
obtains a few additional bushels of beans from his planted acreage, the
laborer earns enough additional cruzeiros to buy that Sunday suit or
that plot of ground, or the businessman makes and saves enough of his
additional profits to modernize his store and offer additional
advantages to the customer, the industrialist enlarges his factory, offers
new products, and hires new employees, and the Government –
through a “normal” taxation is able to afford to build the modern
highways and public facilities that in turn redound to the advantage of
the farmer, the laborer, the businessman, and the industrialist. 197

The above quote exemplifies a “traditional” version of modernization theory within

the ideals of creating a model capitalist society. But, while this was the project

presented by a US trade mission to Northeastern Brazil in 1960, it was not the only

version of what modernization meant in the Northeast. To start this chapter, it is thus

necessary to define what was meant by modernity and modernization and put these

discourses into the context of the 1950s in Brazil and in Northeastern Brazil.198 The

recent historiography on modernization theory and the influence of social science in

U.S. policy defines these terms in the context of the United States. After briefly

laying out these definitions, I show how these ideas were translated in the context of

197
Brazil, Recife Consulate. General Records, 1936-1963. Records of the Foreign
Service Posts of the Department of State. 19 May 1960, Address to the “Associação
Comercial de Pernambuco” to announce that the Trade Mission will be in Recife June
14 – 20. RG 84, Box 86, Folder 510.2 Trade Mission to Brazil June 1960, p.2.
198
Many scholars have examined how modernization in the Northeast supported
“traditional” systems of sugar production and political organization such as Peter
Eisenberg, The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco, 1840-1910: Modernization without
Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974). While it is necessary to
understand the contradictions of modernization, or how the development of rural
agriculture can indeed further strengthen “traditional” forms of governance and socio-
economic divisions, my work departs from this by examining the meanings and
expectations attached to “modern” in the 1950s and 1960s.

112
Northeastern Brazil. W.W. Rostow’s claim that modernization would “catch like a

virus” is not entirely inaccurate; in fact, symbols of modernity such as tractors, radios,

and schools were desires many Nordestinos shared in the 1950s and 1960s. But U.S.

modernization theorists fell short with the assumption that the modernization “virus”

was automatically accompanied by a desire for or even an acceptance of the

American “way of life.” In the case of Northeastern Brazil, it is clear that modernity

and modernization acquired different meanings, influenced by regional identity, the

Catholic Church, and anti-American/anti-imperialist politics.

The recent historiography on modernization theory has focused on how

modernization theory became an integral part of U.S. domestic and foreign policy in

the 1950s and 1960s. Michael Latham argues that modernization was connected to

Cold War politics and the U.S. government’s perception of the need to contain

communism and revolutions in the “Third World.”199 While scholars have

distinguished different strains or theories of modernization among the key

proponents, Latham argues that certain core assumptions can be found in all of these

theories. As he explains:

(1) “traditional” and “modern” societies are separated by a sharp

dichotomy; (2) economic, political and social changes are integrated
and interdependent; (3) development tends to proceed toward the
modern state along a common, linear path; and (4) the progress of
developing societies can be dramatically accelerated through contact
with developed ones.200

Modernization theorists often saw Latin American countries as being in a transitional

state in the 1950s, as traditional societies on their way to becoming modern societies.

199
Latham, Modernization as Ideology.
200
Ibid., 4.

113
According to some theorists, this was the most “dangerous” stage for a society in that

the transition would face staunch opposition from certain groups and would also

make it more susceptible to the threat of Communism.

While Latham and Nils Gilman both argue that modernization theorists saw

the United States as the ideal, most highly developed, and most modern society,

Gilman argues that this version of modernity was still more ideal than real, even in

the United States.201 Another contradiction or problem that scholars address has to do

with distinguishing modernization, modernity, and modernism. Gilman elides the

terms, arguing that modernization theorists used such terms without drawing a

distinction, simply using modern or any derivative as a way to celebrate

Enlightenment ideas of progress, technology and science.202 For instance, as

sociologist Edward Shils described at a conference in 1959:

In the new states “modern” means democratic and equalitarian,

scientific, economically advanced and sovereign. “Modern” states are
“welfare states,” proclaiming the welfare of all the people and
especially the lower classes as their primary concern. (…) [Modernity]
involves land reform. It involves steeply progressive income taxation.
It involves universal suffrage. Modernity involves universal public
education. Modernity is scientific. It believes the progress of the
country rests on rational technology, and ultimately on scientific
knowledge. No country could be modern without being economically
advanced or progressive. To be advanced economically means to have
an economy based on modern technology, to be industrialized and to
have a high standard of living.”203

201
Ibid.; Gilman, Mandarins of the Future, 4.
202
According to Gilman, the modernization theorists, “repeatedly described their
political heroes as ‘modernizers, successful nations as ‘modern’ ones, the culmination
of development as ‘modernity,’ and the advocates of this process (including
themselves) as ‘modernists.’” Usually definitions of modernism and modernization
draw distinctions, defining Modernism as a cultural movement, that is a “reaction
against rather than a manifestation of modernization.” Gilman, Mandarins of the
Future, 7.
203
Ibid., 1-2.

114
Both Latham and Gilman focus on the manifestations of modernization theory and

theorists in U.S. foreign policy and projects for development. Latham examines

Kennedy’s projects of the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps as

“modernization” projects, and Gilman investigates think tanks and research

departments in the U.S. where modernization theory was developed and turned into

policy.

In this chapter, I further explore the argument that “modern” acquired multiple

meanings and that all of the terms (modern, modernization, modernity, modernism)

came to signify certain ideas of technological or industrial development. But, I

hesitate to see modernization theory as being something exclusively linked to the

United States. As Gilman argues, “Modernism was a polysemous code word for all

that was good and desirable.”204 In the context of Northeastern Brazil, the idea of

“modern” also rested on the assumption that modern was good and desirable, but the

idea took on many different meanings, as this chapter illustrates. Some intellectuals

and journalists equated modern society with the United States and Western Europe,

while others defined modern society as a hybridization, in which the ideal civilized

and modern society also incorporated characteristics of Northeastern patriarchy and

“traditional” culture. In fact, many scholars saw Europe and the United States as a

threat to a modern Northeast.205

204
Ibid., 7.
205
The criticism of the U.S. and U.S. projects for modernity must also be read within
the context of the Anti-American sentiments that were common throughout
Northeastern Brazil at this time. Similar to the ways in which the Ligas Camponesas
and the Communist Party questioned U.S. democracy by raising the issue of U.S. race
relations and segregation, modernity was also challenged based on inequalities seen

115
Projects for a Modern Northeast: Land and Agriculture

In 1959, the Catholic newspaper of Caruaru, Pernambuco published an article

describing what its editors saw as the “problems of the Northeast.” Wandragézilo

Neves argued:

Em plena era atomica, o brasileiro trata da terra como se vivesse ainda

na idade media. Queremos atingir fogetes, com metodos agricolas do
tempo do Imperio…O que o nordeste precisa, antes de tudo, é de uma
agricultura mechanizada modern, de uma especie de reforma agraria
em fim porque so assim esta vasta regiao poderá se reabilitar da
decadencia progressiva da qual vem sendo vitima nos ultimos
tempos.206
The Catholic Church was only one of the many groups that argued for a type of

modernization of the agricultural system in Northeastern Brazil. Many groups

depicted the rural areas as “feudal,” comparing rural areas in the region with modern

systems of agricultural production or the symbols of modernity themselves, such as

the “atomic age.” By and large, most groups argued that change in the rural sector

was necessary for the Northeast to modernize, but the solutions proposed varied.

Some argued for radical agrarian reform, others for colonization programs, others for

rural education. In this section, I briefly describe some of the proposals for the rural

Northeast in the 1950s and early 1960s. What is apparent is that before the pressure

with in the model U.S. modern society. For example, one article in the Ligas
newspaper emphasized the fact that inequalities continued to exist in the “modern”
United States, especially in the workforce where women and non-whites received
lower wages than white men for the same work. (“A desigualdade subsiste,” LIGA 15
October 1963, 2).
206
Wandragézilo Neves, “Problemas do Nordeste,” A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação
Catolica (Caruaru)14 March 1959 no.945. National Library. Rio de Janeiro.

116
of radical agrarian reform proposed by the Ligas became identified as a serious

communist threat, projects for agrarian reform had support from numerous groups

that opposed the Ligas. Later in the chapter, I discuss the changes to these proposals

that were introduced in 1964.

In 1959, the mainstream newspaper, O Diário de Pernambuco, published a

number of articles about the need for agrarian reform. These articles coincided with

the court cases over the expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia, and most of the

editorials seemed to support some type of agrarian reform as necessary to the creation

of a modern Northeast. Aníbal Fernandes, the editor of the Diario, saw 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 latifundios and

coroneis. He argued for a system of agrarian reform, not Communist, but perhaps

similar to the Mexican system.207 In another article, Brazil was compared to Italy

with the idea that Italians had incorporated the rural south into the Italian nation, and

thus Brazil needed to “modify the national hymn” to include the rural population and

support agrarian reform.208 The Sociedade Auxiliadora da Agricultura de

Pernambuco,209 an umbrella group associated with the sugar plantation owners and

the fornecedores de cana that promoted the modernization of agriculture, published an

207
Aníbal Fernandes, “Pequenas propriedades, pequenas culturas,” Diario de
Pernambuco, 1 December 1959, 4.
208
“Meneghetti acredita na reforma agraria,” Diario de Pernambuco. 17 January
1959, 1.
209
The Sociedade Auxiliadora da Agricultura de Pernambuco has its roots in the
nineteenth century, and 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 such as the Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria
Nacional (SAIN). Eul-Soo Pang, “Modernization and Slavocracy in Nineteenth-
Century Brazil,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History IX: 4 (Spring 1979): 671.

117
article in the Revista do Nordeste giving their support to agrarian reform. According

to the president of the Sociedade, Zilde Maranhão: “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.”210 According to the article, the

Sociedade approved of expropriation of large estates as long as the landowner

received a just price.211 Even if the Sociedade favored the rights of large landowners

and cane growers, after the legal case of Galiléia, they were forced to acknowledge

the perhaps inevitability of agrarian reform and rural unionization. It became

increasingly impossible to justify the latifundio system in an era of modernization;

land reform was seen as a necessary component of modernization and

development.212

But, land reform was not the only remedy for the “feudal” Northeast. In fact,

many argued that if education and technical support did not accompany land reform,

then such projects would be a failure. 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, the rural Northeastern worker was “mal habituado a um

210
“Ligas Camponesas: O grande Hiato social,” Revista do Nordeste, Ano II, no. 21,
(December, 1959): 27
211
The Sociedade also stated their opposition to land seizure, communist and foreign
infiltration, and radical agrarian reform. If expropriation was done legally and
through the court system, then the Sociedade would support the judgement.
212
The need for land reform was even raised in the Alliance for Progress as a way to
create more equitable and democratic societies in Latin America.

118
trabalho metodizado e sobretudo, na sua grande ignorancia insiste nos metodos

africanos de cultivar a terra e manter processos de combate as pragas baseados nos

meios supersticiosos de rezas, benzeduras, etc..”213 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. “A

colonização japonesa em Pernambuco terá função basica a condição de escola de

trabalho, revolucionando os metodos de produção agricola e implantando uma nova

mentalidade no meio rural capaz de apresentar a agricultura como uma professão

digna de ser imitada e nao reduzindo o homem a ser da gleba cada vez mais pobre

sem capacidade aquistíval para um mínimo de conforto.”

The colonization project was supported by ANCAR (Associação Nordestina

de Credito e Assistencia Rural), the Instituto Nacional de Imigração e Colonização

(INIC) and the Secretary of Agriculture and funded by the Banco do Nordeste. From

1955 to 1959, Japanese immigrants were brought to the Northeast to modernize the

Northeastern system of agriculture, based on the premise that Japanese immigrants

had modernized agriculture in São Paulo, Paraná and Rio de Janeiro.214 Another

213
Jair Meireles, “Plano de Colonização Japonesa em PE,” Boletim Semanal do
Rotary Club do Recife. Ano XXVI,no. 28, Recife, (22 Jan 1959): 156-59.
214
Diario de Pernambuco, 1 February 1959, 4.
In the published comments from a 1966 symposium celebrating the 60-year
anniversary of Japanese immigration in São Paulo, the role that Japanese immigrants
played in developing São Paulo was a central issue. Many of the attendants
commented on the types of agricultural products introduced by the Japanese
immigrants. The notion that Japanese immigrants placed a higher value on
community organizing and education for children also was noted as how the Japanese
had helped to develop São Paulo. 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.

119
reason for the state interest in the Japanese immigrants to Pernambuco had to with

possibilities for the Japanese government and private industry to invest in

Northeastern development projects.215 Projects included a cooperative established in

Gameleira, Pernambuco in 1955, in which forty Japanese families were brought in to

a community of sixty Nordestino families.216 In 1958, the Catholic newspaper A

Defesa described the colonization project in Bonito, Pernambuco to stimulate

agricultural production and to instruct Nordestino rural workers in modern skills and

techniques.217 In 1959, six Japanese families went to Garanhuns, Pernambuco and

thirty Japanese families went to a fazenda in Caruaru, among other places in the

Northeast.218

215
As reported in a conversation about the Japanese Ambassador’s visit to Recife, 13-
16 April 1956: “The Governor’s Secretary, Geraldo Guedes, informed me that the
Japanese Ambassador spoke at length of the possibility of Japanese investments of
capital and equipment, first in agricultural enterprises and then in industry, in this
state. The state authorities appear favorably disposed toward having Japanese
immigrants here, believing that by their industriousness and better techniques they
will set a good example for local small agriculturalists and thereby stimulat
agricultural production here. Guedes also said that the Japanese Ambassador is
justifying to his govt the establishment of a Japanese Consulate at Recife. At the
present time, informal estimates of state officials place the Japanese population in
Pernambuco at somewhat less than 5,000, nearly all of them agricultural laborers.”
(p.1-2) Brazil, Recife Consulate, Classified General Records, 1938-1963. Records of
the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Letter To Donald Edgar,
Esquire, Supervisory consul General, Consular Section, American Embassy From
Percy de F. Warner, American Consul. Official Use Only. 17 April 1956. RG 84,
Rio, Folder 120.2 Letters to the Supervisory Consul General. National Archives.
216
“Será instalada em Gameleira uma colonia agricola para o abastecimento da zona
da mata e do Recife,” Diario de Pernambuco 24 March 1955.
217
Carlos Doria, “Os Niponicos virão…” A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação Catolica
(Caruaru) 10/5/1958 no. 900. National Library. Rio de Janeiro.
218
“Nucleo de Imigração Japonesas será instalada na fazenda Caruaru,” Diario de
Pernambuco 4 April 1959, 10; “36 Japonesas para colonização no interior,” Diario
de Pernambuco 20 June 1959, 8; “O japones: Na batalha do Abastemcimento
Regional” Revista do Nordeste, no. 17 (Agosto 1959), 33.

120
 What is remarkable about the colonization project is the degree to which race

was considered a vital factor in the modernization of agriculture in Northeastern

Brazil. Socio-economic 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 immigrants had shaped

agricultural development in the south, and thus, Japanese immigrants to rural areas in

the Northeast could also modernize the inherently backwards and inferior

Northeastern rural workers, who were often depicted as “African” or as using

“African agricultural techniques.”219 One commentator described the difference

between the European and Japanese immigrants and their influence on Brazilian

development. According to Antônio Jordão Netto, the Europeans had not resulted in

a Europeanization of the “cabolclo”; “o que existiu foi a ‘cabolclização’ do

europeu.”220 But, the Japanese immigrants had not faced this same “threat,”

introducing new techniques and forms of community organization and education to

The other colonization programs supported by an initiative of the Governo

Estadual e Federal do Brasil for “zonas subdesenvolvidas” included: Pio XII, Ceará, 5
families; Piun, Rio Grande do Norte, 10 families; Pnau, Rio Grande do Norte, 3
families; Rio Bonito, Pernambuco, 13 families; Cabo, Pernambuco, 7 families;
Kubitschek, Bahia, 71 families; Ituberá, Bahia, 8 families; Una, Bahia, 35 families. A
number of colonies also were set up in the states of Pará, Amazonas, Maranhão, Acre,
Rondonia, Amapá, Roraima, Mato Grosso, and the southern state of Santa Catarina.
Consulado Geral do Japão, Emigração Japonesa no Brasil, (São Paulo: August
1973), 4-5.
219
According to a report by the Japanese Embassy produced in 1973, Japanese
immigration to Brazil changed in 1961 when the Brazilian government requested
“immigration of tecnicos” for industrial development. The colonization projects of
the late 1950s were at the tail end of what the Japanese Embassy classified as “post-
war immigration” in which immigrants went to work in the agrarian sector.
Consulado Geral do Japão, Emigração Japonesa no Brasil, (São Paulo: August
1973), 3.
220
Antônio Jordão Netto, Comentário, in O japonês em São Paulo e no Brasil, (São
Paulo: Centro de Estudos Nipo-Brasileiros, 1971): 197.

121
the countryside. My point is not to debate whether or not Japanese immigrants led to

an elevated degree of development in Brazil, but to emphasize the language used to

argue how and why Japanese immigrants could be a solution to underdevelopment in

the Northeast. According to these projects, 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.” While this line of argument differs

from nineteeth-century Positivism in that the scholars and policy makers saw a

possibility for change and development (instead of denegration), it is still predicated

on notions of cultural and racial hierarchies.

Industrialization

In 1956, a representative of the Escola Superior da Guerra visited the Instituto

Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (IJNPS) and asked the researchers to prepare a

lecture on the problem of “extremismo” in the Northeast. In mid-July 1956,

researchers presented their conclusions to the 4a Exército, discussing what they saw

as the problems and solutions to poverty and backwardness in the Northeast.

According to the researchers at the IJNPS, the Northeast needed “cultural change.”

The premise was based on the idea that if the United States was able to bring industry

122
to Africa with success, then industry could also function in Northeastern Brazil.221

According to Paulo Frederico Maciel, the biggest hindrance to the development of

industry was the Northeastern conception of time. So, the solution was creating a

new notion of “industrial time” to make the “homem do interior” understand time as

factory time instead of time being a “convenient pleasure”. According to Maciel, 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 discipline of factory work.222 Folklore made the rural Nordestino resistant to

“evolution,” but all this could be changed by radio, which could introduce the

Nordestino to urban culture and make the sertanejo psychologically capable of socio-

economic change.223 The discussion made no reference to the sizeable Nordestino

labor force already employed in factories in the urban south.

Debates and discussions about plans for industrial development in the

Northeast focused on the question of the feasibility of industrial development.

Immediate concerns about the expansion of rural social movements in the rural

Northeast raised questions about the importance of industrial development versus

agricultural development. Oftentimes, as Paulo Frederico Maciel’s arguments

illustrate, the need for industrial development was brought into question by the

supposed lack of a modern labor force in the Northeast.224 The steady flow of

221
Ministerio de Educação e Cultura: Paulo Frederico Maciel, “Um informe sobre
alugns problemas do Nordeste” (Recife: Instituto IJNPS, 1956), 51.
222
Ibid., 52.
223
Ibid., 58.
224
In a conversation between Gilberto Freyre and the U.S. Ambassador James Loeb
on 25 February 1963, Ambassador Loeb supposedly asked Freyre about
industrialization in the Northeast. “Freyre mentioned that abundant cheap labor, in

123
Nordestinos to the south, to Brasília, and to the urban areas of the Northeast, and the

belief in the need for modernization to prevent social revolution meant that proposals

for the development of industry in the Northeast were considered and at times, widely

celebrated. But, similar to the proposals for agricultural development, the main

problem was seen as resting in the people and their doubtful capacity to modernize.225

With Celso Furtado’s proposal for industrial development in the Northeast in

1959 known as the GTDN report (Grupo de Trabalho para o Desenvolvimento do

Nordeste; Study Group for the Development of the Northeast) – the building blocks

of the establishment of SUDENE (Superintendencia de Desenvolvimento Economico

do Nordeste; Northeast Development Agency) – the immediate reaction was that the

Northeast was not “ready” for industrial development. As Mário Lacerda de Melo

argued, the Northeast was underdeveloped because of the backwardness and

“primitivism” of its people, and any economic development had to incorporate social

and cultural change.226 But, SUDENE was approved by the Brazilian Congress in

the first place, and a proportionally high concentration of population, making for a
large potential market. What about the availability of skilled labor, asked the
Ambassador. Mr. Delgado-Arias observed that the Northeasterner has been the great
manpower source for the burgeoning São Paulo industry, where the “Nordestino” has
been trained and has shown a good disposition to learn.” (p.3) Brazil. U.S. Embassy.
Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State, 1962-1963. Confidential memorandum of conversation at
Gilberto Freyre’s home, 25 Feb 1963, about “Problems of the Northeast.”
Participants: prof. and mrs. Gilberto Freyre, Ambassador and Mrs. James Loeb, D.
Eugene Delgado-Arias, American Consul General. RG 84, Box 134, Folder 350
Brazil Feb 1963. National Archives.
225
As Tânia Bacelar de Araújo claims, the “modernization” that occurred in the
Northeast from 1960 to 1992 was uneven and in certain agricultural systems – cane,
cacao and cotton – the production expanded significantly without “modernization” to
the system of production. Araújo, “Northeast, Northeasts,” 23.
226
Mário Lacerda do Melo, “Sobre a industrialização do Nordeste,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 February 1959, 4.

124
1959 and widely celebrated throughout Northeastern Brazil as the development

project that would bring modernization and socio-economic change to Northeastern

Brazil. In Riordan Roett’s analysis of SUDENE, he argued that SUDENE had to be

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.”227 The

purpose was related to social unrest in underdeveloped regions of Brazil that was seen

as a potential threat to national economic productivity and stability.228

According to Celso Furtado, the goals of SUDENE focused on how “to create

an economy resistant to the drought, and to restructure the agrarian economy and

intensify industrial investments.”229 Furtado saw the main problem in Brazilian

economic development as being related to the emphasis on industrial development in

the Center-South and a steady loss of assest from the Northeast to the Center-

South.230 The 1961 SUDENE plan focused mainly on the development of

infrastructure in the Northeast, namely road building and electric power expansion.231

Social development was the next priority which mostly focused on construcing water

227
Political development quoted from A.F.K. Organski, The Stages of Political
Development, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 7, in Riordan Roett, The Politics
of Foreign Aid in the Brazilian Northeast (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press,
1972), 4.
228
Roberto de Oliveira Campos, “A crisis economica brasileira,” Alguns Problemas
Brasileiros, Vol. I, Confederação Nacional de Comercio, (Rio de Janeiro, 1959), 63-
65 cited in Stefan H. Robock, Brazil’s Developing Northeast: A Study of Regional
Planning and Foreign Aid (Washington DC: The Brookings Institution, 1963), 111.
229
Celso Furtado, Seminario para o Desenvolvimento do Nordeste, 1959-Anais-Vol.
II, Confederação Nacional da Indústria (Rio de Janeiro, 1959), 226 cited in Robock,
Brazil’s Developing Northeast, 107.
230
Ibid., 108.
231
Ibid., 114-115.

125
and sewage systems, and the third main priority was transforming the agricultural

system, including colonization programs in the state of Maranhão and some agrarian

reform in the cane producing region in terms of creating cooperatives.232

But, the underlying reason for the priority given to SUDENE by the Brazilian

and US governments was the threat of revolution supposedly posed by the level of

inequality and what were labeled “communist” rural social movements. As Riordan

Roett demonstrated in his study on the relations between SUDENE and US AID, the

Brazilians felt that “subversion” was a Brazilian problem that needed to be solved by

Brazilians and the US government considered Northeastern Brazil “an international

security problem” that needed foreign assistance and aid to solve.233 According to

studies on the relations between US AID and SUDENE, the Americans feared that

SUDENE was being infiltrated by “communists”234 and that SUDENE was not acting

quickly enough to convince Nordestinos that social revolution was not the solution to

poverty. Celso Furtado and SUDENE found that US AID was unwilling to

collaborate with SUDENE in plans for development. US AID agents had limited

232
Ibid., 115-116.
233
Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid, 92.
234
For example, in a Foreign Service dispatch about on a meeting with Celso Furtado,
U.S. Consular officials stated a concern that Furtado was “open” to trade with the
Soviet Union. “There seems reasonable possibility based on history Soviet foreign
economic program (e.g., India, Indonesia, Egypt, Argentina) that Soviet bloc soon
may come forward with concrete offer assist solution Northeast problem. Press
accounts Furtado visit highlighting food offers with critical local comment may be
present stage setting this possibility. Local press today featuring probability
reestablishment Brazil-USSR diplomatic relations with obvious implication this move
likely will lead to others.” Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-
1963. Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Secret
Telegram Foreign Service of US From Recife 27 July 1961, Reference CONDES 32
re: Soviet interest in Northeast and dispatch 31 and 35 re: comments on Furtado visit.
RG 84, Box 122, Folder 320 Brazil-USSR 1959-61. National Archives.

126
knowledge of Portuguese and seemed more interested in short-term propaganda

instead of long-term structural changes. Roett’s evalution of foreign aid was that in

the case of Northeastern Brazil, foreign aid hindered the modernization process,

because “modernization is best manipulated and directed from within the given

society.”235

Consular reports on SUDENE questioned the effectiveness of the program

from its inception in 1960. At the same time that the U.S. government was investing

billions of dollars in aid projects, consular reports emphasized their skepticism about

the feasibility of any development project in Northeastern Brazil, for agriculture or

industrialization.236 These reports saw “education” as the only solution for the

problems of the Northeast. As a 1960 report described:

The more scientifically trained observer, after innumerable expeditions

through the area making soil tests and analyses, is inclined to doubt
that the Northeast can ever feed and/or support its present or future
(larger) population by agriculture – no matter how much benefited by
modern technology. (…) The industrialization foreseen would be an
alien branch grafted onto the native tree, far from its sources of supply
and its natural markets. The grafting operation might be successful

235
Roett, The Politics of Foreign Aid, 172-173.
236
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Memorandum To Minister Saccio
From Herbert K. May, Confidential, 28 June 1961, “A suggested program for US
Economic Activities in the Brazilian Northeast,” RG 84, Box 122, 350.30.16.
National Archives.
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service Despatch
Amconsul Recife to Dept of State, CERP Section D IV A. 19 May 1959. “Developing
NE Brazil: Agrarain Reform and redistribution of income.” RG 84, Box 122,
350.30.16 03-05. National Archives. 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 extenstion for the farms, advanced technical and industrial
training for managers and supervisors, and professional training for teachers,
scientists, and other consultants.” (p.5)

127
 and the entire plant may flourish beautifully, but then again, it may
only survive with nursery protective measures, a delicate greenhouse
creation, or it may quickly wither and die, never having taken root in
the native plant, despite the best efforts of highly trained botantists.237
In many of the consular analyses of development projects for the Northeast, “experts”

suggested that the only possibility for modernization was through education because

of regional conditions. At the same time, education was also seen as a precarious

undertaking because

There is a tremendous psychological resistance to education in the

Northeast. The resistance is two-fold. First, a large number of the
poorest people have no particular desire at the present moment to
improve their ecomomic status. Thus, besides the normal antipathy
toward new ways, there is also a lack of econ motivation. Second, the
wealthier and better educated people seem to believe that the poor, the
“matutos”, are incapable of being educated.238

Education: Rural and Urban

In both rural and urban plans for development in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the

major concerns for the feasibility of modernization in the Northeast involved the

backwardness of the Nordestino population. According to most modernization

theorists, educational and training programs could provide a solution. Starting in

1955, numerous education programs and technical training schools were established

237
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Report by Edward T Walters,
American Vice Counsel, 12 Sept 1960, “The Brazilian Northeast: The Necessity for a
U.S. decision,” RG 84, Box 128, Folder 430.3 Military Bases and Posts 1959-61, p.3.
National Archives.
238
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service Dispatch
Amconsul Recife to Dept of State, CERP Section D IV A. 19 May 1959. “Developing
NE Brazil: Agrarain Reform and redistribution of income.” RG 84,
Box122,350.30.16 03-05. National Archives.

128
throughout the Northeast. Most articles on the problems of the Northeast in the

Diario de Pernambuco emphasized the state’s abandonment of its people, and the

solution was located in rural education which would stop the rural exodus to the cities

and create a better standard of living for rural workers and families. A new technical

agricultural school was established in Vitória de Santo Antão, near the birthplace of

the Ligas Camponesas, in 1955.239 Modern technology – radio and cinema –

provided a new approach to reaching a broader sector of the population. While some

of these education programs, such as the adult literacy programs associated with

Paulo Freire, have often been depicted as “revolutionary,” an analysis in the context

of modernization discourses shows that these projects were also “evolutionary.”

In a 1956 interview with Paulo Freire (then, the director of the Serviço Social

de Industria de Pernambuco - SESI), Robert Alexander described Freire’s perspective

on the role of industrialization and urban education.240 According to the interview,

industrialization had broken the paternalistic bond that had been a stabilizing

component of Northeastern society. The factory worker became a number and lost

the personal relationship with his boss, and according to Freire, the sudden loss of

paternalism threatened to cause chaos because it derailed the authority of the father

and led to a “demoralization” of the family. Thus, Freire’s objective was to build

programs to replace paternalism, or to partake in what he supposedly referred to as a

“slow evolution” to prevent revolution. As director of SESI, Freire established

educational centers to instruct the new industrial labor force not only in literacy but

239
“Escola rural doméstica de Vitória de Santo Antão,” Diario de Pernambuco 6
January 1955, 3.
240
Interview with Paulo Freire, Recife. 18 February 1956. Robert J. Alexander
Interview Collection, Rutgers University. Box 5, Folder 53.

129
also in voting and politics and social norms about raising families, neighborhood

problems, and culture. Freire organized local training centers in which the

community members participated in organizing what types of programs were

important for the community; i.e., some communities organized sports and

recreational activities while others organized music and dances.

Rural education programs in the Northeast emphasized the need for technical

training over literacy. The plan in 1957 to combat the “ignorance of the cabolclo,”

was to start an adult and adolescent literacy program, to start a rural education

program, and to create a radio education program. As Minister Clovis Salgado

explained in an article linking education to national security:

É claro que para mudar a mentalidade rotineira do nosso homem rural

nao basta alfabetizá-lo; mas a posse das tecnicas rudimentares do ler,
escrever e contar será o primeiro passo para que compreenda e se
integre, progressivamente no mundo moderno, nos seus
conheciemntos, confortos e aspirações . De que modo, a não ser pela
educação, será possível extripar um velho hábito, dos mais
perniciousos, como o de queimar camos e derrubadas para o plantro
das roças e pastagens.241
Salgado insisted that literacy programs were not enough to change Northeastern

Brazil; education had to be accompanied by a modernization of agriculture.

Likewise, Anibal Fernandes argued in an editorial in the Diario de Pernambuco that

agricultural development could create a more politicized populace. He noted the case

of the agro-industry of onions that transformed people living along the São Francisco

241
Clovis Salgado, “Educação e Segurança Nacional,” Revista MEC, Ano II, no.7,
(September/October, 1957).

130
River Valley from “autenticos ‘jeca-tatus’” to prosperous men who participate in

politics, “even electing their own deputies.”242

Paulo Freire, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and the creator of adult

literacy programs based on conscientização, is often depicted as a revolutionary

educator, and labeled a “Communist” although Freire himself clearly stated he was

staunchly Catholic and not a Communist. His goal was to raise the political

consciousness of the illiterate, connecting literacy training to politics. Recent studies

have labeled Freire a “Romantic-Utopian,” comparing Freire to J.J. Rousseau and

William Morris whose “nineteenth century connection to the English working class

resembles Freire’s twentieth century Catholic-Marxist mystique.”243 Peter Lownds

also notes the influence of Franz Fanon and Josué de Castro on Freire’s pedagogical

approach.244 But, unlike Fanon and some of more revolutionary actors in the 1960s,

Freire made no reference to race relations in his early works. He also worked with

Francisco Brennand to create the graphic representations for Educação como prática

da liberdade (1967), a Pernambucan artist associated with the conservative cultural

movement, the Armorial movement.245

Many who uphold the idea of Freire as a “revolutionary” educator claim that

his educational programs in Northeastern Brazil need to be read from within the

historical context of the early 1960, where “insurgencies” and rebellions flourished in

the region. At the same time, arguments about his “idealism” are also connected to

242
Anibal Fernandes, “Atividades Agricolas e Industriais no Nordeste,” Diario de
Pernambuco, 5 Maio 1959, 4.
243
Peter Michael Lownds, “In the Shadow of Freire: Popular Educators and Literacy
in Northeastern Brazil,” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angles, 2006), xii.
244
Ibid., 4.
245
Ibid., 85.

131
this era. While I agree that historical context is crucial, I argue that it is necessary to

go a step further and understand this historical context before making claims about

the revolutionary nature of Freire’s education programs. In other words, as other

critics of Freire have argued, he was more of a conformist than a revolutionary

educator. In comparison with some of the other social movements of the early 1960s,

Freire’s programs were only revolutionary in the sense that the programs focused on

trying to teach Nordestinos how to read and write, but in terms of many of the

political messages and techniques, the programs carried more of a status quo

message. As Freire’s critics have claimed, “the pedagogical relationship [for the

MCP] is one in which the learner is constructed as passive, silent, ignorant, unaware,

inexperienced, possibly fearful ut acquiescent [whereas] the educator is active, in

control, free, aware, experienced, wise, fearless, and self-sacrificing.”246

Tia Malkin-Fontecchio has studied the numerous urban education reforms and

programs that started in the early 1960s in Recife including the Movimento de

Cultura Popular (MCP) sponsored by the municipal government of Recife; the

Promoção Agnes of the local and US Presbyterian Church; SUDENE, and the US

AID. She argues that the educational reforms were a part of the broader social,

economic and political changes of the era.247 Malkin-Fontecchio divides the programs

into “revolutionary” or “literacy for social change” versus “status quo” or “literacy

246
Diana Coben, Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire, and the Politics of Adult
Education (NY: Garland, 1998), 112-113 cited in Peter Michael Lownds, “In the
Shadow of Freire: Popular Educators and Literacy in Northeastern Brazil,” (PhD
diss., University of California, Los Angles, 2006), 89.
247
Tia Malkin-Fontecchio, “Citizens or Workers? The Politics of Education in
Northeastern Brazil, 1959-1964,” (Ph.D. diss. Brown University, 2003), 21.

132
for development.”248 While some of the projects were associated with the

“revolutionary” Leftist governments, the division does not seem as clear when

examined in light of modernization theory. Even the MCP had the goal of

“awakening the people” and guiding them to participate in the political process.

The Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife

published its objectives in 1962: a. to promote cultural awareness and action between

the University and the povo; b. to develop the regional culture and regional mentality

through lectures, publications, courses and scientific studies; and c. to create courses

and seminars that study the reality of Brazilian culture.249 In 1964, a number of the

courses and publications were reprinted in the Bulletin, with cards that presented the

early development of the “Paulo Freire method” that was being implemented in the

Northeast. In most of the diagrams, people are divided in two categories, similar to

Modernization Theory’s “traditional” and “modern.” For example, one diagram

shows a flow chart of “Animal” (described as a person who lacks contact with the

world) ⇒ Instinct ⇒ Adaptation compared with “Man” (described as someone

having relations with the world) ⇒ Reflection ⇒ Integration.250 The card further

describes the difference between animal and man. The reactions of an animal are

based only on contact; they are direct, simple, immediate and based on instinct. The

animal sees that he has to adapt oto the world, make an adjustment and accommodate

the new situation. On the other hand the reactions of humans are active, dynamic and

248
Ibid.
249
Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife. No. 1,
March-April, 1962. National Library. Rio de Janeiro.
250
“Apresentação de Cartazes: Roteiro de Exposição para o sistema Paulo Freire,”
Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife. No. 5, January-
February, 1964. National Library (Rio de Janeiro). Cartaz no. 1.

133
produce a change as a human being. This capacity of man comes from reflection

(intelligence, inventiveness) and the ability to use technical or other tools. All tools

are made by men and become factors of ways of expressing his life. The “moral” of

the story is that in going through the process of “humanization,” it is also necessary to

“humanize” the objects produced by men so that they cannot be used against him.

(Examples given of such technologies that need to be “humanized” include nuclear

power and media such as radio, television, and cinema.)

Similar to Modernization Theory, Freire’s method also rested upon a

transition in society, that he labeled in three stages: “closed society,” “society in

transition,” and “open society.” 251 In the categories, the difference between

(Protestant) modernization theory and (Catholic) Freirean theory is clear. A “closed”

society is characterized by an economy based on exportation and the subordination to

imperialism; an oppressed population, alienated culture, and traditional educational

system. The “society in transition” has industrialization, an “emerging” people, it is

pre-revolutionary, and people are reacting and starting to question the traditional

education system. In the “open society,” people are active, there is economic, social

and political freedom, democracy and an educational system that helps create society.

According to Freire, this transition took place in São Paulo in the 1920s and 30s,

marked by the labor strikes and unionization as well as the Semana de Arte

251
“Apresentação de Cartazes: Roteiro de Exposição para o sistema Paulo Freire,”
Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife. No. 5, January-
February, 1964. National Library (Rio de Janeiro). Cartaz no. 2.

134
Moderna.252 The transitions exemplify the move toward democracy and “open

society” and an affirmation of nationalism and national values.

Similar to views of man’s individual transformation in Modernization Theory,

Freire also offered a diagram of “traditional” versus “modern” man, although Freire’s

version was based on “individualism” versus “collective.” In the first diagram, a man

is depicted working while another man rests. The words on the card read: Isolation,

Individualism, Possession of Something, Imposition, Escape, Incomplete. The card

explains that individualists overvalue themselves and are deceived by the thought of

having things and wanting personal gain. They acquire an attitude of imposition,

arrogance and escapism or incompleteness, losing any type of vision that includes

other humans and humanity in general. On the other side of the card, an illustration

portrays two men working together above a different list of words: Communication;

Solidarity; the Search for Something; Comprehension; Fidelity; Completeness. To be

human means to establish a dialogue of communication and of solidarity with other

humans. Humans working on creating solidarity are defined by the spirit of

comprehension, respect, valorization of others, reciprocal trust, and the search for a

completeness in life. This completeness is always something man searches for; he

never closes himself or relies only on himself, but is always open to others for

everything.253

252
“Apresentação de Cartazes: Roteiro de Exposição para o sistema Paulo Freire,”
Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife. No. 5, January-
February, 1964. National Library (Rio de Janeiro). Cartaz no. 2.
253
“Apresentação de Cartazes: Roteiro de Exposição para o sistema Paulo
Freire,”Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural da Universidade do Recife. No. 5,
January-February, 1964. National Library (Rio de Janeiro). Cartaz No. 4.

135
 The idea that societies can be neatly divided into two categories (with a third

intermediate transitional stage), and that Northeastern Brazil is in the process of going

through the transition in the 1950s and 1960s is a similarity between U.S.

modernization theory and Paulo Freire’s method. Both theories emphasize the role of

education in the transition period, both depict societies at the macro and personal

behavior levels, and both refer to technology. The difference lies in how these

theories define what changes should be made in society and the view of what was

considered an “ideal” society. Whereas modernization theorists, by in large,

advocated a transition from communal, “patriarchal” societies to modern,

individualist societies, Paulo Freire proposed a transition from individualistic

societies to communal societies.

A Symbol for Northeastern “Modernity”: Delmiro Gouveia

“Abrindo a Coleção Brasil Para Todos a mim coube Antônio

Conselheiro, símbolo do Nordeste antigo e sofredor; e em continuação
– bela continuidade –, ao poeta Mauro Mota cabe a figura máscula e
extraordinaria de Delmiro Gouveia, símbolo da ação e do novo
Nordeste.”254

The opening of the massive public works project, the CHESF (Companhia

Hidrelétrica do São Francisco S.A.) which installed the Paulo Afonso hydroelectric

dam on the São Francisco River in Northeastern Brazil in January 1955, was

celebrated as a sign of modernization arriving in the region. But the construction of

the dam invoked memories of the original hydroelectric dam established on the São

254
Mauro Mota, Quem foi Delmiro Gouveia? (São Paulo: Empresa Grafica Carioca,
1967), 43.

136
Francisco, a project initiated by the industrialist Delmiro Gouveia in 1917. From the

1950s to 1960s, numerous articles on Delmiro Gouveia appeared not only in the

Northeastern mainstream papers, but also in the major newspapers of in the South, in

radical periodicals, and in literatura de cordel.255 An impressive number of adulatory

biographies on Delmiro Gouveia were published from the 1950s to 1970s, most

drawing from an earlier works such as Plínio Calvacanti’s A Canaã sertaneja da

pedra (1927), historical newspaper articles and oral histories conducted in the 1950s

and 1960s. In 1961, a contest was held by the Companhia Hidrelétrica do São

Francisco, for the best monographs on Delmiro Gouveia and in 1961, the government

of Alagoas, transmitted the stories over the radio.256 And on the June 5, 1963, a

celebration of the centenary of Gouveia’s birth was held in Alagoas. The famous

Northeastern singer, Luis Gonzaga composed a song about “Paulo Alfonso,” in which

he described Delmiro Gouveia as coming up with the idea for the dam that brought

industry and modernity to the Northeast.257 In February of 1964, the Instituto

Joaquim Nabuco led a conference on Delmiro Gouveia, proclaiming that he was a

man who could symbolize the Northeast.258 In the 1970s, Maurício Segall won third

prize that the Concurso de Dramaturgia de Serviço Nacional de Teatro for his play

about Delmiro Gouveia, O coronel dos coronéis, and Orlando Senna and Geraldo

255
For example, O Jornal (Rio) and O correio da Manhã (Rio) published interviews
with Gouveia’s daughter in 1955 after the inauguration of the Paulo Afonso dam.
Cited in J.C. Alencar Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro: A vida de Delmiro Gouveia
(Rio de Janeiro: Edições O Cruzeiro, 1965).
256
Telma de Barros Correia, Pedra: Plano e cotidiano operário no sertão (São Paulo:
Papirus Editora, 1998), 291.
257
J. Machado de Sousa, Vida de Delmiro Gouveia (Recife: s.n. publisher, 1964), 97.
258
Costa Porto, “Ainda Delmiro Gouveia,” Diario de Pernambuco 8 February 1964,
4.

137
Sarno’s film, Coronel Delmiro Gouveia was a prizewinner at the 1978 Festival de

Brasília.259 Gouveia even became the theme of a samba school in Rio de Janeiro in

1979.260 In 1993, the Federação das Indústrias de Pernambuco, O Diário de

Pernambuco, FUNDAJ and BANDEPE started a “Prêmio Delmiro Gouveia de

Vanguarda Industrial,” to award to industries that are innovative in terms of quality,

labor relations and community integration.261

While Delmiro Gouviea was not the only industrialist in Northeastern Brazil

whose projects stretched back to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century,

he turned into a symbol during the Cold War, in part because of the factory town

being located in the sertão, and in part because of the new hydroelectric dam on the

São Francsico River. José Sergio Leite Lopes’s work on Paulista, an industrial city in

Pernambuco, and on its owner, Herman Lundgren shows that other Northeastern

industrialists shared certain similiarities in terms of their depictions in the 1950s and

1960s, but a few notable differences suggest why Delmiro Gouveia was promoted as

the symbol of the Northeast.262 For one, Lundgren was Swiss by origin, which in

contrast to Delmiro Gouveia who was from the sertão, changed the narrative of the

hero of the Northeast. Paulista is also closer to Recife and Olinda and in the coastal

region, and the other factory town of Lundgren, near Sapé, Paraiba, was also located

in the agreste region, which have different connotation in terms of industrial

259
Correia, Pedra, 290.
260
Ibid.
261
Ibid., 291.
262
According to Leite Lopes, Raul de Góes published a book on Lundgren and
Paulista in 1964, “de forma a construir um herói da indústria brasileira à semelhança
de Mauá, Teófilo Otoni e Delmiro Gouviea.” 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.

138
development than the sertão. Leite Lopes illustrates this difference by discussing how

factory workers from the sertão were treated in comparison to those from the urban

areas, reproducing the stereotype that the sertanejo was barbaric and backwards, unfit

for modern industry. Furthermore, the Paulista textile factory did not meet the same

fate as Delmiro Gouveia’s Estrela in the sertão. The death of Delmiro Gouveia and

the destruction of the textile factory supported the regional narrative that attempts for

change were predetermined for failure and that imperialistic forces needed to keep

Northeastern Brazil a underdeveloped region.

By examining the depictions of Delmiro Gouveia from the 1950s to the 1970s,

it is possible to see the competing visions of what an ideal modern society would

entail in Northeastern Brazil. Through the narratives, the authors also describe what

they see as the major challenges or hindrances to modernity in the Northeast. From a

broader perspective, the representations of Delmiro Gouveia show how historical

symbols and narratives contribute to the construction and re-construction of regional

identity in Northeastern Brazil. As the region faced major changes in terms of

industrialization and modernization, the main social actors sought historical

references to validate the Nordestinidade of modernity. 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 to the 1970s. Through this analysis, it is possible to see the

meaning of modernization for the Northeast.

One of the final chapters of Telma de Barros Correia’s study of Brazilian

factory towns and Pedra – now known as Delmiro Gouveia – addresses the

139
representations of Delmiro Gouveia.263 Correia argues that the literature can be

divided into two main categories: status quo and Leftist nationalist. The status quo

authors portray Gouveia as a super-man and use accounts that furthered the

“bourgeois myth of social climbing as possible for the poor Nordestino.” Leftist

authors depicted Gouviea as a victim of decadent oligarchies and as a “martyr” of the

anti-imperialist struggle, showing how Gouveia’s factory town failed when he died

because it was not actually a factory run by the workers themselves.264 Correia shows

how more recent authors have focused on Delmiro Gouveia’s sexuality or depicted

him as a symbol of a precursor to the environmental movement.265 She locates the

reason for the multiple interpretations of Delmiro Gouveia in Gouveia’s ability to be

a “master of marketing,” a person who used the idea of modernity to capture the

“dreams and hopes” of men of his time and of future projects for the Brazilian

nation.266 While Correia’s work reveals the multifarious interpretations of the symbol

of Delmiro Gouveia, I argue that when put into the context of debates over modernity

and projects associated with “modernization” in the 1950s to the 1970s, the

representations of Delmiro Gouveia acquire new meanings. The fact that his story

has been appropriated in numerous ways that demonstrate the overlap between

regional and national is also not surprising when put in the context of regional

identity and the use of historical symbols. In other words, Delmiro Gouveia may

have been a “regional myth” who turned into “a national myth…for those who defend

the Brazilian capitalist development,” as Maurício Segall claimed. But, by

263
Correia, Pedra.
264
Ibid., 291-295.
265
Ibid., 298-299.
266
Ibid., 299.

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contextualizing the multiple representations of Gouveia, who used these

representations, what they emphasized about Gouveia and how the representations

changed over time, it is possible to better understand the debates in the 1950s to

1970s over “modernization” and how these debates informed discourses of regional

and national identity during this period.

Delmiro Gouveia: The Man

Representations of Delmiro Gouveia often portrayed him as the model for the

Northeast. Olympio de Menezes cited Gustavo Barroso’s characterization: “Delmiro

Gouveia foi um tipo, no físico, no moral, e no mental, verdadeiramente representativo

da forte e tenaz sub-raça do infeliz Nordeste brasileiro. Aspecto acaboclado, energia

indomável e inteligência aguda.”267 Gilberto Freyre, among others, referred to him in

English as a “self-made man.” Gouveia substituted the fanaticism and banditry of the

sertão with modern industrial civilization, “based on science and

technology.”268Supposedly, common sayings about Delmiro Gouveia painted him as

the “King of the Sertão” or the “Governor of the Sertão.”

Illustrating how Gouveia fits into the regional image, another saying

commonly cited in the books on Gouveia in the 1950s and 60s declared: “O Nordeste

até hoje deu tres homens; Padre Ciçero na oração; Lampião na valentia; e Delmiro

Gouveia no trabalho.”269 Another compared Delmiro Gouveia to Antonio

267
Olympio de Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia (Recife: Instituto Joaquim
Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1963), 73.
268
Tadeu Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro de Paulo Afonso (Maceió:
Departamento Estadual de Cultura,1953; second edition Recife, 1963), 113.
269
J. Machado de Sousa, Vida de Delmiro Gouveia (Recife: s.n. publisher, 1964), 97.

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Conselheiro of Canudos: “Delmiro Gouveia já foi incorporado ao folclore social do

Nordeste, assim como um Antônio Conselheiro pertenece ao folklore mágico e um

Lampião ao heróico.”270 But, at the same time, other authors pointed out that he was

not a “fanatic” like Padre Cicero or Antonio Conselheiro. Instead, similar to Euclides

da Cunha, he saw the sertanejo as “abandoned” and “constantly fatigued” but as

capable of being transformed into a constructive force able to lift up the Northeast.271

One account made this comparison by saying that people had come to Canudos to

marvel at the size of the immense Church whereas in Pedra, people admired the large

storage units to store cotton and manufactured products.272 He was described as the

“creator of a perfect community,” “someone who knew how to impose order and

consolidate the progress” announced on the national flag, and a “superior man.”

The Ligas Camponsesas newspaper, in reviewing F. Magalhães Martins’s

biography of Delmiro Gouveia also described his exceptional “Brazilian-ness”: “A

vida de Delmiro Gouveia, exemplo de brasilidade, de coragem, de dinamismo, a vida

deste educador precursor entre nos dos mais avançados serviços sociais”.273 But,

perhaps wary of the possibility for Leftist groups to appropriate the symbol of

Delmiro Gouveia into a revolutionary hero, the Diario de Pernambuco focused on the

idea that Gouveia supported order and was a businessman, not a revolutionary. The

Diario de Pernambuco described Gouveia as a type of hero or symbol of the

Northeast, but claimed that he was never interested in “politica militante, interessado

270
Ibid., 112.
271
Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 153-155.
272
Felix Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá do sertão Alagoano (Maceio:
Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1963), 194.
273
Wánia Filizola, “Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e Nacionalista,” LIGA 14 August
1963, 5.

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apenas em negocias, em ganhar dinheiro, em alargar o campo de ação, consolidando a

invejavel posição economica.”274 According to the editor of the Diario de

Pernambuco, Gouveia was a lover of popularity and not of the illusory applauses of

the masses. While he had good intentions, he wanted to work more than anything, to

make profits and to do that he needed peace, collaboration and order.275

While some accounts emphasized his roots in Ipu, others compared Gouveia

to figures outside of the Northeast; for instance, Moises, David (of David and

Goliath) and Plato in that he was “born politicized.”276 The well-known media giant,

Assis Chateaubriand, supposedly declared Pedra a “magisterial response to Canudos”

and compared Delmiro Gouveia to a bandeirante.277 Although many of the authors

emphasized Gouveia’s connections to the United States and Europe, they show how

Gouveia initiated, formed and used these relations to bring modernity to the

Northeast. Gouveia contracted technical professionals from numerous countries to

make the dam and the town; the foreigners did not “exploit” him. Gouveia

supposedly “improved” typical English sayings, changing the idea of “time is

money,” into “time is more than money.”278 One account even states that Gouveia

hired a chauffeur from Germany.279 The reason to mention this is to show that

Gouveia used foreigners in the project of creating Northeastern modernity, that he

274
Costa Porto, “Delmiro e a política pernambucana,” Diario de Pernambuco 13
February 1964, 4
275
Costa Porto, “Delmiro envolvido nas tramas da política,” Diario de Pernambuco
13 February 1964, 4.
276
Sousa, Vida de Delmiro Gouveia, 5-8.
277
Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 139.
278
Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 103.
279
Ibid., 95.

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knew how to control these foreign investors and technicians to help him to complete

his project of bringing modern civilization to the Northeast.

The Early Years

The biographies invariably start with Gouveia’s family, his place of birth, and his

childhood. Authors emphasize that he comes from a small town in Northeastern

Brazil, Ipu, Ceará, and that his family was of “modest” origins, working the land and

raising livestock. Biographers foreground his “nationalist” origins by emphasizing

that his father volunteered to fight in the Paraguayan War. In some accounts, his

father fought with a Northeastern brigade that “won fame as soon as they arrived as

the battalion with the best maneuvers.”280 One account describes Ipu as the

quintessential representation of the racially mixed Brazilian nation, “a society of

ranchers and farmers, who mixed the blood of three races and the cultures of three

continents.”281

After establishing Delmiro Gouveia as a nationalist from the sertão, most

accounts turn to showing how Gouveia became the “Rei das Peles” in Recife at the

turn of the century. Tadeu Rocha described this process as Delmiro Gouveia

becoming aware of the inhumane quality of life in Recife, the need for modernization,

and the intellectual ideologies of socialism.282 Gouveia supposedly started working

280
Ibid., 22.
281
Ibid., 18.
282
Rocha describes Recife in the 1870s as a place where industry and modern
civilization was introduced at the same time that slums, misery and disease also

144
as a station manager of the “Brazilian Street Railway Company” as a young man.283

Authors emphasize the fact that Gouveia made numerous trips to the United States

and Europe; for instance, he attended the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. He also

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 1894.284 His home in Recife was described as European,

with emphasis on its cleanliness and order.285 F. Malgalhães Martins portrayed

Delmiro Gouveia’s early business initiatives as part of his “dream” of “modernizing

the life of his beloved Recife.”286 According to these accounts, modernity for

Delmiro Gouveia meant introducing electricity, hygiene and business, modeled on

U.S. and European cities.

The next major step in most accounts of Delmiro Gouveia was the creation of

the Mercado de Derby, the fire that destroyed it, and Gouveia’s arrest in Recife. Due

to the high prices of the basic foodstuffs at the Mercado de São José 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 prices below those of the Mercado de

increased. Gouveia became literate with the help of José Vicente Meira de
Vasconcelos, who supposedly was a socialist. Ibid., 32-35.
283
Ibid., 39-40.
284
F. Magalhães Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista (Rio de Janeiro:
Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1963), 42-47.
285
“Pelo asseio, pela limpeza impecável, pensava-se estar numa villa alemã na
Baviera, num chalé suiço em Schaffuse, na casa de um cultivador de tulipas em
Haarlem, na Holanda,” Felix Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá do sertão
Alagoano (Maceio: Departamento Estadual de Cultura, 1963), 51.
286
Drawing from an earlier work on Delmiro Gouveia, Martins quotes Plínio
Calvacanti, “Ele concebeu a idéia grandiosa de transformar o Recife numa cidade
moderna, com higiene, com electricidade e com o conforto dos grandes centros
civilizados.” Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista, 55-56.

145
São José. Felix Lima Júnior described the market as impeccably clean and organized,

with electricity, sewers, and running water. It was supposedly modeled on European

and U.S. markets and in the plaza in front of the market, Gouviea built a recreational

area where people partook in fiestas resembling “American fairs,” with clowns, and a

carrousel, and stands selling popcorn.287 According to Olympio de Menezes, the

Derby market came from Delmiro Gouveia’s vision to modernize Recife after visiting

the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.288

Some accounts use Derby to emphasize the fact that Delmiro Gouveia had a

social consciousness and concern for the poor. Outraged by the prices at São José,

Gouviea intervened in the market and provided meat and manioc flour at lower prices

so that the poor people could eat.289 As Araripe claimed, Delmiro Gouveia was a

“comerciante progressista e de alta visão, que sem decurar de seus legítimos

interêsses pessoais cuidava de servir ao povo com dedicação e descortino.”290

Olympio de Menezes described the power that Delmiro Gouveia held in Northeastern

society at the time of the Mercado de Derby as based on his ability to gain the support

of the povo.291 The people supposedly created him as a mystic figure able to provide

them with meat at one-third of the price offered at São José.

But, after the fire on January 1, 1900, a controversy arose. According to

Araripe, the flames quickly “devoured the structure that was the pride of Recife and

287
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 62-64.
288
Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 53.
289
Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 35-36.
290
Ibid., 38.
291
Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 79-81.

146
that had served the povo.”292 Many accounts provide an incredibly vague idea of

Gouveia’s arrest after the fire, shifting immediately to his need to leave Pernambuco

for Alagoas to avoid imprisonment. Some claim that his arrest was related to the fire

at Derby, and that he was regarded by the authorities as being responsible for the

fire.293 Some authors claim that Gouveia presented a threat to the political and

economic elite in Pernambuco, and thus, they created a scandal to defame Gouveia.

After his release from prison, Gouveia left Recife for Europe, where he stayed for a

year.

The fire, however, was not the only scandal in Gouveia’s life story.

According to Rocha, in 1902, the police surrounded Gouveia’s house, the Engenho

Beltrão, to recover a minor who Gouveia had kidnapped and brought to live with him.

Gouveia was married at the time, but his wife was not living in Recife, and he

supposedly fell in love with “a young girl of rare beauty who was not protected by

good maternal customs.”294 What is interesting about this story is that it reveals the

most controversial fact of Gouveia’s life: his sexual life and tendency to seduce

(perhaps to rape) young women. To avoid imprisonment, Gouveia fled to the

neighboring state of Alagoas and it is at this point that he started to formulate the idea

of Pedra, the factory town on the banks of the São Francisco River.

292
Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 42.
293
Ibid., 42-43. Delmiro Gouveia’s arrest supposedly caused popular protest and the
markets all shut down until his release.
294
Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 55-56.

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Pedra: The Model Modern Society

“Pedra” tem a melhor luz elétrica do Brasil.295

As Araripe described, “fugindo de Pernambuco, sob pressão, a fim de escapar

perseguição, Delmiro Gouveia escolheu Pedra para base das operações comerciais

que pretendia reencetar. Mais uma vez iria começar de novo.”296 This stage in

Gouveia’s life is the focus of most of the biographies and the point of departure for a

few of the studies. Most of the biographies focus on how Delmiro Gouveia turned a

backwards, isolated place in the Northeast into what they saw as being the most

modern factory town in all of South America. Gouveia started a textile mill, Estrela,

on the banks of the São Francisco River, installing a hydroelectric dam to run the

machines and to electrify the town. Gouveia supposedly turned the “horrid”

topography of the sertão and the “barbaric” sertanejo into modern civilization.

Estrela exported its textiles throughout Brazil, to Argentina and Chile, although the

brand name for foreign exports was “Barril.”297

A particularly poignant example of how the concept of the modern was

interpreted in the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s can be found in the depictions of

how Delmiro Gouveia transformed the sertão and sertanejo into being an ideal

modern society with modern citizens. The introduction of industry alone was not

295
A quote by Mauro Mota, cited in Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 196.
296
Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 50.
297
Ibid., 61.

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enough to create modern society; Gouveia had to enforce modern rules and provide

modern benefits to educate the workers and their families and turn them into modern

citizens. I describe here the town and infrastructure, then the rules, benefits and

punishments that Delmiro Gouveia instated for his citizens. Even though the

accounts were from the early 1900s, the emphasis on Delmiro Gouveia’s role in this

transformation, as a man and as a good boss, illustrate that the modern society had to

be led and imposed by “exceptional” men, not by the people themselves. But,

Northeastern patriarchal modernity also directly challenged the divisions in cultures

that Delmiro Gouveia found at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. With education and

modern industry, the interpretation of Gouveia’s “triumph” in Pedra proved that the

Dahomeyans of the Midway Plaisance (or the sertanejos of the Nordeste) could in

fact turn into the modern civilization on display in the White City. Thus, the

depictions of Gouveia’s factory town help to show the overlaps between ideas of

nineteenth-century scientific racism and modernization theory in the 1950s and

1960s.298

Delmiro Gouveia supposedly built new houses, all painted white and

supposedly impeccably clean, in the town of Pedra for his workers. Inspired by a trip

to Italy, he built Romanesque columns in front of the houses, lining the main streets.

Pedra supposedly had the most advanced electric system in Brazil, the town had

running water that passed through a filtration system, and boasted telephone and

298
The “racial improvement” promoted by Gouveia follows Nancy Stepan’s
argument about the transformation of eugenics in Latin America. Nancy Leys Stepan
The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991).

149
telegraph systems, and even an ice cream store and an ice factory.299 He instated

leisure activities such as a town band, free sessions for the cinema, soccer games and

“exercícios de patinação. Other symbols of modern civilization included eight

schools, medical facilities, public parks, a pharmacy, a carrousel and a cinema.300

The textile industry required new infrastructure as well, and Gouveia had roads built

and brought “the first cars” to the sertão.301

Gouveia, as a “good” and “modern” boss, adhered to an eight-hour workday,

and on Sunday, the factory closed. He required everyone in the town to wear shoes,

and the workers were required to use a uniform, “azulão,” that Gouveia himself even

wore so that no one felt “humiliated or diminished.”302 He was described as having a

“patriarchal and educational mission,” requiring all people in the town, regardless of

age, to attend classes for literacy and training.303 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 figure and dates, such as “José de Alencar,” “Rui

Barbosa,” and “13 de Maio.”304

299
Cited from Mauro Mota, Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 196. The ice
factory as a symbol of modernization brings to mind Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude.
300
Rocha, Delmiro Gouveia, 98.
301
Araripe, A glória de um pioneiro, 64-65.
302
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 201.
303
Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista, 107-109. The educational
system was supposedly based on Delmiro Gouveia’s observations of São Paulo’s
Normal School. Children who did well in class were rewarded with diversion:
cinema and carrousel.
304
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 197.

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 But to live and work in Pedra meant that workers had to follow Gouveia’s

rules: no police, no soldiers. The description of these rules in the biographies defines

what was seen as “non-modern” and “modern.” Townspeople were forbidden to spit

on the street, to drink, to gamble, and prostitution was illegal.305 He required

everyone to take a bath daily, to comb their hair and to wear shoes.306 He inspected

houses for their hygiene and prohibited domestic abuse. A few stories that appear

repeatedly throughout the accounts describe Gouveia’s regulation and education. For

instance, one day he was bringing a visitor through town and saw a man leaving his

house through the window instead of through the door, which was prohibited, and the

man was scolded in public. Another story is that of a “new arrival” to the town who

constructed a shack outside of Pedra. When Gouveia found the shack, he invited the

man and his family either to 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.307

But the most commonly repeated story about Pedra in the biographies was

how Gouveia promoted weddings and the establishment of nuclear families in Pedra.

As Olympio de Menezes explained, “Na sua cidade proletária, todas as noivas

305
According to Magalhães, those who spit or threw a banana peel on the ground
received a fine of 500 – 2.000 reis. Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e
nacionalista, 146.
306
Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista, 110.
307
This story is also in the opening sequence of the film, Coronel Delmiro Gouveia,
in the close-up shot of an old “ex-worker” who explains to the camera, “Quando
chegava um retirante de fora, nu, ele mandava vestir. Mandava lá pra loja dele e
vestia todo mundo. Se estava com fome, dava de comer. E no outro dia já ia
trabalhar.”

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operárias eram vestidas de seu bolso, do sapato ao véu.”308 Almost every account of

Delmiro Gouviea discussed the fact that he promoted weddings by paying for bride’s

expenses in a formal ceremony. Modernity meant marriage in the Church. But what

is also curious about Gouveia’s desire to promote marriages is that one of the

controversies over his death also suggests that he was murdered because of his illicit

affair with one of these young brides.

A Nordestino Death for the Modern Man

“Antes que o capitalismo internacional o liquidasse, o cangaceirismo

nacional o sacrificou, sobretudo por questões de terra e prestígio.”309

A triste realidade é que as balas homicidas, deflagradas contra

Delmiro Gouveia, não interromperam, apenas, o curso da vida de um
extraordinário pioneiro. Também retardaram, de uns quarenta anos,
a marcha do progresso em terras do Nordeste.310

The story seems to repeat itself in Northeastern Brazil. Any chance for change or the

capacity to overturn traditional power structures seems to be preordained to meet with

a violent ending. In the case of Delmiro Gouveia, this narrative is even more striking

as Gouveia was portrayed as the “exception” to the norm in Northeastern Brazil. And

yet, the classic regional narrative still informs his life story. According to his

biographers, he was a man who pushed for change and succeeded in creating a new

type of Nordeste who was then killed by dominant forces in the Northeast and the

entire community and project for modernity dissipated without him. The great

308
Menezes, Itinerário de Delmiro Gouveia, 142.
309
Quoted from Thadeu Rocha, friend of Delmiro Gouveia, cited in Lima Júnior,
Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 225.
310
Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista, 117.

152
“industrial coronel” was “barbarically” assassinated.311 While all of the biographies

published in the 1950s and 1960s address Gouveia’s death, films, novels and

scholarly investigations published from the late 1970s and early 1980s focus almost

entirely on the circumstances of Gouveia’s death.

One version of the death of Delmiro Gouveia blames the murder on three

cangaceiros, two of whom served a life sentence for their role in the shooting (José

Inacio Pia “Jacaré”, Róseia Morais and Antônio Félix). But, even though the men

served life sentences, their responsibility has always been disputed. For instance, a

1984 study, Eu não matei Delmiro Gouveia (Maior erro judiciário do Brasil),

claimed that Róseo was forced to admit his guilt under torture and threats, and then

held in prison without being allowed visitors other than his wife to keep the story

hidden.312 Some accounts claim that large landowners, or competing coronéis, had

sent the cangaceiros to kill Delmiro Gouveia: José Rodrigues de Lima who was

protected because he was a state deputy and José Gomes de Sá, who fled to Ceará.313

As Magalhães described, the cangaceiros were simply “pobre vítimas de um meio

social atrasado” who were hired to kill Delmiro Gouveia.314 The coronéis who hired

the men were threatened by his “strong Nordestino audacity and initiative and dreams

of the greatness and economic independence of his homeland.”315 A related narrative

of the death told of how Delmiro Gouveia had raped a young bride on the way to

311
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 220.
312
Jorge Oliveira, Eu não matei Delmiro Gouveia (Maior erro judiciário do Brasil)
(Macéio: Sergasa, 1984).
313
Martins, Delmiro Gouveia: pioneiro e nacionalista, 117.
314
Ibid., 180.
315
Ibid.

153
Recife to buy her wedding gown, and this provoked the husband and groom to defend

their honor and kill Delmiro Gouveia.

Another major narrative, as Magalhães quoted from IBGE’s Enciclopédia dos

Municípios Brasileiros, was that Delmiro Gouveia “morreu bárbaramente

assassinado, vítima de interesses de trustes estrangeiros.”316 According to this

account, the British company Machine Cotton had done everything in their power to

destabilize and destroy Delmiro Gouveia’s textile company. In the film, Coronel

Delmiro Gouveia, the representative of Machine Cotton, Mr. Hallam, threatens

Delmiro Gouveia telling him that he cannot fight against the “invincible Machine

Company.”317 Machine Cotton had tried multiple times to purchase the textile

company to which Delmiro Gouveia had responded, “No, I am Brazilian.”318 The

threats to destabilize Gouveia’s factory merely pushed Gouveia to expand his exports,

even to British colonies, which supposedly only increased their hatred of Gouveia.319

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.”320 In the Ligas Camponesas newspaper review of a biography of

Delmiro Gouveia, the role of Machine Cotton was emphasized with the added

316
Ibid., 193.
317
Geraldo Sarno e Orlando Senna, Coronel Delmiro Gouveia (script) (Rio de
Janeiro: Editor CODECRI, 1979), 122.
318
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 272.
319
Ibid.
320
Mota, Quem foi Delmiro Gouveia? 55-56.

154
qualifier that after the Revolução de 30, the British influence was eliminated and

substituted by imperialist forces from North America.321

The circumstances of the death and the state’s failure to fully investigate also

raised the idea that the state and political officials were in some way involved in the

murder. Felix Lima Júnior compared the circumstance of the murder and the escape

of the cangaceiros to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and the mysterious escape of

Booth from the Ford Theater.322 Supposedly, Delmiro’s three dogs did not make a

sound when the cangaceiros approached. And, according to Lima Júnior, a preta

velha explained their silence, recalling that the dogs had spent the entire day yowling

to the point that Delmiro Gouveia had asked what the dogs could foresee.323 By

raising folklore and perhaps “black magic,” this account of Delmiro Gouveia’s death

again shows how the life of the modern Delmiro was doomed by the traditional

society of the Northeast. Gouveia’s death was preordained by “greater” forces that

prevent modernity, order and progress from changing the sertão.

After Delmiro Gouveia’s death on 10 October 1917, supposedly foreign

business interests supposedly took immediate action in attempting to close down

Estrela, the modern factory in the sertão. Most accounts refer to acts of dumping,

fraud, spying, and any other illegitimate business practice to describe how Machine

Cotton eventually took control of Estrela. As Lima Júnior described, Machine Cotton

started selling its textiles at a price lower than market value in order to establish itself

as a monopoly. “Era o brado de alerta da consciencia nacional, que não encontrou

321
Wánia Filizola, “Delmiro Gouveia: Pioneiro e Nacionalista,” LIGA 14 August
1963, 5.
322
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 213.
323
Ibid., 214.

155
eco no governo da República. Nenhuma medida foi tomada, infelizmente, e anos

depois, a Machine consegiu liquidar a nossa fábrica de linha para vergonha do

governo e opróbrio do povo brasileiro.”324 In April 1930, a manager of Machine

Cotton came to Pedra to examine the machines. Some were transferred to the South

and the rest of the factory was ordered to be disassembled and thrown into the São

Francisco River. This “imperialist take-over,” is a frequently repeated narrative in the

stories of Delmiro Gouveia; for instance, the PCB newspaper of Pernambuco focused

on this issue in their homage paid to Delmiro Gouveia: “Homenageando Delmiro

Gouviea, queremos recordar ao povo nordestino, o crime cometido pelos homens do

capital ingles, contra uma das nossas indústrias que se tivesse continuado, a

fisionomia da nossa indústria nos sertões do nordeste seria muito diferente.”325

And the story of what happened to Pedra and Delmiro Gouveia’s memory?

Pedra was renamed as “Delmiro Gouveia” in 1952. Most accounts describe it as a

place where civilization had touched the sertão, and by the mid 1950s, 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. This narrative also involves the idea

of “forgetting,” or a victimization narrative that can be mobilized to make claims of

324
Ibid., 275-276.
325
“Centenário do pioneiro Delmiro Gouveia,” A Hora, 8 – 14 June 1963, 3.

156
injustices, whether they are warranted or not.326 But, as in many of the regional

narratives, Delmiro Gouveia’s story supposedly had disappeared, as Felix Lima

Júnior claimed, “in this country of ungrateful people, Delmiro Gouveia is yet another

victim of the conspiracy of silence.”327 According to one of Delmiro Gouveia’s

daughters, her father was “Perseguido, em vida, pelo truste internacional, meu pai

continua, depois de morto, perseguido pelo truste nacional de silêncio.”328

And, as Telma de Barros Correia explained in her study on representations of

Delmiro Gouveia, the message of the film, Coronel Delmiro Gouveia places the

blame for modern industry not surviving in Pedra on Delmiro Gouveia paternalistic

order , and on English imperialism. The final scene shows one of the most typical

actors who interprets the “Nordestino,” José Dumont, destroying the textile factory

and throwing it into the waterfall as the voice-over explains,

“Foi isso que aconteceu. Seu Delmiro mandou a gente fazer a fábrica,
a gente fez. Os ingles veio e mandou quebrá as máquinas e derrubá no
rio. A gente quebrou e derrubou. Eram os donos, os patrão. Os patrão
manda e os trabalhador obedece. Ninguem perguntou pra nós o nosso
pesnsamento, se a gente queria ou não quebrar as máquinas. Agora, o
povo daqui nunca esqueceu o Coronel Delmiro. A fraqueza do
Coronel é que ele era só, sozinho mesmo, e aí atriraram nele e
mataram a fábrica. Tenho pra mim que ele foi como um exemplo pra
nós tudo. Mas penso também que o dia em que o povo fizer as fábrica
pra ele mesmo aí num tem força no mundo qui pode quebrá nem
derrubá, porque num tem força-maior que a do povo trabalhador, que
trabalha, como as máquinas, e pensa, que nem gente.”329

326
For instance, Severino Calvacanti’s claim of the injustices faced by Northeastern
politicians when he was forced to retire after a scandal. (see chapter two)
327
Lima Júnior, Delmiro Gouveia: O Mauá, 293.
328
Statement by Maria Gouveia in 1955, cited in Ibid., 293.
329
Sarno, Coronel Delmiro Gouveia, 126.

157
Cultural Representations of Evolution or Revolution

The theme of evolution or revolution appeared in public policies, social movements

and development projects as well as in the cultural sphere in the early 1960s.

Cultural debates refected key issues of authenticity and debates within Brazil over the

revolutionary potential of the Northeast. Theater productions and films expressed the

poverty of Northeastern Brazil and offered interpretations of this poverty as

revolutionary or evolutionary. While the films and plays were about the rural

Northeast, few of them actually approached the topic of the contemporary political

scene and the rural social movements, choosing instead to represent the Northeast in

terms of historical symbols or themes such as slavery, drought, cangaceiros, and

religious fanatics. This section of the chapter analyzes the plays and films about

contemporary rural social movements, rural politics or rural revolution in the early

1960s.

The MCP, (Movimento de Cultura Popular), was the best known of the

revolutionary theater groups that hoped to conscientizar the poor in the Northeast of

their revolutionary situation through theater productions. In the early 1960s, the MCP

produced the plays, Revolução na América do Sul, Testamento de cangaceiro,

Julgamento em Novo Sol, Volta do Camaleão Alface, and A derradeira ceia. Most of

the theater productions used the Theater Santa Isabel or the Arraial, labeled the

“headquarters” of the MCP.330 And, even though the MCP was a radical theater

group, the plays on stage in Recife were mostly performed in front of an urban and

330
“Movimento cultural do Nordeste propõe se a iniciar uma nova era no teatro em
toda a região,” Diario de Pernambuco 24 April 1963, 3.

158
middle class audience. By examining the reviews of the MCP theater production,

Julgamento em Novo Sol, Hermilo Borbilha Filho’s João Farrapo, and the Paulista

Teatro de Arena production Revolução em América do Sul, in revolutionary and

mainstream newspapers, it is possible to locate how the issue of evolution or

revolution played out in the cultural sphere.

A number of theater productions started in Recife in the 1960s, some

sponsored by the Movimento de Cultura Popular (MCP) and the Teatro de Cultura

Popular (TCP) with the intention of using revolutionary theater to raise the

consciousness of the population, addressing topics about agrarian reform and poverty.

In March of 1963, the Ligas Camponsesas newspaper reviewed the theater

production, Julgamento em Novo Sol,331 performed by the MCP in the Teatro do

Arraial Velho and part of the radical street theater productions associated with

Augusto Boal.332 Although Julgamento was based on the interior of the state of São

Paulo, the article commented on how it raised issues pertaining to rural life

throughout Brazil. The play focused on a struggle between 3,000 rural workers

against the large landownder (coronel) who wants to expel them from his lands so he

can grow more grass to feed his cattle. As quoted in the review, the coronel claims

that “minha intenção sempre foi uma só: enriquecer esta região. Ela não pode ficar

nas mãos do lavradores. Ignorantes (…) eu digo que os frigorificos estrangeiros estão

se interessando pelos meus rebanhos. Estão procurando ajudar o progresso do pais.

331
Nelson Xavier, Augusto Boal, Hamilton Trevisan, Modesto Carene, and Benedito
Araújo, Julgamento em Novo Sol.
332
“Arte Para o Povo: MCP traz para o palco drama do camponês,” LIGA 6 March
1963, 5.

159
Mais divisas. E eu me vejo de mãos atadas pela burrica deste povo.”333 This political

justification and narrative was heard commonly throughout Brazil during this period,

and the point of the play, according to the review, was to educate the people about

how to respond to such a statement from the powerful landowner. The point of the

play was to “create courage to fight against injustices through the action demonstrated

in the play.”334

The Communist Party Jornal do Bancário reviewed Julgamento em Novo Sol

as being “pioneering” and “revolutionary” in terms of bringing theater productions to

the povo, “dentro da mais moderna técnica teatral.” In a photo of one of the scenes in

which peasants are sitting on the floor involved in a conversation, the caption

explains: “A autenticidade do vestuário é incontestável.”335 The point of the play

according to this review is to show the defenses of the peasants who confront the real

Brazilian agrarian problem along with the “falso humanismo” of some of the large

landowners. The Communist Party reviewer highlights the role of the Church in

upholding the landowning system, quoting from the play 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 “bondade” do patrão, but that the landowners

never remember to pay their workers a decent salary. The only criticism was in the

selection of the actor who played the lead peasant who was excellent but whose “tipo

atlético não é do camponês brasileiro.”

333
Ibid.
334
Ibid.
335
“Julgamento em novo sol,” Jornal do Bancário 2nd Quinzena de Maio, 1962, 5.

160
 The review of Julgamento em novo sol in the Diario de Pernambuco claimed

that the play was terrible as a play and as a spectacle.336 The reviewer said that the

play “Lembrou-nos uma tentative bisonha daquilo que Erwin Piscator descreve como

tendo sido o Teatro Politico que se fez na Alemanha, entre o fim da guerra de 1918 e

o advento do nazismo, no livro do mesmo nome.”337 According to this review, the

play was a “farsa de extremo primarismo” that made it impossible to feel solidarity

with the rural workers in their conflict with the landowner, because of the idea that

violence was the only solution. The reviewer claimed that artistic autonomy of the

play was non-existent; that the playwrights had used theater as a means of distributing

ideological propaganda. The reviewer claimed that with the exception of a few of the

actors who had some talent, many had simply been cast because “seus proprios tipos

fisicos foram usados para caracterizar as figures que interpretavam e assim facilmente

pareciam autenticas.”338

In a separate article on theater groups in the Northeast in the Diario de

Pernambuco, the author criticizes the MCP for being purely political propaganda and

nothing artistic. Supposedly in 1963, another theater group began in the Northeast,

the Movimento Cultural do Nordeste, with the intention of creating a circuit of theater

productions in all the major cities in the Northeast as well as in the towns in the

interior. But, instead of being “political” plays, these were to be artistic productions,

drawing inspiration from classic (Greek and Roman) theater, with the objective of

336
“ ‘Julgamento em novo sol’ visto pelo crítico Henrique Oscar: Ruim como peça e
como espetáculo,” Diario de Pernambuco 11 April 1963, 2 (second section).
337
Ibid.
338
Ibid.

161
“educating” the povo.339 The author claimed that people, rich or poor, attended films,

circuses, and plays for the delight of the spectacle, claiming that the reason why the

MCP plays were supposedly poorly attended was that these plays were political but

lacked the artistic diversion one desires from a play.340 Thus, the Movimento

Cultural do Nordeste, would bring the great theater productions, chanchadas and

artistic pleasure back to the stage. Meira Pires’s João Farrapo, produced with the

support of the Rio Grande do Norte state government and Governor Aloisio Alves,341

provided a different view of revolution in the Northeast.

According to the director, the objective of the play was that it had no political

affiliation or foreign influence. As Meira Pires claimed about the objective of the

play, “Eu quis que o heroi, depoise de assistir e sentir, impassivel, tanta miseria,

terminasse por concordar com o povo daquele lugarejo perdido e a ele aderisse

misturando-se à sua fen a divindade, como unico recurso capaz de solucionar os

graves problemas da nossa sofrida região, já que ‘os homens de lá’ continuam

insensiveis aos reclamos e anseios dos sertanejos necessitados e famintos.”342 Instead

of joining the revolution, João Farrapo who represents the common alienated man of

the Northeast, chooses to pray. According to Meira Pires, “o povo está cansdo de ser

ludibriado e prefere, por isso mesmo, apelar para Deus porque seu grito de angustia,

de desespero e de dor não alcança os nossos dirigentes preocupados que vivem com o

339
“Movimento cultural do Nordeste propõe se a iniciar uma nova era no teatro em
toda a região,” Diario de Pernambuco 24 April 1963, 3.
340
Ibid.
341
Governor Aloisio Alves was a controversial figure in Northeastern politics during
the early 1960s, in that he cooperated fully with the U.S. government and U.S. AID,
and claimed not to be socialist and not to support the politics of Miguel Arraes.
342
“Teatrologó Meira Pires define posição da peça ‘João Farrapo’” Diario de
Pernambuco 13 September 1963, 3 (2nd caderno).

162
fomento sempre crescente do martirio para, por meio dele, conseguir a consecução

dos seus inconfessaveis objetivos.”343

The reviewer was extremely happy with the view portrayed in the play

because according to the reviewer the underdevelopment in the Northeast has created

an alientated population, not a revolutionary population. According to the reviewer,

the people in the Northeast, similar to the people in the play, do not believe in or

desire armed revolution as a solution. And, as the reviewer states, it is better for the

povo to pray “para enganar a fome” than to pick up arms to destroy their own

brothers.344 The review in the Diario de Pernambuco ends in a peculiar way: the

reviewer states the play may seem to serve the political right, anti-nationalist, and

imperialist but what is going on in the area where the play takes place is that the

guerrilhas are taking the prayer books out of the hands of the people, replacing the

books with Che Guevara’s guerrilha manual. In other words, the play presented the

reality but Leftist social movements and agitators continually threatened this “reality”

in their attempt to seduce the rural population to start a violent revolution.

The focus of most of the reviews of Augusto Boal’s play, Revolução em

America do Sul, performed by the São Paulo Teatro de Arena, was on the censorship

supposedly imposed by the State of Pernambuco. The play opened in Recife in late

October 1961, and according to A Hora, the Censura da Secretária de Segurança

Pública, requested that certain parts of the play were removed and then tried to

343
“Teatrologó Meira Pires define posição da peça ‘João Farrapo’” Diario de
Pernambuco 13 September 1963, 3 (2nd caderno).
344
Ibid.

163
“impede the performance of the second part of the play.”345 For instance, in one part

of the play where the actors were supposed to shout “Revolução! Revolução!

Revolução!” the word had to be changed to “Movimento!”346 During the

performance, in the part that was supposed to be censored, the audience shouted,

“Abaixo a censura fascista.” But, in a review of the play in the Ligas Camponesas

newspaper, the reviewer claimed the play was “bourgeois.”347 A union leader

supposedly criticized the production because the actors made no attempt to participate

with the audience,348 and the portrayal of the worker was dehumanizing. As quoted,

345
“Censura Fascista interdita peça teatral” A Hora, 28 October – 4 November 1961,
7. The censorship was also raised in the Diario de Pernambuco.
346
Joacir Castro, “Movimento, movimento, movimento,” A Hora 4 -10 November
1961, 3. Castro compared the censorship of the play to the “conservative, homens do
Golpe” (specifically, Olímpio Mendonça) who were responsible for invading the
Sindicato dos Bancários (headquarters of the underground Brazilian Communist Party
in Recife), the União dos Estudantes de Pernambuco and also the forces responsible
for wanting to expel the camponesas from the municipio de Cabo.
347
A review from the Ligas Camponesas similarly criticized one of the major Cinema
Novo films released around the same period, Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas
Secas. The film strove to portray the “reality” of the rural Nordestino, including what
was considered passivity and non-revolutionary action. While the mainstream media
reviewed the film in a positive light, the Ligas Camponesas newspaper criticized the
film. The review in Liga claimed that Vidas Secas portrayed flat characters, without
contextulizing the problems of the life of the rural Nordestino and without showing
the complexities of internal and external struggles facing the man of the sertão. The
reviewer claimed this portrayed Fabiano and sinha Vitória as “animal-like” and non-
intelligent, which the reviewer blames on Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s unfamiliarity
with the people and life of the sertão. “Why would he want to express that the
caboclo didn’t communicate? What did he wish to show with the lack of symptoms
(dreams that crossed between the couple? If this was it, and not a mere interpretation,
an interpretation completely wrote of the homem do sertao, and principally in the
relationship between Fabiano and sinha Vitoria, in which a verbal understanding
doesn’t exist, for a lack of vocabulary but there is still an effective and even
intellectual understanding between them.”
348
In another LIGA article on Brechtian theater, an observer of the Berliner Ensemble
noted the revolutionary style of East German theater, specifically discussing the
interaction between actors, the director and the audience. “Arte para o povo: O teatro
de Brecht,” LIGA 28 August 1963, 5.

164
“Revolução na América do Sul mostra o operário como se fosse um marginal, isto não

é absolutamente verdade na sociedade brasileira.349

The theme of the “marginality” of rural workers was a topic addressed in a

number of films about Northeastern Brazil in the early 1960s. As cultural critic Jean-

Claude Bernardet claimed, many of the films made in the early 1960s wanted to show

the disease of Brazilian society: “o povo é explorado, não tem condições mínimas de

vida; se o país evolui, o povo não toma conhecimento dessa evolução.”350 Most of the

directors chose to denounce what they labeled as the bourgious national beliefs; for

instance, the idea that “cangaceiros” were a product of glandular problems or that

illiterate people should not have the right to vote.351 But, at the same time, filmmakers

chose to employ certain representations of the regional stereotypes of poverty and

passivity of the rural population. In this section, I analyze two films that exemplify

the debate over evolution or revolution: the ABC production, Helen Jean Rogers’s

Brazil: The Troubled Land (1961), and Olney São Paulo’s Grito da terra (1964).352

These films dealt with the issue of the contemporary political situation in the rural

349
“Arte Para o Povo,” LIGA 20 March 1963, 5.
350
Jean-Claude Bernardet, Brasil em tempo de cinema: Ensaio sobre o cinema
brasileiro de 1958 a 1966 (Rio: Civilização Brasileira, 1967), 45.
351
Ibid., 46.
352
Three other films produced in the early 1960s fit this category loosely although
two have a more urban focus. One particular scene in Anselmo Duarte’s Pagador de
Promessas (1962) suggests that the Brazilian media turned unconscious peasants of
this era into political activists fighting for agrarian reform. The film is further
analyzed in a later chapter. Leon Hirszman’s Maioria Absoluta (1964), a
documentary on the rural Northeast, examined the issue of illiterates having the right
to vote. Although Hirszman interviewed Northeastern peasants about their living
conditions and their political interests, the film has a more “urban” focus, criticizing
the “bourgeois” attitude that illiterates do not and should not have an ability to vote.
And, Eduardo Coutinho’s Cabra marcado para morrer (1983) would have been an
ideal film if the film had been completed and produced in the 1960s. It is also
analyzed in the final chapter.

165
Northeast, although neither reached a broad Brazilian audience, unlike the films that

portrayed the Northeast in terms of more familiar historical symbols.

The film, Brazil: The Troubled Land, broadcast in the United States on ABC

television, portrays the threat of revolution as linked to poverty and

underdevelopment.353 The film starts with Francisco Julião talking about the

struggles of the peasants in Latin America but quickly shifts to the modern, urban

cityscape of Recife and specifically the beach area of Boa Viagem, showing

skyscrapers, stores, and cars. Then, the viewer is introduced to “Severino,” described

as a 49-year-old peasant who cuts sugar cane and is illiterate. The camera follows

Severino, barefoot and in shabby clothing, through the streets of Recife as he looks in

at stores selling televisions and other modern equipment, ending at the headquarters

of the Ligas Camponesas, described as the “Communist Front headquarters.” He

stands in line to meet with Francisco Julião who sits at a table under Abelardo da

Hora murals of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Francisco Julião.

The next scene shifts to the countryside, cane fields and a “typical” rural

house, where Severino’s wife, “Dona Julia,” makes dinner (manioc) for their six

children and the 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 unequal power relations, the film cuts to a large landowner, described

as “Severino’s master, Constâncio Maranhão.” The images depict a large house with

353
I want to thank the librarians at Northern Illinois University who went out of their
way to make it possible for me to see the only available copy of this 16 mm film
through Interlibrary Loan Services. Helen Jean Rogers, Brazil: The Troubled Land,
(Carlsbad, CA: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1961).

166
a pool and Maranhão shows off his new 38-caliber gun to the camera crew, saying

that it is the “best gun made in the United States.” 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.” In reviews of the film, this scene was interpreted as demonstrating the

backwardess, violence and feudal nature of the rural landowning elite, emphasized in

a number of U.S. newspaper and magazine articles at the time depicting similar

spectacles of power and apathy for rural workers. While this attitude undoubtedly

existed and continues to exist, the scene with Maranhão is interesting because it

seems that Maranhão is in fact strutting his modern American-ness like a peacock to

the camera, trying to show them just how modern and “American” he is in his choice

of weapon and his Wild West or cowboy-esque mannerisms.

So, with the scene of feudalism set in the audiences’ minds, the film turns to

presenting the case of revolution. The scenes show violeiros, or troubadors, people

who travel through the countryside singing literatura de cordel. The documentary

announces that they now sing about Julião and the need to raise rural wages and start

a revolution like in Cuba or Patrice Lumumba’s Congo. The film shows scenes of

rural workers rallies, and peasants talking about the need to stop working for the

landowner who brings the worker only misery. And, the voice-over ominously

predicts: “The shadows lengthen over the troubled land.”

Celso Furtado was interviewed about his views on the Ligas Camponesas and

he stated that he was not worried and that Julião was not an important political figure.

Furtado claims that the problem of the Northeast is a “Brazilian problem” that must

be solved by Brazilians. Based on the studies of SUDENE and US AID, Furtado’s

167
argument seems valid but in the film, it is presented as an argument related to the fact

that government officials in Brazil were not “modern” enough to confront the real

threat of communism. Furtado’s understatement of Julião’s power was quickly pulled

into question by the scenes that followed Furtado’s interview that emphasized the

power of Julião. 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.” He seems popular among the crowds of rural

workers, embraced warmly and having flower petals thrown over his head. In a rally,

Julião states that the hoe is the symbol of backwardness and misery, contrasting with

the large landowners who live in the cities and enjoy modern comforts. “If the

peasant cannot win in peace, it will have to be revolution!” The voice-over explains

that the Ligas Camponesas’s enemy is American capitalism, while the heroes are

Fidel Castro and Mao Tse Tung.

The final cut takes the audience back to “Severino” and as he walks along a

dirt road lined by sugar cane, the 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 film is remarkable in its depiction of the “land of contrasts”: the modern urban

areas and the Wild West feudalism of the rural areas and it is also an impressive

historical document showing live footage of Francisco Julião and the Ligas

168
Camponesas. The character of “Severino” is peculiar because it is unclear if he is

actually a peasant or if he is an actor interpreting a peasant, since most of the scenes

with “Severino” were obviously staged. The message is that of modernization

theorists: modernity exists in Brazil and even in Northeastern Brazil, but most of the

region’s people still have no access to this modernity even though they find it

appealing. Northeastern Brazil appears to be in a precarious position, where its

poverty and feudalism could easily turn to “communist” revolution if (the United

States) does not step in and help bring modernity, freedom and democracy to the

region.

Olney São Paulo’s Grito da terra portrays a different perspective on the issue

of revolution versus evolution. In contrast to Brazil: The Troubled Land, Grito da

Terra was produced at the cusp of the military coup (the first scenes were shot early

December, 1963) and the film never was well distributed in Brazil or abroad, even

with editing and promotional support from Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Vladimir

Carvalho and João Ramiro Mello.354 Olney São Paulo’s political views and films led

to his arrest and torture in 1968, the consequences of which may have led to his early

death at age 41.355 His film style has been compared to the Italian neorealistas such as

Vittorio de Sica. Generally speaking, Grito da terra was about the need for agrarian

reform and violence in the countryside, filmed near São Paulo’s hometown of Feira

354
Angela José, Olney São Paulo e a peleja do cinema sertanejo (Rio: Quartet
Editora e Comunicação, 1999), 75-78.
355
José Lourzeiro, “Prefacio: O cineasta que virou luz,” Angela José, Olney São
Paulo e a peleja do cinema sertanejo (Rio: Quartet Editora e Comunicação, 1999), 9-
11. Olney São Paulo’s arguably most important film, Manhã cinzenta (1969)
portrayed the arrest, torture and murder of a student couple by the military, and
resulted in Olney São Paulo’s actual arrest.

169
de Santana, Bahia. as the director of production and actor, Eládio Theotonio de

Freitas, claimed, “A história é meio esquerdista, mostrando as lutas dos lavradores

com os latifundiários, tema atual e oportuno quando a reforma agrária está na ordem

do dia.”356 It was loosely based on Ciro de Carvalho Leite’s novel, Mulheres de vida

fácil, in that São Paulo wanted to discuss the story of a woman who wanted to leave

the sertão because she hated life there. “Uma Madame Bovary subdesenvolvida.”357

As Maria José described, Grito da terra was part of the cultural movements of

neorealismo and cinema novo. It “unveiled the nordestino tragedy, the social

relations, and agrarian reform. The long shots of the film take us to the great empty

spaces of the Bahian sertao, the caatinga and the hills. The slow, crawling narrative is

directly linked to the notion of time for the sertanejo, whose days and nights pass by

sluggishly. The ideas of time and space, formulated from environmental

determinism, make clear the way in which the Northeastern man reacts and thinks, in

a paused speech, with long gestures and in the way of walking without a rush to

arrive anywhere.”358 David Neves, a film critic for Diário Caroica, who was critical

of cinema novo films and of the Paraíban documentary school films such as Aruanda,

claimed that the film narrative “left much to desire.”359 Neves claimed that it is a film

of the sertão for the sertão, but that Olney São Paulo “ignorava o verdadeiro

significado que seu filme poderia ter no panorama cinematográfico nacional

356
From an interview with Eládio Theotonio de Freitas, A tarde (Salvador), 14
January 1964, in José, Olney São Paulo, 74.
357
Ibid., 71.
358
Ibid., 195.
359
David Neves, “O sertão Segundo Olney,” Diário Carioca 11 December 1964.
Folder 05211. O grito da terra. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.

170
queríamos justamente diizer que a precipitição conduiziu-o a caminhos erroneous no

que respeita, sobretudo, à apresentação do filme nas metrópoles.”360

The characters, as described by Maria José, are not the cangaceiros and

fanatics of other films but based on what was seen as the “reality” of the early

1960s.361 Loli is a “sensual and dangerous woman” who wishes to leave the sertão

for the city (Helena Ignez of Mandacaru Vermelho, A grande feira, Menino de

engenho); Maria is a “typical peasant” who believes in the strength of the nordestino

to fight against environmental limits (drought) and the power of the latifundio. The

romantic counterparts are Geraldo, the brother of Loli and boyfriend of Maria, who is

a poor cowhand who also works in the fields and Sebastião, the lover of Loli, the

villain who is an aspiring large landowner who wants to own more land and become

involved in politics as a coronel, willing to rob and kill for power. Finally, the Afro-

Brazilian actor Lídio Silva, who interprets the figure of the messianic Sebastião in

Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo, plays the part of a rural teacher who sees the need to

conscientizar the Nordestino peasants to learn to read, write and understand their

rights.

The central theme of the film is to analyze the power relations between the

smallholders, the small business owners and the large landowners.362 According to

Olney de São Paulo, his goal was to produce a film about the Northeast,

“um filme que fosse um poema onde somente o homem e a terra

identificados, existíssem como seus únicos personagems. Um quase
documentario, uma cronica rural, ou talvez um depoimento sincero
sobre a vida do sertanejo desemaparado e explorado que, não obstante

360
Ibid.
361
José, Olney São Paulo, 78.
362
Ibid., 79.

171
 parecer aceitar tudo como se fosse coisa natural, no íntimo não
compreende porque lhe foi destinado viver em tamanho miséria. Uma
desgraça que se a uns sensibiliza e a outros incomoda, deixa-nos a
todos numa tranquila e criminosa indiferença. O filme seria também
um grito – um grito contido, é verdade, mas um grito de desespero
daquela gente que se arrasta sob a pêso do sol e do infortúnio. O
nordestino é assim memso: pachorrento, triste; sua vida é um cortejo
fúnebre, onde não existem condições para a ambição e a morteé sua
única certeza. Dentro desse espírito, tentei realizar uma película em
que buscasse também um estilo brasileiro para o filme do nordeste,
utilizando para isso de uma linguagem simples, direita, acessiva e não
concessive; uma linguagem de cronica de amor mas que não
interessasse somente à pessoa amada. Não seria um filme regionalista,
pelo contrário. O drama do Nordestino é universal. Começa no
Brasil, na América, continua na Asia, na Africa e até na mais
civilizada metrópole. É a terrível angústia social que sufoca o
homem.”363

Olney São Paulo, as with many of the cinemanovistas, saw the Northeast as

representing larger themes in world politics of exploitation and imperialism.

The film faced censorship, in particular one scene in which Maria made a

reference to the “Cavaleiro da Esperança,” otherwise known as Luis Carlos Pretes

(PCB). In the scene, Maria says that the teacher has mentioned that the “cavalo

branco de luz” will come soon, shedding light and hope on the region. According to

one film review, the censorship left the film “mutilated” and almost

incomprehensible.364 But most of all, the fact that the film was only ready for release

after the coup meant that few theaters wished to show it because it dealt with the

controversial theme of agrarian reform and rebellion.365 From 1965 to 1967 the film

was shown in Rio, São Paulo, Salvador, Aracaju, and Recife, distributed by Satélite

363
Ficha da Cinemateca MOMA, 17.7.1967, no. 110; Folder 05211, O grito da terra.
MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.
364
Aruiz Espírito Brabo, “O Grito da Terra,” Ultima Hora. Folder 05211, O grito da
terra. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.
365
José, Olney São Paulo, 82.

172
Filmes. It was shown at the I Festival Internacional do Filme in Rio, and the Festival

do Cinema Baiano in Fortaleza. It was also shown at the Noite do Cinema Brasileira,

organized by the U.S. embassy in 1965, and was selected for international film

festivals but the producer, Ciro de Carvalho, declared that it would only leave Brazil

in full, without the cuts made by the censorship board.366 It is extremely difficult, if

not impossible, to find Grito da terra in Brazil today and even in the archival film

holdings (MAM-Rio, FUNARTE, Cinemateca Brasileiro), little exists on the film and

director.

Jean-Claude Bernardet raises the appropriate question about why more films,

and “revolutionary” films, chose not to make films about the rural struggles of the

1950s and 1960s. He suggests that the reason for this absence of films about the

Ligas Camponesas has to do with the fact that “in the countryside, the main interest

was criticizing the latifundia and denouncing the misery, so the peasant struggles – as

an autonomous struggle and popular project – could scare the bourgeois audiences

and producers, especially because they were all attracted to the developmentalist

projects.”367 He claims that Brazilians who were interested in developmentalism

were primarily interested in the rural Northeast because they saw it as a feudal region

that needed to be incorporated into the nation, as producers and consumers of a

capitalist society. According to Bernardet, the filmmakers had a tacit agreement with

the bourgeouis – not to approach the theme of the urban working class, industry,

urban areas or the urban elite – which is why the Cinema Novo directors chose to

366
Ibid., 83.
367
Jean-Claude Bernardet, Cineastas e imagens do povo (São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 2003), 48.

173
focus on the rural Northeast. But, after the coup, the pact with developmentalism was

broken and it became clear that the urban elite were not so anti-imperialist and

nationalistic and thus filmmakers shifted to urban, working class themes in their

films.368

I appreciate Bernardet’s explanation because he raises an excellent question

about the absence of films about the Ligas Camponesas, the shift after the coup to

films that had a more urban focus, and the issue of the consumption of these films by

the urban middle class, which are three issues that deserve greater attention by

historians and film scholars. However, the issue of repression and censorship also

must be taken into consideration. By the 1970s, the theme of Northeastern poverty in

film was one of the few cases in which the military censors completely prohibited one

film’s distribution, Vladimir Carvalho’s O pais de São Saruê, domestically and

internationally, for seven years. In comparison with Grito da terra, the amount of

publications and information on O pais de São Saruê is impressive: When the film

was released in 1979, it became a focus for criticism of the military regime, its

censors, and the issue of poverty in the Northeast. The reasons why the government

feared these cultural productions differed, but the restrictions on the topic of poverty

emphasize a common narrative in Northeastern Brazil that has to do with silencing.

But, what is interesting is that claims of “silences” are consistently used in the

Northeast to raise issues of victimhood and injustice but at the same time, the

government actually prohibited certain issues and censored topics.

368
Ibid., 47-48.

174
 Carvalho described his experience with the censors and during the military

regime, when he returned to Paraíba in 1966-67: “Sabia que a várzea estava vigiada,

que ninguem podia mais falar em Liga Camponesa, quanto mais entrar de camera de

filmar e gravador para documentar os despojos do que for a o maior moviemento de

massa, desde Canudos, Contestado e Caldeirão.”369 But, he selected to make a film

about the struggle to survive in the rural Northeast, as Carvalho claimed, “São Saruê é

uma tentative de colocar o povo e sua movimentação, o comportamento de ocupação

das terras secas do Nordeste Brasileiro, tomando a Paraíba apenas como uma

referencia e uma súmula, porque a Paraíba, como Pernambuco, como Alagoas, são

súmulas do Nordeste, quer dizer, é o mesmo folklore que se repete, com variações, é

o mesmo tipo de exploração da terra, é o mesmo tipo de acontecimentos que

registaram a sociedade.”370 O país de São Saruê (1971) was released during height of

the most repressive era of the dictatorship, also a period in which General Médici

attempted to create new national programs under a banner of strong patriotism, or as

Carvalho quoted, the mantra of , “Brasil, Ame-o ou deixe-o.”371 The black-and-white

film portrayed a “suffering image of the impoverished Northeast” that caused it to be

censored in this era of strong nationalism. The film was only released from the

censorship board in 1979, at the beginning of the abertura.372 The tensions between

the Northeast as the heart of the nation, the Northeast as the victim of exploitation and

369
Paulo Melo, “Vladimir, A batalha do cotidiano,” notes from the programa de
apresentação de O Pais de São Saruê – Brasília – 1981. Folder: Vladimir Carvalho.
Cinemateca Brasileira. São Paulo.
370
Vladimir Carvalho. Interview with José Marinho de Oliveira. Folder D22412,
Depoimentos Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste. São Paulo, ECA/USP, s.d.
Cinemateca Brasileira. São Paulo. p.22.
371
Ibid., 34.
372
Ibid.

175
misery, and the Northeast as the site of resistance against dominant national

narratives all flow throughout the cultural representations of revolution and poverty.

176
Chapter 4: Slavery, Abolition, and Quilombos: Racialized
Narratives of Resistance

On 23 October 1960, O Diário de Pernambuco ran a feature story about “a preta

Felipa” and her memories of the past century.373 The story opens with journalist

Severino Barbosa describing Felipa Rosa de Lima’s eyes as “very alive and

intelligent, they have observed a century of Brazilian history and seen secrets that if

discovered, would revolutionize half the world.” But, according to the author, her

mouth says nothing because Felipa does not like to remember the past and even less

to disclose her secrets.

Felipa’s parents, Joaquim ‘Negro’ and Luisa Maria da Conceição, were slaves

owned by coronel Manuel Carlos de Andrade in the interior of Paraíba, but Felipa

was born free according to the Lei do Ventre Livre, and grew up in the “casa grande

dos Pereira,” the grandson of Manuel Carlos de Andrade.374 Supposedly, Felipa lived

in the familial ambiance of the Pereira household, helping to raise his children. She

explained to the reporter that Manuel Carlos de Andrade “loved his slaves. In his

house, there was never punishments, and it was unheard of to think about shackles, o

tronco (trunk – torture device similar to stocks), chains or other tools that terrified

slaves in other senzalas.” Her father, Joaquim Negro, was an “esteemed preto” at the

heart of the plantation owner’s family and a hard worker, and her mother, “a strong

373
Severino Barbosa, “Testemunha de um seculo de história do Brasil: A preta Felipa
prefere não falar do passado,” Diario de Pernambuco. 23 October 1960, 7.
374
The Pereira’s were one of the “big” families in the Northeast, and supposedly
Felipa was the “irmã de leite” of dona Maria Augusta, who was related to the
contemporary deputy, Marcolino Pereira.

177
and active mulata” preferred to work in the countryside as a cowhand than as a

domestic servant.

Felipa remembered abolition as the “glorious day” that seemed to turn the

world upside down. “The slaves shouted with happiness and went out running in the

middle of the streets, cheering that Princesa Isabel had given them their freedom. At

night, in the igreja do Rosário, the blacks celebrated. And from this moment on, they

went back to their houses to raise their children and to become free.” But, the tragic

memory was that of the Revolution of 1930, which, according the the Diario de

Pernambuco, “like all revolutions, left a scar of blood in the Northeast.” The small

rural area, “an obscure nest of freed slaves,” turned into the focus of national

attention, with blood running in the streets. Felipa was taken prisoner and tortured by

the revolutionaries because coronel Zê Pereira was an adversary of João Pessoa.

Felipa remembered planes bombing the area and she claimed that no one slept any

longer, constantly looking to the sky, waiting for the “evil bombs to fall.” The article

stated that newspapers from afar told of the bloody battles in the Northeast, “of

brothers killing brothers, in an inglorious struggle, motivated by violence, in which

the results were more damaging than beneficial.” The journalist added his own

conclusion to the retelling of the revolution, noting that “Felipa was right to not want

to remember certain things.”

Felipa is quoted as saying, “I am a ‘negra velha,’ with white hair and an aged

soul. (…) What happened, happened. It is part of the history of the sertão, of the

time of slavery, slaves working the fields, asking the white master for his blessing.

(…) I saw the abolition of slavery, I saw the empire fall and the start of the

178
República, I saw revolutions that frightened families, people running with fear from

bullets and people dying in the streets. What do I want to remember these things for?

I’m very old, I only want to rest in the last days of my life.” The story ends with the

journalist repeating the point, “Felipa saw everything but she prefers to forget. Why

dig up the dead?”

The context in which this story appeared in the conservative mainstream

newspaper must be taken into consideration, providing insight into the reasons for the

story being newsworthy and also suggesting why certain narratives were emphasized.

While it is impossible to know the conditions of the interview or even to know more

about Felipa, it is possible to read her narrative to ask questions about the debates and

struggles that were taking place in October of 1960. Even though the article was

about her memories, the story emphasized the idea that it is better to forget and to not

talk about the past. Felipa provided the newspaper with an “authentic” voice of an ex-

slave woman who seemed to support the dominant narratives about the violence of

revolutions, the benevolence of Brazilian slavery, and the legitimacy of abolition.

These interpretations were all under negotiation in 1960, with rural social movements

countering and rejecting such notions.

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had recently been staying in Recife,

in the early part of October. Sartre published his monograph about the Cuban

Revolution and commented about the revolutionary nature of Northeastern Brazil and

its rural social activism underway, and was criticized explicitly by the Diário de

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Pernambuco.375 Jânio Quadros visited Cuba with Francisco Julião at the end of

September376 and the Diário de Pernambuco published a number of op-ed pieces and

articles about the Cuban Revolution, denouncing the executions that had taken place

and criticizing the fact that Cuba had started selling sugar to the Soviet Union.377

After the legal expropriation of the Engenho Galiléia in January of 1960, a number of

new land invasions had taken place. Landowners claimed that the rural workers and

member of the Ligas Camponesas threatened them with death, and rumors spread

about the Ligas Camponesas setting fire to the canefields.378 And, O Correio da

Manhã (Rio) published some of the first major reports on the Ligas Camponesas by

Antonio Callado. Callado’s book on the Ligas Camponesas was released, helping to

turn the struggle for land in Northeastern Brazil into a national issue.379 In addition, in

375
Anibal Fernandes, “O que Sartre deveria saber,” Diario de Pernambuco 18 August
1960, 4; Anibal Fernandes, “À margem de certas opiniões de Sartre,” Diario de
Pernambuco, 18 October 1960, 4; Olivío Montenegro, “A voz de Sartre,” Diario de
Pernambuco 13 November 1960, 4; Anibal Fernandes, “A furacão sobre Cuba,”
Diario de Pernambuco 18 December 1960, 4.
376
“PL e o MPJQ processam Francisco Julião e jornal,” Diario de Pernambuco 30
September 1960, 1.
377
Malebrancho Bernardo, “Castro, o grande traidor,” Diario de Pernambuco 7
August 1960, 7; Anibal Fernandes, “O propósito de nacionalismo,” Diario de
Pernambuco 10 August 1960, 4; Anibal Fernandes, “O caso dos cartazes,” Diario de
Pernambuco 15 September 1960, 4; “Protestos contra os fuzilamentos em Cuba,”
Diario de Pernambuco 20 October 1960, 12; Anibal Fernandes, “Só o ‘Cuba Libre’!”
Diario de Pernambuco 12 November 1960, 4.
378
“Polícia embalada garantiu engenho contra invasão de 150 camponesas,” Diario
de Pernambuco 7 June 1960, 7; “Engenhos de Paudalho estão infestados de
comunistas,” 9 June 1960, 7; “Moradores do Camaçari pedem mandado de segurança
ao TJ,” Diario de Pernambuco, 26 August 1960, 5; “Novos incêndios em canaviais
inquerito contra o agricultor,” Diario de Pernambuco 30 Septembe 1960, 7;
“Agricultores rebelados contra ‘Ligas Camponesas’ estão ameaçados de morte,”
Diario de Pernambuco 7 October 1960, 7.
379
Anibal Fernandes, “Reforma Agraria,” Diario de Pernambuco 11 September
1960, 4; “Antonio Callado foi ao ‘Galileia’ e lançou ontem seus novos livros,” Diario
de Pernambuco 28 September 1960, 4.

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late October 1960, Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda, about a quilombo community in

the hills of Paraíba was first screened in Recife, at the São Luiz theater.380

By evaluating the article on Felipa within this historical context, it is possible

to understand the emphasis on violence and the damaging effects of revolution. The

mainstream media emphasized the idea that history in the Northeast of revolutions

and rebellions were “better to forget” at the time when rural social movements were

reframing historical narratives to create a broad base of support for land reform. The

Ligas Camponesas engaged with threatening revolution, calling for an end to the

traditional system of the latifundio. By this time the widespread fervor in support of

the the Cuban Revolution had waned. Whereas in 1959, even the Diario de

Pernambuco editors had stated their support for the Cuban Revolution, by the mid

1960s, the Diario portrayed the Revolution as violent and as resulting in little change

for Cuba. Instead of a triumph for Latin American independence, the Diario saw

Cuba as having to decide between succumbing to either U.S. or Soviet imperialism.

The presence of Sartre and Simone de Beauvior, and their support for Cuba, also

seemed to threaten the traditional society of the Northeast with their declaration in

favor of anti-colonial movements and revolution. Felipa’s story suggested that the

wise “subaltern” woman warned of the violence and uselessness of revolution for the

majority of people, poor or rich.

Beyond serving as a poignant example of the conservative media’s criticism

of revolution and rebellion, Felipa’s story also raises issues of race relations and

slavery. According to the Diario, Felipa celebrated the Golden Law of abolition and

380
Diario de Pernambuco, 20 October 1960, 12, about the release of Aruanda
scheduled for 29 October 1960.

181
recognized the benevolence of the “good” masters, who allowed for a peaceful

transition from slave to free, and treated their slaves and workers with great respect

and kindness. This dominant historical interpretation was being attacked by the Ligas

Camponesas, by filmmakers, by intellectuals and by other social movements. The

Ligas, for example, referred on a regular basis to the statement by Pernambucan

abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco in which he claimed that abolition without agrarian

reform would be incomplete.381 While the metaphor of “slavery” was commonly

appropriated during the Cold War to talk about both U.S. imperialism and Soviet

imperialism,382 the fact that Northeastern Brazil had been a slave society and the fact

that non-free labor practices still existed in the 1950s and 1960s, gave the metaphor a

different twist. And, by the early 1960s, many of the social movements were starting

to question Northeast author and politician Gilberto Freyre’s notion of racial

democracy.

In this chapter, I explore the multiple uses of the discourse and representations

of slavery and race relations in the 1950s and 1960s and the connections drawn

between these narratives, Northeastern identity and the struggle for land. While rural

social movement leaders frequently employed the symbol of slavery, it acquired a

381
14.9.1885, Joaquim Nabuco said in a speech to Parliament
“O abolicionismo significa a liberdade pessoal, ainda melhor, a igualdade civil de
todas as classes sem execução-é assim uma reforma social; significa o trabalho livre,
é assim uma reforma economica; significa no futuro a pequena propriedade, é assim
uma reforma agraria, e como é uma explosão da dignidade humana, do sentimento da
família, do respeito ao próximo, é uma reforma moral de primeira ordem.”
382
Christina Klein, “Musicals and Modernization: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The
King and I” in Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold
War eds., David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark Haefele, Michael Latham
(Amherst: University oif Massachussets Press, 2003): 146. Klein argues that “As a
metaphor for communism, ‘slavery’ became linked in Cold War rhetoric with both
‘imperialism’ and the ‘Oriental.’”

182
number of meanings. Part of the objective of this chapter is to try to understand how

racial idenities formed a part of the struggle for land in the 1950s and 1960s, an issue

that has been entirely excluded from the historiography on the Ligas Camponesas and

the struggle for land in the Northeast. Although these social movements engaged

with the language of “civil rights,” none of the movements sought to create a

racialized identity (of black or Nordestino against white), although this was implicit –

and at times, explicit – in their political discourse. In this chapter, I show how, in

what ways and in which context, the symbol of slavery was racialized and what this

meant in terms of redefining regional identity. Even when a metaphor of slavery was

strictly economic, in a region with a legacy of slavery, the implication of such a

symbol must take into consideration racial connotations. It is also important to

emphasize the strength of the discourse of racial democracy in Brazil and to point out

that racialized discourses and identities had a much greater diversity of meanings

beyond a “color line.” Nordestino, in other words, can be the Other in Brazil without

necessarily fitting neatly into legacies of Victorian racial hierarchies that privilege

whiteness.

Certain characteristics have come to be associated with Nordestino identity,

strengthened by visual representations in the mass media of certain people who best

embody these characteristics.383 For instance, certain actors (José Dumont) are

383
The idea of how Northeastern identity has created a visual idea of Nordestinos
having certain physical characteristics is fascinating and difficult to analyze.
Whereas scholars, filmmakers and authors have created a certain idealized version of
the physical types of a Nordestino, the reality is that it is impossible to pinpoint any
certain physical characteristic as being specifically Nordestino. For example, while
gathering for Recife’s Gay Pride parade in 2005, I talked to a group of students about
this question of Nordestino identity. One of the women was blonde, fair-skinned and

183
regularly cast as Nordestinos because they embody (or have come to embody) the

stereotypes associated with regional identity. While this is one “stereotype” of

Nordestinos, another representation is of African decendency. In this chapter, I

analyze representations of slaves, slavery and quilombos in popular culture to

illustrate the ways in which this particular symbol came to represent the Northeast in

the early 1960s. Whereas the discursive political use of the symbol of slavery was

not always clearly racialized, representations of slavery in popular culture and film

were more obviously connected to blackness. The questions that arise from this

unstable division between discourse and popular representations demonstrate why it

is important to analyze both to understand the construction of regional identities.

Did the use of the symbol of slavery always have some lingering connection to

transatlantic slavery, or was the Nordestino Cold War slave entirely different? Why

was this particular symbol frequently used in the early 1960s? If the Nordestino slave

from the interior of Pernambuco but had lived many years in Rio de Janeiro, and she
claimed that even though she was 100 percent Nordestina, most people did not
identify her as being from the Northeast. The group then debated the issue, and
agreed that this particular woman did not seem very “Nordestina,” but the group
consensus was that I could easily be defined as Nordestina because of my relatively
large forehead. (As a note, I am of Polish-American descent.) Undoubtedly, the idea
of Nordestino would be different depending the context and the person’s subjectivity.
But, the point of this anecdote is to emphasize the difficulty in determining “regional”
characteristics and also the power that mass media such as film holds to create certain
visual representations of the “Nordestino” in Brazilian society.
News reports on the Northeast seem to look for images that reproduce certain
stereotypes of Nordestinos. And in a recent, popular telenovela, A senhora do
destino, the main character was a Pernambucan immigrant who lived in Rio de
Janeiro. The Carioca actress supposedly took lessons to acquire a Northeastern
accent that led her to speak slowly and accentuated and to constantly throw in
regional expressions such as “Oxente.” Since I had never heard a Nordestino talking
in this way, I raised the issue with many people. (The eight o’clock novela is a
frequent conversation topic throughout Brazil.) By and large, Nordestinos found her
accent appalling or ridiculous while Cariocas and Paulistas praised its authenticity.

184
was depicted as black in popular culture, did this mean that all references to slavery

during this period carried a connotation of blackness or Africanness? And, how did

the narratives of slavery, abolition and quilombos either support or challenge the

dominant narrative of racial democracy?

To address these questions, the chapter explores the political discourse of

slavery, abolition and quilombos and representations in popular culture. The first part

looks at how the idea of Nordestino as modern-day slaves was commonly used to

describe the migrations to the South of Brazil. Then, I show the many ways that

symbols of slavery, abolition and abolitionists were appropriated in the late 1950s and

early 1960s in the debates over agrarian reform. The Ligas and the PCB frequently

appropriated of the idea of Nordestinos as slaves in the 1950s and 1960s to challenge

the violence of the latifundiario and the legitimacy of what was depicted as being a

“feudal” system. But, in a region with a legacy of slavery, the question remains about

whether or not rural workers found this identity appealing. The following section

examines how the idea of racial democracy and transnational politics of race relations

such as the Civil Rights movement in the United States connected to the struggles for

land reform in Northeastern Brazil. Finally, I analyze the cultural representations of

quilombos in films and other cultural productions to show how visual representations

of rural Nordestinos acquired a (different) racialized meaning.

Nordestino Migrants as Slaves

By the mid-1950s, the continual migration of Nordestinos to the South began to

generate public concern. This may have been related to what was depicted as an

185
“overflow” of workers fleeing the droughts and the poverty of the Northeast to look

for work in the South, serving as some type of warning or advertisement against

internal migration. Or, it may have arisen from general concern about the number of

stories and cases of indentured labor. In the mid-1950s through the late 1950s,

numerous reports in all types of media sources started describing the plight of

Nordestinos in the South and their exploitation.

One of the issues raised about the internal migration was a racist argument

that attempted to distinguish the Nordestino migrant as a different type of human

species. A number of self-described “new intellectuals of the Northeast” started

exploring the question of marginality and migration in conferences in the early 1950s

throughout the Northeast.384 These studies produced the type of understanding that

Lopes de Andrade described in 1955. According to Lopes de Andrade, Graciliano

Ramos’s Barren Lives tells the dominant narrative of the Northeastern migrant,

conceived as a pariah in the economic sense of the term.385 “The very clothing of this

migrant – dirty, torn, smelling badly – quickly give us this erroneous impression [of

the Nordestino as an economic pariah]. However, well analyzed in their social

evolution, the half man of the Northeast is not an economic pariah, he is in no way a

beggar in the Western and Christian meaning of the word. He is a marginal, marginal

in the sociological classification, a person who is socially ‘different.’” The journalist

continued by examining the historical roots of the “caboclos,” making the argument

384
Lopes de Andrade, Forma e efeito das migrações do Nordeste (Paraiba: A União
Editora, 1952). The intellectuals associated with this include Robert E. Park (“The
Human Migration and the Marginal Man”), Juarez Batista, Geraldo Sobral, Afonso
Pereira, and Mauro Mota.
385
Lopes de Andrade, “Pobreza e migração no Nordeste,” Diario de Pernambuco 24
April 1955, 22-23.

186
that their indigenous roots influence their present day non-sedentary lifestyle.

Supposedly their isolation from “civilization” had left Nordestinos in a state in which

they can “successfully resist any attack from modern industrial society.” This

“species” known in 1955 as flagelados or drought refugees, supposedly continued to

multiply like “mushrooms” throughout the the sertão and the Northeast, “sifilisando a

todos antes que se civilizassem, como diria Gilberto Freyre.” According to the

journalist, Brazilian society should not incorporate flagelados as beggars because this

type of classification would lead to a repetition of the system of slavery. But at the

same time, the author argued that the situation was hopeless for the Northeast and the

Nordestinos because of the culture of the flagelados who constantly looked for

poverty and misery, be it in their “own habitat” or in the skyscrapers of Rio and São

Paulo. “The history of the Northeast is deeply entrenched in the heart of the

‘Poligono das secas’.” In other words, some type of inherent cultural gene made

flagelados enjoy misery and poverty, flee modern civilization and remain non-

sedentary.

This interpretation was not an isolated remark or even unusual. For example,

Oliveira Viana’s Evolução do povo brasileiro, first published in 1922, was

republished in 1956 with a new preface, insisting on the need for Brazilians to accept

the power of nationalism over regionalism. Viana argued that all Brazilians needed to

evolve “socially, ethnically, and politically.”386 He argued that evolution was

particularly critical for the “sub-raça mestiça” in the Northeast, where this “crossed

type does not have somatological stability and is always subject to regressing to their

386
Oliveira Viana, Evolução do povo brasileiro (SP: Livraria José Olympio Editora,
1956) 4th ed. (First edition, 1922), 9.

187
original race.”387 This racist understanding is necessary to reference because it seeps

into many of the descriptions and explanations of Nordestino migrants as slaves in the

1950s. But, not everyone shared this understanding. Luis da Câmara Cascudo, for

example, described what he called “mental miscegenation” a “defining characteristic”

of Brazilians. Cascudo argued that “a northeastern peasant, after four years in São

Paulo, is as much as a ‘paulista’ as a campones from Santos or Piraciacaba.”388

Other articles focused on the “pull” factors inducing Nordestinos to migrate to

the South and to the coastal urban areas. As an article in the Diario de Pernambuco

stated in 1958: “Attracted by the splendor of the cities, the poor creatures look to

survive and believe in the promise of their well being from the traffickers of human

flesh.”389 The Catholic newspaper, A Defesa from Caruarú, Pernambuco, described

in 1957 the rural exodus as coming from the miserable conditions in the countryside,

“the chagas vivas that day by day are ruining the nation.” “Some day the matuto

comes to the city and sees the free health care and starts to renounce their rural

life.”390 With the 1958 drought, the number of flagelados increased, along with

reports of “slavery.”

The São Lourenço newspaper, A Hora, printed an article on slavery in 1959,

claiming that the Lei Áurea no longer was respected in Brazil, based on reports

387
Ibid.,191-192.
388
Luis da Camara Cascudo, http://memoriaviva.digi.com.br/todos.htm, cited in Peter
Michael Lownds, “In the Shadow of Freire: Popular Educators and Literacy in
Northeastern Brazil,” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2006), 19.
389
Waldemar Valente, “Paisagem das secas,” Diario de Pernambuco 17 August
1958, 1.
390
Carlos Dôrria, “O éxodo rural,”A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação Católica
(Caruarú) 25 May 1957, 3.

188
coming from Goiânia.391 The “disillusioned” Nordestinos in their search for a better

life were labeled “pau-de-arara” and sold like cattle. “In Goiânia, a single nordestino

is sold starting at Cr.$900 and a couple, including the woman and children, starting at

Cr$1.600.” The “slaves” were bought by fazendeiros in Minas Gerais and São Paulo.

“In respect to the situation of our slaves, the news media say that the infelizes

(miserable) nordestinos ‘live in shanties, without any furniture, without receiving any

payment for working from sun up to sundown. Many try to escape and they try to

reach the closest cities or if nothing else, they throw themselves into the river that

divides the regions. Most of those who choose the river option drown to death.

Others are captured or killed by the capitães-de-mato, kept by the fazendeiros. (...)

In the middle of the atomic age, we are doing the worst thing, we are selling our own

brothers! And long live democracy!”392

The Diario de Pernambuco also ran an article in November of 1959 about the

need to stop the trafficking of Nordestinos in “paus de arara,” referred to frequently

as slave ships (navios negreiros), since this system had created a “real regime of

391
“Escravagismo,” A Hora (São Lourenço) 6 December 1959.
392
“Em Goiânia, um nordestino solteiro é vendido a base de 900 cruzeiros e o casado,
inclusive a mulher e os filhos, a base de 1.600 cruzeiros.” The “slaves” were bought
by fazendeiros in Minas Gerais and São Paulo. “Tratando da situação dos novos
escravos, diz as noticias que os infelizes nordestinos ‘vivem em barracões, sem
qualquer mobilário, sem receber qualquer remuneração, e trabalhar de sol a sol. As
fugas são numerosos, pois muitos dos nordestinos não resistindo ao regime de
trabalho forçado, tentam atingir as cidades mais proximas ou, ainda, atiram-se ao rio
que faz a divisa entre as regiões. Estes últimos, na sua maioria morrem afogados. Os
outros são recuperados ou mortos pelos capitães-de-mato mantidos pelos fazendeiros.
(…) Em plena era atomica fazemos pior, vendemos os nossos irmãos! E vive a
democracia!”

189
slavery.”393 Supposedly the drivers used the idea of the South as the Promised Land

to load 60 to 70 passengers in their trucks and charge 2-3 mil cruzeiros for each

passenger. The passengers did not have the money to pay the ticket and thus entered

into “slavery,” promising to repay the transportation by working under exploitative

conditions dictated by their new employer. The article claimed that the only solution

was federal intervention to stop the “Mercado dos nordestinos.”

The Communist Party also printed detailed descriptions of Nordestinos as

slaves in Novos Rumos. For instance, Ana Montenegro referred to the case of Manoel

da Costa Santos and Maria Francisca Santos, who were reportedly sold in the Mineira

city of Montes Claros for Cr.$4.000,00, “like a pair of animals.”394 Maria Francisca

had supposedly lost all of her children and almost turned into a slave because of the

miserable circumstances caused by the unequal distribution of land and power in

Brazil. Montenegro said that Montes Claros and many other cities function as a

“posto de venda de Nordestinos,” where the miserable Nordestinos are brought to be

sold to fazendeiros, and have no protection. Fortunately for the couple that she

describes, journalists bought them as proof of the infamous commercial transactions

and so they were not bought as slaves. Another article also discussed the sale of

Nordestinos in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, stating that the drivers of the paus de

arara received Cr.$3.500,00 for each Nordestino they transported to the South.395

Once the Nordestinos arrived at the fazendas in the South, they were required to sign

393
“Tráfico de Nordestinos e Intervenção Federal,” Diario de Pernambuco 15
November 1959, 1.
394
Ana Montenegro, “Venda dos Nordestino,” Novos Rumos (Rio) March 1959, 11.
395
“Cr.$3.500,00 por cabeça e dois anos de escravidão,” Novos Rumos 27 March – 2
April 1959, 10.

190
a contract that gave them the right to three meals a day, and Cr.$60,00 daily wages,

but with the understanding that this money would only be paid after two years of

labor. The fazendeiro subtracted the transportation cost from this amount as well as

the expenses accrued while working on the fazenda.

In contrast to the earlier claim that the Nordestino is naturally a beggar or used

to the non-sedentary life, the article in Novos Rumos refers to the case of a young man

of 18 years, who told the reporter that he is healthy and a good, strong worker, “ ‘but

I feel ashamed, well, it has been 40 days that I’ve been wandering through the city

looking for a job and I haven’t found one. I had to beg for crumbs on the streets,

wash dishes in hotels to feed myself.’”396 In the end he decided to sell himself to a

fazendeiro with the hope that at the end of the two year period, he would have

Cr.$40.000,00 and be able to start a new life.397

Novos Rumos published a poem, similar to the style of literatura de cordel in

dialect, about the life of the migrant in 1959. Zê Praxedi, “the cowboy poet,”

described the conditions of life in the sertão as becoming unsustainable, so he decided

that at the end of April, he would go to Rio. (Note: original Portuguese version of the

poem is in the footnote and is recommended because of the nature of poetry and the

dialect that is not found in my translation.)

“This past week/ The caboclo Zê Vicente/ Gave us the news/ That still
now makes me feel happy/ That 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

396
“ ‘mas me sinto envergonhado, pois há 40 dias que perambulo pela cidade à
procura de um trabalho e não encontro; tive que mendigar migalhas pelas ruas, lavar
pratos nos hotéis para me alimentar.”
397
“Cr.$3.500,00 por cabeça e dois anos de escravidão,” Novos Rumos 27 March – 2
April 1959, 10.

191
 worker/ Well-respected and a quick worker/ 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 a cheap price/
Those of us from Ceará/ while we don’t go there/ We don’t know why
we were born. The paper is very expensive/ for this reason, I arrived
at the end/ Bless your afiliated/ and your esteemed compadre/ Chico
Nobe Serafim.”398
The point of the poem is to demonstrate the conditions of hunger and poverty that

encourage the Nordestino to migrate to the south and accept being “sold,” but the

poem also shows that the Nordestino feels forced into the situation and realizes his

exploitation.

The Ligas Camponesas also provided reports on slavery existing in the South

in LIGA.399 For example, one such article denounced slave labor in Campos,

Guanabara, described as a rich, “progressive” municipality in the south where seven

Ligas had already formed. The front page image is of a woman worker carrying cane,

and the story claims that the rural workers and their families have been subjected to a

cruel slave regime, where even the “tronco dos escravos” (torture device similar to

stocks) has been preserved by the feudal masters of the plantation. LIGA described

the field workers as pariahs, claiming that they live and work like a “sub-human

species,” terrorized by the “lei da chibata” (whip). The workers in the usina (mill)

398
Zê Praxedi, “Carta do Sertão,” Novos Rumos March 1959, 11. “Essa semana
passada/ O cabôco Zê Vicente/ Deu a nós u’a nutiça/ Qu’inté me dêxô contente:/ Que
tem um minêro rico/ No sertão comprando gente. Achei barato, cumpade,/ O preço
dum brasilêro/ Sendo bom trabajadô/ Respeitadô e ligêro/ Num tando munto duente,/
Vale, miseravimente/ Apenas, dois mi cruzêro! Sendo fome vale mais./ Vô pensá
como se faz/ Cum pessuá qui nós temo/ Se é de morrê de fome/ Barato mermo
vendemo./ Nós, aqui do Ceará/ inquanto num vamos lá/ Num sabe pra que nacemo.
O papé tá munto caro,/ Purisso chequei ao fim/ Abençôi teus afiado/ O teu cumpade
istimado/ Chico Nobe Serafim.
399
“Trabalho escravo nos canaviais de Campos,” LIGA 6 November 1962, 1;
“Campos: Regime de Escravidão Impera nos canaviais,” LIGA 6 November 1962, 4.

192
supposedly had developed class consciousness and were better organized but the

landowners kept them isolated from the field workers (lavoura), so as to maintain

their control over the latter. These workers received low wages but more problematic

was the fact that they were required to pay a “taxa de habitação” or rent that was

overpriced. In order to make the cane quota, women and children joined the labor

force even though the only one paid was the male head of the family.

Slavery and Agrarian Reform

One of the main objectives of the Ligas Camponesas was to end what they called

“feudal” labor relations. They wanted the unpaid labor systems, such as the cambão,

eito, declared illegal.400 In Francisco Julião’s Cambão – The Yoke, the first paragraph

of the introduction describes cambão as “A spark setting the countryside ablaze; a

match under a charge as old as the peasant or slave himself; and a word signaling the

start of a long and arduous journey. In every language in the world it has many

400
As Julião defined, “cambão is the day’s unpaid labour demanded by landowners
once a week from their peasants as rent for their land.” Francisco Julião, Cambão-
The Yoke: The Hidden Face of Brazil (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1972), 11.
Also, “Contrato de Arrendamento só favorece ao fazendeiro,” LIGA 18 December
1962, 1; and, a letter by Francisco Julião published in O Diario de Pernambuco:
“como a lei não protégé os camponeses só há um caminho: congregá-los, despertá-
los, politisá-los, para que a lei se faça. A lei, outrora, defendia a escravidão. A
ordem era LEILÃO DE ESCRAVOS como, hoje, ainda é o CAMBÃO.” “Uma carta
do dep. Francisco Julião,” Diario de Pernambuco, 31 January 1961, 6.

193
names, and each means slavery.”401 The Ligas tried to establish a minimum wage for

rural workers, hourly and weekly limits, and extend the CLT (Consolidação de Leis

Trabalhistas) to rural workers. But what seemed to be the dual objective in

appropriating the symbol of slavery in regards to the struggle for land reform was to

question and challenge the violence employed by large landowners and the police to

control rural workers. Slavery, or slave systems, frequently cited by social movement

leaders and popular poets, turning into a relatively common way to question the

legitimacy of the landowners, the police and the latifundio system.

The Ligas emphasized the violence of the latifundio system and how the large

landowners still employed punishments regarded as vestiges from the time when the

Northeast was a slave society. As Marcos Martins da Silva, President of the

Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais dos Municipios de Escada, Ipojuca e Amaragi,

Pernambuco, stated, “the Lei do tronco, kidnappings and solitary confinement in

prison rule in the municipio of Escada. The worst terror in the world reins on the

engenhos bangues, which are really just branches of the usinas and the engenhos

Solidade, Arandu, Canto Escuro, Sapucagi e Conceição. The hired thugs of the

latifundiarios are armed with the 1908 guns of the Armed Forces and with portable

machine guns. The “early morning bath” (banho da madrugada), beatings and even

the death penalty are dictated by the latifundiarios, those who make the laws on their

engenhos.”402

401
Julião, Cambão-The Yoke, 11. The book was originally published in Spanish,
Cambão: La cara oculta de Brasil (México: Siglo Ventiuno Editores, 1968); and later
in Portuguese, English, and French.
402
“Trabalhadores Rurais ganham salaries de morte,” LIGA 13 November 1962, 3.

194
 The Ligas also illustrated visually what they claimed was the state of

contemporary labor relations in the countryside. These illustrations portray how the

Ligas saw race relations as a part of the regime of slave labor. Unlike photographs

that might be more difficult to interpret in terms of racial meaning in Brazil, the

illustrations unquestionably mark the landowners as white and the workers as black.

Figure 1

Drawing in LIGA 13 November 1962, p.3.

QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

A poem by Pereira de Sousa, entitled “Nordeste Escravo” also describes the

situation in Northeastern Brazil in terms of slavery.

“Black slavery was abolished/ That was a disgrace for all of Brazil/
But today for an enormous number of people/ are the needle pricks of
a new type of slave. Today, in Northeastern lands/ the poor peasant
lives enslaved/ who only receives tips for salary/ that they pay him in
vouchers every month. Barefoot, half-naked, hoe on the shoulders/ He
is in a sad situation, hungry and enslaved/ Cultivating yet always more

195
 bitter. And this repeats scenes of slavery/ When the peasants marched
to work/ Well, if you caught sight of them, robust and always proud/
Resisting the figure of the plantation foreman. Grasping the thick
whip in his hand/ with his breeches and high boots/ And with disdain
he aims at his brothers/ who are less esteemed, on the other side of
luck. But if the yoke of the cambão falls apart/ If they pay cash and
not vouchers/ and if there are inspectors in every shanty/ And if the
fight against the misery and the evil/ then with the support of Nabuco/
the Northeast will ring with redemption/ Because it will already have
passed the apprenticeship/ that it needs for a new abolition.”403

Another poem, literatura de cordel, published in a Northeastern newspaper, Gazeta de

Patos: Orgão Livre e Rebelde a Serviço do Sertão Paraíbano in December 1962,

linked the condition of the rural worker to slaves, in the form of a conversation,

typical of literatura de cordel.404 It starts with the following statement: (The different

voice is in bold.)

“The land is for those who work it/ It is for those who plant it/ and
never for those who live off/ of our misery by exploiting us.”405 The
conversation develops between Zeca Moreira and his friend, who Zeca
continues to try to convince about the reality of the opening statement.
(“It is not stupid, my friend/ You can believe that it is true/ I’ve
already heard people talking/ about such things in the city.)

403
Pereira de Souza, “Nordeste Escravo” LIGA 25 December 1962, 3. Foi abolida a
negra escravidão/ Que foi oprobrio no Brasil inteiro/ Mas, hoje sobre enorme
multidão/ Os agulhões de um novo cativeiro. Vive hoje, ainda em terra nordestinos/
Escravisado, o pobre camponês/ Que apenas por salário tem propinas/ Que lhes
pagam em vales todo mês. Descalço, semi-ni, enxada os ombros,/ Vai tristonho,
faminto e escravisado/ Amanhnado mas sempre amargurado. E se repetem cenas de
cativo/ Quando os campônios marcham ao labor/ Pois se avista, robusta e sempre
altivo,/ Repelente figura de um feitor. Grosso azorrague empunha ele nas mãos/ De
primeiros botinas e culote/ E com desdém ‘aponta’ aos seus irmãos/ menos presados,
ao revés da sorte. Pue se desfaça o jugo do cambão/ Quese pague dinheiros e não
vales/ E que haja fisco em todo barracão/ E se combatam da miséria os males/ Que
ressurgm Nabuco, Patrocínio/ Pois o Nordeste clama redenção/ Porque já tem
formado a tirocínio/ De ser precisa nova abolição.”
404
Zê Taveira, “Conversa de Camponês,” Gazeta de Patos: Orgão Livre e Rebelde a
Serviço do Sertão Paraíbano, 31 December 1962, 6.
405
“A terra é de quem trabalha/ É de quem sua prantando/ E nunca desses qui vivem/
nossa miseria explorando.”

196
 So, you’re thinking/ that we were born equal/ with some of us living to
rest/ and othes to work too much?
(It is true that a Christian/ kills himself alone, on a plot of land/ It
was when the harvest comes/ he is the owner of only one little
bite.)
The meia, my friend, the terça (forms of unpaid labor)/ are forms of
exploitation/ And if it stopped there, it would be OK/ but it not only
this. There are people who fence off land/ and at the same time the
claim the land as theirs/ they never work it/ they don’t let themselves
work.
(But this exists, Seu Zeca/ As a way of distinguishing people/ as to
those who are literate/ and those who don’t have any schooling.)
There is no difference/ all that exists is exploitation/ Even without
being literate/ You have a understanding of the world. The others who
are wise/ who know how to read and write/ Think that ignorance/
keeps us tied up. And they don’t open school/ Out here in the sertão/
The only purpose of which/ is to maintain slavery. I know that there
are many caboclos/ Who don’t know their rights/ For this reaon they
don’t fight it/ They think everything is how it should be. For this
reason what we need/ everyone, everywhere observing/ that we are
slaves/ and what we need to do is to fight against it.
(You are speaking so beautifully/ You even seem like a doctor
(educated person)/ But you are illiterate/ The same as me. Who
taught you these things/ Where did you learn/ that things could be
difference/ from how we were born?)
The son of Noca, my friend/ factory worker in the city/ Told me that in
our hands/ is where we can find happiness. There where he works/
There is a whole workers world/ And they go on strike/ to obtain a
raise in salary. He said that they asked/ and they asked again a little
later/ and that the patrão (boss/owner) did not respond/ He realized
that it was a problem. So then they decided/ that the work had to stop/
And they only returned to the factory/ when the boss raised the salary.
(So, the work stopped?)
Everyone crossed their arms/ until he raised the salary/ and the son of
Noca explained to me that the slavery that exists/ there is a lot that has
to end/ The spoils, for who harvests/ is the same for those who plant.406

406
“Não é besteira, cumpadre/ Pode crer que é verdade/ Já escutei se falar/
Dessas coisa na cidade. Você então tá pensando/ Que nós nascemos iguais/ foi pra
uns viver folgado/ E outros trabaiá demais? Tá certo que um Cristão/ Se mate so,
num roçado/ Erá quando vem a coiêta/ Sê dono só dum bocado? A meia
cumpade, a têrça,/ São formas de exploração/ Se parasse aí, vá lá,/ Mas não é só isso
não. Tem gente que cerca terra/ Só mesmo mode cercá/ Que nela nunca trabáia/ Nem
deixa se trabaiá. Mas isso existe, Seu Zeca/ Prumode da distinção/ Entre a gente
que é letrada/ E os qui não tem instrução. Não existe diferença/ O que existe é
exploração/ Mesmo assim, sem ser letrado/ Você tem compreensão. Os outros qui

197
 And, the “Hymn of the Ligas Camponesas” also referred to slavery:

“Comrades and brothers in suffering

Our song of pain rises from the land.
It is a (...) seed that the wind
Broadcasts through the valley and over the hill.

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, and for bread
Comrades, we band together and we march

Our hands are goldenly callused

Attesting to our hard and honored labor
Brazil without us has no treasure
Without us Brazil has no future.”407

são sabido/ Qui sabem lê e escrevê/ Pensam que a ignorancia/ Empata a gente de vê.
E não que abi escolas,/ Aqui fora no sertão/ Só de vontade qui tem/ De manter a
escravidão. Sei qui há muito cabôco/ Qui não sabe o seu direito./ Pru via desso não
luta,/ Pois acha tudo bem feito. Porrisso é qui nós percisa/ Por todo canto espaiá/ Qui
chega de escravidão/ E qui a gente tem qui lutá. Tu tá falando bonito/ Até parece
um dotô/ Tú qui é analfabeto/ Igualzinho como eu sô. Quem te insinou essa coisa/
Onde foi qui tú aprendeu/ Qui pode sê diferente/ De como a gente nasceu? O Fi
a Nóca, cumpade/ Operario da cidade,/ Me contou qui em nossas mão/ é qui tá a
felicidade. Qui lá onde ele trabáia/ Tem um mundão operário/ E qui fizeram uma
greve/ Pelo aumento de salário. Ele disse qui pediram/ Qui pediram mais um pouco/
E qui o patrão nem ligou/ Fez conta qui era môco. Eles então resorreram/ Para o
trabáio pará/ E só voltarem pra fábrica/ Quando o patrão aumentá. E o trabalho
parô?/ Todo mundo cruzou braço/ Até que ele, aumentou/ E o fi da Noca explicó: A
escravidão lá pra fora/ Ha muito qui se acabou/ Nas istrajas, o qui se cóie/ É mesmo
de quem prantou.
407
Vice Consul Edwards Walters provided this “hymn” in a dispatch in 1960 after
going to the Engenho Galiléia and meeting with the Ligas Camponesas members, but
this is the only place I have found the hymn and it was in the English translation.

198
 In a letter to Francisco Julião that was in the DOPS-PE file on the Ligas

Camponesas from Lourenço Freitas of Upatininga, Pernambuco, Freitas described the

misery of the cane worker in the area, asking for Julião’s assistance in organizing the

rural workers. In it he described: “Na zona, é a região típica da miséria, onde muitos

engenhos o trabalhador vive em situção identica a os negros do século passado.”408

Padre Crespo, of the Church Federations of Rural Workers, also used the language of

slavery to describe the situation of Nordestino peasants: “O nordestino é um escravo.

Vivemos numa civilização escravocrata se bem que disfarçada. Há formas de

escravidão piores do que as da escravidão negra. Homens que só têm deveres, mas,

não têm direitos.”409

The new abolition, according to the Ligas Camponesas, was radical agrarian

reform. In 1962, Julião made the famous statement of the “Carta de Alforria do

Camponês” or the Peasant’s Manumission Letter. The first line reads, “From here,

Recife, Pernambuco, the cradle of the Ligas Camponesas, I send you this letter,

peasants of Brazil, with the hope that it will arrive in your home.” Throughout the

declaration, Julião uses the “tu” form to address the peasant, a familiar term but

relatively uncommon in Brazil. The first section, entitled “The Union” describes the

regime of poverty and violence that dictates the life of the Brazilian peasant. Julião

Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the

Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service Dispatch 7 Sept
1960, from AmConsul Recife to Dept of State. Subject: The Ligas Camponesas of
Pernambuco, Confidential. RG 84, Box 128, Folder 500: Northeast 1961. National
Archives.
408
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas
Camponesas s/numero., no. 29.796, January 1956. Copy of a letter to Julião from
Xisto Lourencço Freitas, no. 125. DOPS-PE. Recife.
409
“Padre Crespo vê na sindicalização rural a última esperança do trabalhador do
campo,” Diario de Pernambuco 17 August 1962, 11.

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tells the peasants that the Ligas are the “closed hand” of solidarity between all the

rural workers and the world rebels such as Jesus Christ, Francisco de Assis, Mao Tse-

Tung, and Fidel Castro. “Alone you are a drop of water but together you are a

waterfall,” Julião instructs.

Part II describes the paths or ways to bring freedom to the peasant. Julião

desribes freedom as land, bread, medicine, school, and peace. The next section is on

the Liga, described as the first step in the path for freedom. Julião asks, “what does

democracy mean to the peasant? I will explain it to you. It is taking the soldier 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.” In this

section, Julião attacks the cambão and the voucher system, stating that these exist in

the countryside throughout Brazil and are anti-democratic, a way for “the latifundio

to enslave you.” Julião emphasizes that all rural workers need to join the Liga,

because this is the way to work together for freedom, “the guide that can show you

the way to freedom.”

The rural union (sindicato) is the fourth section, and Julião distinguishes

between rural workers who work the land and those who are eiteiro, or hired hands,

that supposedly have no rights to anything, work sunup to sundown, die early,

hungry, tired. “You are slave by day, 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, because you are already a factory worker (operário).” Julião states that the

Communist Party rural unions are better than the Church unions because the priests

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will not fight for freedom. “They will only light a candle and hand you off like a

package to the latifundio.

The other possible path, indicated in the fifth section, is the cooperative,

described as being “all for one and one for all.” The cooperative supposedly is the

best way to fight against the latifundio, where all the foreiros, posseiros, small and

middle landholders work together to produce products for market, sharing the

rewards. The sixth part “a human and just law” describes the “Lei Trabalhista” that

needs to be extended to rural workers. The emphasis is placed on everyone working

together against the latifundio, against tyranny, and for land reform and freedom.

And the seventh section discusses the need for enfranchisement of illiterates.

According to Julião the number of illiterates who cannot vote compose half of the

Brazilian population. Not only should they have the right to education, but they

should also have the right to vote.

Shortly before the military coup, the Pernambucan Communist Party

published a story in A Hora about the punishments used on some of the engenhos in

Pernambuco.410 In the Municipio of João Alfredo, the rural worker Severino

Francisco dos Santos refused to give the landowner the day of unpaid labor,

(cambão), and was “medievally beaten up with blows and struck by a raw leather

whip, until he he lost his senses, by the hired thugs of the senhor de engenho of the

fazenda Cascaval, property of Sr. Severino Augusto de Albuquerque.” Another

report, by Estanislau Oliveira described the violent acts committed by the

latifundiário of Engenho Serra, notorious for being one of the most violent engenhos

410
“Latifúndio comete novo crime,” A Hora 22 – 28 February 1964, 1.

201
(located near Engenho Galiléia outside of Vitória de Santo Antão): “they varied the

beatings with cipó-pau (type of vine associated with slave punishment), xique-xique

(cactus), horse whip, where they burned peasants, still alive who were considered

rebels, placing a strong current on the necks of those who were tied to a tronco

(stocks) with open arms to the Big House, the pulling out of facial hair for arriving

late or working slowly, murders in the middle of the night, while everyone was asleep

(the bodies were thrown into the pond/water reservoir, where many bones were later

discovered), and the refusal to let any professor enter the engenho.”411

Givaldo Rios, writing for another Recife-based Communist Party newspaper,

the Jornal dos Bancários, described the details of what he called, “life on the

Engenho Serra.”412 Photographs by Fernando Castro showed men pointing upwards

on the engenho, to the following description: “A ‘forca’ como é chamado o

instrumento que o latifundiário condenava aqueles camponeses que discordavam de

sua ‘lei’ e que rgegistarmos na foto acima. Era nesse instrumento de suplício que a

justiça federal funcionava impunemente no Engenho Serra.” Rios described the

conditions and the struggle for land and against the violence of the Engenho Serra,

owned at the time by the ex-Secretário de Segurança Pública, Alarcio Bezerra

Cavalcanti. Supposedly only one worker of the fifty families on the engenho was

literate, most were over 60 years old and the landowner had been involved in

throwing workers off the engenho for years. He quoted an unnamed rural worker

who described the atrocities that had taken place: “ ‘O que o doutor Arraes e Julião

quiser, nós faremos. Quanto às ossadas desinterramos todas deste engenho e

411
Lauro Goes, “A trágedia do Engenho Serra,” A Hora 14-20 March 1964, 3.
412
Givaldo Rios, “A vida no Engenho Serra,” Jornal dos Bancários 6 March 1964, 2.

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pertenecem a diversas vítimas, ex-moradores destas terras.’” He pointed at a 12-year-

old child and explained, “ ‘o pai daquele alí foi amarrado a uma pedra e avoado assim

dentro do lago que fica na frente da Casa Grande. Outros foram enforcados e alguns

quiemados vivos na ‘estufa.’ Todas essas moretes foram feitas sem grandes motives.

Bastava que algum morador resolvesse abandonar o serviço e fosse procurar outras

terras para trabalhar, ou fosse ainda pegado chupando cana ou fruta do engenho, para

que recebesse como castigo a vingança do Coroné Alarece.”

Another rural worker with three children told the reporter the story of what

happened to her husband. Álzira Lourdes da Silva testified

“Meu marido estava cortando cana quando seu cachimbo

provocou acidentalmente um pequeno incendio. Mesmo queimando
os braços e com a ajuda de outros companheiros, as chamas forma
debeladas, não indo o prejuizo além de uma braçada de cana. À noite,
quando estavamos dormindo, a polícia invadiu o nosso mocambo e o
levou para Recife. Durante 45 dias, José ficou preso, sendo surrado e
mal comido.
Depois foi trazido pelos guardas aqui para o engenho onde foi
pendurados pelos braços na ‘forca.’ Alí pedurado foi sacudido com
violencia diversas vezes de encontr à parede até ficar banhado de
sangue. Quando ia sendo levado quase morto para a ‘estufa,’
chorando eu me diriji junto com outras mulheres ao Coroné Alarico e
pedimos que não queimasse José. Ele então nos respondeu – Vocês
são umas miseraveis atrevidas que me vêm pedir ara não queimar este
homem. Ele deve ser queimado da mesmo forma como queimou
minhas canas. Mas apezar de não ser queimado, ele vai se arrepender.
E, em seguida levou José preso e amarrado em companhia de vários
capangas. No dia seguinte, seu moço, quando fomos nos aproximando
da casa grande, vimos o pobre José pedendurado pelo pescoço por um
corrente, amarrado alí e apontou para uma árvore junto a casa grande.
Somente agora é que nos pode contra tudo isso, pois o Coroné não está
aqui.”

When I visited the Engenho Galiléia in 2005 and spoke to some of the ex-

Ligas Camponesas members, they recalled the Engenho Serra and described it as one

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of the most violent engenhos in the area. Stories, perhaps rumors, continued to be

told in the rural Northeast about the many human bones that were found in the açude

when it dried up on the Engenho Serra. The ex-Ligas militants remembered the

violence on the Engenho Galiléia, perpetrated by the capangas and the police, and

spoke with pride about Julião, saying that he had “freed” them, that “slavery” no

longer existed in the community. One of the reasons why the metaphor of slavery

was powerful throughout the Northeast was that, at times, the type of power wielded

on the engenho by the landowner and supported by the police resembled the violence

of slave society.

Interpretations and Representations of Abolition

The idea of abolition and the image of abolitionists acquired many different meanings

in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The cultural representations and historical

interpretations shifted dramatically from a top-down narrative of slave owners

“teaching” their slaves about abolition, as depicted in the films Sinha Moça (1953)

and Oswaldo Censoni’s João Negrinho (1954)413 to a bottom-up narrative. Social

movement leaders used abolition as an example of the type of social struggle

necessary for agrarian reform and they used the theme of abolition to call into

question the legitimacy of the power of the latifundio and the government. For

instance, in the Diario do Congresso Nacional in December 1959, (circled in red and

held in the DOPS-PE files), Antonio Callado testified in Brazilian Congress about the

413
Robert Stam, “Slow Fade to Afro: The Black Presence in Brazilian Cinema,” Film
Quarterly 36, no. 2 (Winter 1982): 16-32.

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need for agrarian reform and for supporting the expropriation of Engenho Galiléia. In

his testimony, he used the language of slavery and abolition to argue that the force of

agrarian reform was impossible to revert: “Eu confesso que não vejo aqueles bravos

caboclos da Galiléia expulsos do seu pequeno ninho de homens livres. Não vejo tal

coisa e destetaria vê-la. Aqueles homens morreriam de vergonha e de malancolia,

voltando ao tronco e chicote depoise de quatro anos de liberdade. Garanto que eles

preferam morrer das balas do capitão José Lopes.”414 Northeastern abolitionists, as

well as famous foreign liberators of slaves such as Abraham Lincoln, were

resurrected and turned into symbols for social movement leaders engaged in the

struggle for land reform.415

Francisco Julião found a historical ally in abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco who

had delivered speeches and writings on the necessity for agrarian reform as a

component of abolition. Julião used Nabuco not only as a way to promote agrarian

reform and gain support from rural workers, but also to counteract, morally and

patriotically, those who criticized agrarian reform and the Ligas Camponesas. For

414
Testmony of Antonio Callado, Diario do Congresso Nacional (seção I) 3
December 1959, p.9220-9222. In: Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco.
Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas: Caiçara, Engenho Barra, Engenho
Caehaira, Vitória de Santo Antão. March 1951 – June 1969. no. 29309, (24-25).
DOPS-PE. Recife.
415
Supporters of the Ligas Camponeses regularly referred to Francisco Julião as an
“Abraham Lincoln.” In what appeared to be an attempt to debunk this association,
the Diario de Pernambuco published an insert in May 1963 (no association claimed)
with a picture of Lincoln and the following statement: “A propriedade é o fruto do
trabalho; a propriedade é desajável. É um bem positivo do mundo. Alguém send
rico, mostra que os outros também poderão sê-lo e isto é encorajamento para a
indústria e a iniciativa pessoal. Não deixe aquele que não tem casa destruir a de
outrem. Mas dê uma oportunidade para trabalhar diligentemente e construir uma para
si, assegurando também com esse exemplo, que ela estará a salvo de violência depois
de edificada.” Diario de Pernambuco 24 May 1963, 7

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instance, in July 1959, the Diario de Pernambuco published a letter from Francisco

Julião to Zilde Maranhão, a journalist who Julião claimed wrote in support of the

Associação dos Fornecedores de Cana.416 Julião labeled Maranhão as a person who

stood against the glorious Pernambucan past and the ideals of Joaquim Nabuco.

Julião stated that freeing peasants from the “feudal regime of the latifundio” was in

fact part of the long process of emancipation. In Julião’s efforts to urge Maranhão to

refrain from criticizing the Ligas Camponesas, he referred to Maranhão’s hometown:

“I don’t remember if it was Aliança, your birthplace, or Nazaré

da Mata, where some of the senhores-de-engenho wrote letters to tell
other slave masters about what Nabuco was threatening and advising
them to not give shelter to that communist agitator, carbonário, and
nihilist. Look here, Zilde, at what Nabuco and his contemporaries said.
I really doubt that even one of the grandchildren of the slave masters
would today denounce their grandfather as an enemy of abolition. His
memory would be destroyed and this grandson would feel isolated in
the editorial office of the newspaper where you work, in the club that
you attend, in the association that you are a part of, in any place in this
country. The day is not far off that this grandson will keep silent about
the horrible crimes that they are committing against the peasant in the
regime of the cambão, vara, meia, terça, vale, barracão and any other
of the thousands of ways the peasant’s work is exploited.”
Julião urged Maranhão to read the poetry of Castro Alves about slavery, “Palavras de

um conservador,” so that Maranhão could understand the side that he was supporting.

And Julião also claimed that agrarian reform was the only way to destroy the slave

regime that continues intact.

The 75th anniversary of the Lei Aurea (Golden Law) was celebrated on May

13, 1963. The Pernambucan Communist Party publication, A Hora, connected

abolition with agrarian reform, suggesting that if abolition had become a law, agrarian

416
Francisco Julião, “Desafio do deputado socialista ao jornalista Zilde Maranhão
para um debate sobre reforma agrária,” Diario de Pernambuco 15 July 1959, 8.

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reform could become a law.417 “The main argument that was used then is identical to

what they are using today against agrarian reform, which is, according to them, that

the national patrimony will be stolen, as if once freed, slaves 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 really it would multiply in

its productivity through the live interest of thousands and thousands of new

landowners.” The anniversary of abolition was seen as a model to stimulate the

struggle for the abolition of the oppressed suffered by thousands of Brazilians still

caught in a feudal and precaptialist situation, and one that needed to develop and

transform for the emancipation of the Brazilian economy as well.

The Communist Party Novos Rumos published a historical analysis of the

struggle over abolition in Brazil, with the explicit intention of comparing it to the

process of combating the abolition of the latifundio.418 The article proposed to

rethink the role of Princess Isabel in the process of abolition, portaying her actions as

generated by the pressure from the povo and the “authentic leaders” who fought

against groups struggling to preserve their privileges.

According to the article, the history of slavery was the history of struggle. “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 antinatural,

antihuman labor for which he was destined. This history of slavery in Brazil is a

417
“Abolição da escravatura faz (amanhã) anniversario,” A Hora 11 – 17 May 1963,
7.
418
“Abolição: Reforma de Base Conquitada no Século XIX,” Novos Rumos 17 – 23
May 1963, 8.

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heroic chapter of escape, quilombos and rebellions.” The article discusses the

rebellions, laws, events, and numerous associations throughout the nineteenth century

that led to abolition. What is most interesting is the emphasis the article placed on

certain groups and their influence on bringing about abolition. The article discussed

the influence of student groups; for instance, the campaign of “limpeza das ruas” led

by students at the Escola Politécnica, asking slaveowners to free their slaves, which

supposedly led to the streets of Ouvidor, 7 de Setembro, Uruguainana, Travessa

Ouvidor becoming “slave-free.” Women, actors, musicians and artists also

supposedly played a major role in organizing the campaign for abolition. The

methods, as the article claims, “are the same methods used today” to organize the

popular campaign against slavery.

The article discussed legal debates at the time, focusing on what certain

leaders were saying about the need to preserve slavery, since abolition would

supposedly cause chaos and disorder. “Those in the Parliament defended the thesis -

that they still use today in the case of many peasants - that it would not take one step

forward to abolish slavery without “preparing” slaves for their new lives.” The article

points out that one of the main arguments against abolition was the threat to the

principle of private property. In conclusion, the author claims that the same issues

confront Brazilians today and that few things have changed in terms of methods and

forms of struggle needed to make profound structural changes.

Linking this history to the present struggles of agrarian reform, the author

writes,

“The example of the past guides our present struggles. Abolition of

slavery teaches us that it would have never come about without mass

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 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. If the people had merely
watched the debates and waited for the government officials, they
would still be involved with their debates over property rights, the
upset of order, the anarchy of the economy and all the other arguments
that allowed them to continue the unhuman and indefensible status
quo. And we would have had more than a half a century of delays,
debates and palliative measures. It is not this path which works for us.”

In a more positive vein, the Ligas Camponesas also published an article on

abolition in Brazil that emphasized the Northeastern roots of abolition and focused on

the municipality of Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte.419 On September 30, 1963, the

people of Mossoró gathered to celebrate 80 years of abolition, since Mossoró passed

an abolition measure five years before the Lei Aurea. LIGA published what they

considered the “most important” events of the commemorations which included the

inauguration of the Sindicato dos Ferroviários de Mossoró, in which a number of

invited guests including Francisco Julião, gathered to celebrate and later joined in a

game of football with the railroad workers, students and peasants.

The article continued, explaining the connection between the past and the

present:

“The episode of Mossoró’s abolition functions, above all else, to fix

the position of this land and of its people on the side of freedom and
the equality of the rights of all men. The entire city, on this day,
celebrates the passage of this anniversary, commemorating the truism
passed in 1883, that was a noble page written in the history of this
municipio.
The struggle of our forefathers who battled against the feudal
society, against the slaveholders, the exploiters of slave labor, was a
struggle without truces and was highly dignified, that shook

419
“Mossoró – A primeira cidade brasileira a extripar a escravatura – comemorou
fesitvamente o 30 de setembro,” LIGA 23 October 1963, 5.

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 everyone’s consciousness and united the citizens in a broad army
against the slaveholders.
Over 80 years ago, when this city still did not have more than
3,000 inhabitants, those who administered the city, the leaders of the
people, the government officials, could give a marvelous lesson to the
entire country, declaring free all the blacks subjugated to slave labor.
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 nor Christian if if is based on the explotation of some
versus others, and the oppresive actions of the powerful against the
humble already at this time lingered in the souls of Mossoroenses.
Today, Mossoró is more developed, clearly integrated in the
modern struggle for the conquest of progress, and the romantic
makings of its forefathers driven by those who became leaders in the
abolitionist movement is still venerated with reason.
It is worthy of note that this small city of Mossoró with less
than 3,000 inhabitants at that time, poor, lost in the immense
Northeastern Brazil, let itself be dominated by those ideas that, for
some time, had inspired the works of Castro Alves and that served as
the base of the civic cries of Joaquim Nabuco, Lopes Trovão, and
Eusébio de Queiroz.
The 30 of September shows that Mossoró arrived early to these
ideas and here they quickly sprouted in fertile soil.”

The use of Mossoró as a symbol of the struggle for abolition highlights the idea that

abolition emerged from the Northeast as a struggle coming from the workers, students

and rural people, instead of it being a law given to the slaves from Princess Isabel.

The Ligas also used the case of Mossoró to provide another example of how

revolutionary change had come from the Northeast, preceding and leading the nation,

as the Ligas hoped to do with the struggle for land reform. Governor Miguel Arraes,

in a January 1964 speech in the Praça da República in Rio de Janeiro, declared, “Our

struggle is a struggle for emancipation!”420 Arraes called for “national emancipation”

from foreign imperialism and restated the need for agarian reform. The Ligas, the

PCB and Northeastern prominent politicians and intellectuals wove together the fight

420
“Arraes – Ano I,” Novos Rumos 7-13 February 1964, 5.

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for the abolition of slavery and the struggle for agrarian reform in Northeastern Brazil

on various levels, but the question remains how this connected to the historical period

of civil rights and third world liberation as well as to the dominant narrative of racial

democracy.

Racial Democracy and Transnational Perspectives on Race Relations

The national Brazilian narrative of “racial democracy” has often been associated with

Gilberto Freyre (Casa-grande e senzala, 1933). Freyre was from Pernambuco, an

elected federal deputy in the 1946, and the founder (1949) and director of the Instituto

Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (IJNPS), where in the 1950s and 1960s, he led

a number of seminars and courses on Northeastern Brazil and race relations. As

director of the IJNPS, Freyre visted the UNESCO headquarters in 1951 and asked for

the IJNPS to be a part of the studies on race relations, which was accepted

immediately, with studies planned for Afro-Brazilian religions and culture in

Pernambuco.421 In addition, most foreigners who came to Pernambuco in the 1950s

and 1960s met with Freyre during their visit or their stay since he was considered an

expert on Northeastern Brazil, and considered a “non-political” or “objective” voice,

even though this was not the case whatsoever. Freyre’s fame came from Casa-

grande e senzala, in which he presented an argument about the mildness of the slave

421
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. As Marcos Chor Maio argued, the main importance of the UNESCO studies was
that they reinforced the social science methodology for studying race relations in
Brazil and they confirmed what many Brazilian activists and intellectuals had been
claiming: Prejudice and discrimination against blacks existed in Brazil.

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system in Brazil. He argued that modernization had led to the downfall of Brazil

because of the disintegration of the patricarchal family and the protection of the

slaves by the masters. The argument also drew upon the idea that the benevolent

nature of Brazilian slavery allowed for a racial democracy – that is, a society not

based on racial divisions – to emerge through miscegenation. So, how did this

dominant narrative play out in the rural social movements and popular culture?

Judging from a number of examples of literatura de cordel, race and class

shaped the popular poets’ interpretations of systems of domination and resistance. A

poem published in LIGA explicitly referred to race as a component of the struggles of

the peasants against the large landowners. “The large landowner is kind with our

wives!/ The other day he took charge of/ the son of Zé Pretinho/ that by way of some

strange miracle/ was born very blond…”422 The explicit reference to the power of the

422
DENIS, “Pompilo Inferno,” in LIGA 18 December 1963, 8 in Francisco Julião,
ed., Ligas Camponesas: Outubro 1962-Abril1964 CIDOC Cuadernos, no. 27
(Cuernavaca, 1969): 454. The full poem is:
O inferno começa ali/Inferno de mortandade/maleita, fome e patrão/Inferno de eterna
dívida/que jamais se acabará/pois, se acaso morre o pai/o filho trabalhará.
Em lugar nenhum do mundo/carne seca, chita e facão/valeram tanto dinheiro/e
tamanha escravidão/É bem verdade que o padre/alivia o sofrimento/prometendo em
troca diste/o céu como pagamento/Ele diz que também sofre/mas sofre um pouco
melhor/O duro é sofrer no mato/sem pão, conforto e remédio/sofrer cortando
seringa/sendo cupado sem tédio/sofrer dando o sangue à vista/pra dois grandes
sugadores:/mosquito e seringalista.
Sofrer sabendo que o filho/vai crecer analfabeto/sofrer sabendo que o mesmo/está
reservado ao reto. Isso, para não citar/os jagunços do patrão/sueuri, índio,
enchente,/governo, banco, fiscal,/que nos tiram, secamente/o pouco que se
ganhou/suando no seringal./De vez em quando o patrão/manda chamar Maria/ e faz
uma prefeção/sobre a tal democracia./Pergunta se eu tenho andade/ com história de
comunismo/e dizem em tom de ameaça/que isto é beira de abismo/Depois que Maria
volta/ quase sempre traz presente/ não pra mim, para Joana/que mulher do Vicente./
O coronel é bondoso/ com as esposas da gente!/ Outra dia tomou conta/ do filho do
Zé Pretinho/ que por um estranho milagre/ nasceu lourinho, lourinho.../mas somente a
mulheril/ tem direito a regalia/ --homem nasceu para sofrer!/ ninguém lhe contraria./

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large landowner in terms of sexual relations and race relations is relatively

uncommon in literatura de cordel. Most scholars argue that the popular poetry

reflects and supports the dominant narratives in erudite literature, but this poem

suggests that the dominant narrative faced significant challenges. Likewise, the black

figure in literatura de cordel often plays the role of the “bad” character, either violent

and savage or a submissive slave, but in the case of this poem, the “black” character

is the victim of exploitation who is urged to fight against the large landowner.423

Another way that the racialized dimension of the struggle for agrarian reform

in Northeastern Brazil was raised was in relation to international anti-colonial

O doutor que é da cidade/ não pode imaginar/ o que é ser miserável/ viver morrendo
de fome/ e morrer de trabalhar./ mas o pior de tudo isso/ é que a gente não tem tempo/
de assistir à Santa Missa/ como manda a religião/ e se morrer de repente/ vai purgar
todos pecados/ pela vida divertida/ no calor do Fogo Eterno/ E começa outro
Inferno...
423
Olga de Jesus Santos and Marilena Vianna, O negro na literatura de cordel (Rio
de Janeiro: Fundação Casa Rui Barbosa, 1989).
An example of the conservative popular poetry version of a racist version of
the “negro” is in Poeta Seny’s “Porque é quem em 60 Negro vai virar Macaco,” a
poet who regularly published anti-Ligas and anti-agrarian reform poetry:
“Disse: o fogoió meu povo/ todos mi escutem um momento/ que vou dizer como o
negro/teve origem e nascimento:/ duma onça e um gorilla/ por meio do cruzamento.
Um gorila lá na Africa/ casou com um Canguçu,/ e nasceu uma familia/ preta, da côr
de urubú/ com as semelhanças de gente/ feios como um papangú... E o povo
primitivo/ de lá daquele lugar/ domesticou esses bichos/ e lhe ensinou a falar.../ eis a
origem dos negros/ como poude se gerar...” (…) “negro tem mais um defeito/ que
você falta saber.../
Negro não manda, vai, / negro dar e não promete/ meteu-lhe o braço ligeiro / com
bem força to topete../ que o fogoió caiu tonto, / só aguentou um bofete. E logo que
levantou-se/ quiz faser revolução/ porem o povo gritou/ O senhor não tem razão!/ e
tiraram o fogoió/ de dentro da condução. E por causo desta greve / o povo rindo
comenta../ brincando com a negrada/ os da pele mais cinzenta/ propaga que negro vai/
virar macaco em 60. Existe até negro tôlo/ que não suporta se dana, / se é preto fica
cinzento/ e reponde esta chicana/ se negro virar macaco/ branco vai virar banana.”
Poeta Seny, “Porque é quem em 60 Negro vai virar Macaco” (n.p., n.d.)

213
struggles, including the civil rights movement in the United States. One article on

Angola in LIGA directly challenged Gilberto Freyre’s studies on Africa and

Portuguese colonialism as benevolent claiming that “Nem mesmo Gilberto Freire,

com todo o seu sabejismo ‘luso-tropical’ foi capaz de transformar em folklore

inocente o oprobrio sistema de dominação (…) conservado por Salazar.”424 Not only

does this statement address the violence of the anti-colonial struggles, but it also

challenges the use of folklore and folk culture as a way to read these struggles, and

Gilberto Freyre’s interpretations of anti-colonial struggles.

The Ligas Camponesas regularly published articles about the U.S. Civil

Rights movement, using the struggle over Civil Rights as evidence of the false

democracy of the United States, referring to the United States as the “Cortina de

Dolar” (as opposed to the Cortina de Ferro, or Iron Curtain).425 One such article

wondered how the US saw Brazilians given that most Brazilians have black blood in

their veins, and to be black in the US meant being arrested for protesting peacefully

and being forced to sit in the back of the buses, treated as inferiors or as animals.426

What is interesting is the Brazilian perspective of race that comes out in the article, in

that it seems even more incredible to the author that blonde or light-skinned

Americans who have traces of black blood are also subjected to segregation. The

circumstances of James Meredith’s graduation from the University of Mississippi

424
“Massacre em Angola Não Tem Fim” LIGA 27 November 1962, 6.
425
“Racismo nos EUA,” (about Birmingham) LIGA 22 May 1963, 4; “Tres religiões
defendem a integração racial,” LIGA 7 August 1963, 4; Luta contra a discriminação
racial,” LIGA 28 August 1963, 4; Ayrton Alencar, “200 mil negros ocuparam
Washington: Por liberdade e por democracia a ‘Marcha da Vergonha,’” LIGA 4
September 1963, 6.
426
“Consciencia Revolucionária: Democracia, liberdade, sargentos,” LIGA 15 May
1963, 2; Also, Eulália Vieira, “Consciencia Revolucionária,” LIGA 22 May 1963, 2.

214
were interpreted as “American democracy being on the brink of civil war,” and the

article called it embarrassing that machine guns and bayonets had to be held to allow

a student to graduate from college.427 The Ligas also used this case to point out that

the major newspapers in Brazil had not published anything about the incident, which

supposedly showed that the Brazilian newspapers worked to preserve the “good

name” of the United States.

The Ligas also tried to build solidarity between African-Americans, Cubans,

Brazilians, and Africans.428 For instance, one article discussed the case of Robert

Williams, an African American who fled to Cuba after the Revolution, because of

political persecution in the United States. Williams was quoted as saying, “ ‘A

mesma propaganda que procura ocultar ao nosso povo a verdade sobre Cuba é

utilizada pelo Governo Americano para iludir os negros do meu Pais. (…) A

propaganda oficial procura fazer crer aos americanos de cor que em todos os demais

paises os negros são tratados com discriminação e que são os EUA quem ainda os

tratam melhor.”429 The U.S. civil rights movement appeared to have been of great

interest to the Ligas, with numerous reports about protests and racist politics in the

U.S. South.

A 1961 film by documentary filmmaker Jean Manzon exemplifies an attempt

of the U.S. government to counter the crique of racism in the U.S.. “Harmonia das

Americas” (Harmony of the Americas, 1961) documented a tour through Brazil

427
Deraldo Lima,“O outro lado da história,” LIGA 16 October 1962, 3.
428
“Morre W.E.Burghardt DuBois, ideologo negro,” LIGA 21 September 1963, 2;
“Africanos contra o racismo,” LIGA 21 September 1963, 3.
429
“Americanos (de Cuba) dispostos a morrer pela revolução,” LIGA 13 November
1962, 6.

215
sponsored the Brazil-U.S. Cultural Institute by the Howard University Choir.430 It is

not clear where or when the film showed but it was in Portuguese. The tour and the

film were clearly cultural propaganda to showcase African-Americans as U.S.

cultural ambassadors to Latin America, and to show the similarities between African

American and Brazilian culture. The fact that the trip occurred and the film was

produced suggests that the U.S. government took the criticism of race relations

seriously, and were making an effort in the early 1960s to establish a common view

of the Americas as an area of racial mixing connected to Africa.

In September 1963, LIGA published Mao Tse-Tung’s “message” to Black

North Americans, and Mao’s “Emancipation Proclamation for African Americans”.431

In a conference in Afria, Mao asked all the people of the world to unite against racial

discrimination and North American imperialism. Mao said that the nineteen million

blacks in the U.S. still lived in a system of slavery, oppression and discrimination.

According to Mao, the violence of the Klu Klux Klan and lynchings showed the true

nature of US democracy, but in the past few years, black North Americans had started

to fight for their freedom and rights. The declaration discussed the protests and legal

measures to end segregation policies. It ended with a call for solidarity, “Exorto aos

operários, camponeses, intelecutais, revolucionarios, elementos burgueses sensatos e

outros pessoas sensatas de todos os cores no mundo, brancos, negros, amarelos,

mestiços, etc., a unir-se contra a discriminação racial. (…) Estou profundamente

430
U.S. Information Agency. Jean Manzon, “Harmony in the Americas,” 1961.
306.3605. National Archives.
431
“Negros norte-americanos lutam: Mensagem de Mao Tse Tung,” LIGA 21
September 1963, 3; “A proclamação de emancipação dos Afro-Americanos, de Mao
Tse Tung,” LIGA 21 September 1963, 3.

216
convencido de que contando com o apoio de mais de 90 por cento dos habitantes do

mundo inteiro, a luta justa dos negros norte-americanos se enroara de certo com a

vitória. O malvado sistema colonialista e imperialista que florecia com a escravidão e

o tráfico de negros também desaparecera com a emancipação da racismo!” The

Emanicipation Proclamation referred to Abraham Lincoln, but put “North American

racism” in a broader context, labeling it a “threat to the entire world.” “For the racists

of the U.S., a person of color is worth less that a mongrel dog and this is the justice of

the country that has proclaimed itself the savior of the world.”

Regular reports appeared on African independence struggles, with a special

focus placed on Angola.432 Oftentimes the articles made a direct comparison between

independence struggles in Angola and the struggle of the Ligas for radical agrarian

reform.433 LIGA published poetry and literature from Angola, including works by

Agostinho Neto and Manuel Lima, and Viriato da Cruz Makèzú, that dealt with topics

such as slavery, imperialism and racism.434

Figure 2

Cartoon in LIGA 6 November 1963, p.6

432
“Imprensa Popular,” LIGA 20 November 1962, 5; “Massacre em Angola Não Tem
Fim” LIGA 27 November 1962, 6; Heliodoro Albuquerque, “Do Ponto de Vista
Operário: Lumumba,” LIGA 13 March 1963, 2; “Argélia: Exemplo de revolução
nacionalista,” LIGA 13 March 1963, 5 (about the significance of Algerian
independence for Angola); “Voz da África: África 1962,” LIGA 22 May 1963, 4;
“Congo dará ajuda aos nacionalistas angolanos,” LIGA 14 August 1963, 4;
“Nacionalistas angolanos em conferencia,” LIGA 14 August 1963, 4; Andrade
Lima,“Manobras do colonialismo português,” LIGA 4 September 1963, 4; “Nkrumah,
Selasissié e win manifestam-se sobre a conferencia de chefes de estado,” LIGA 15
October 1963, 2.
433
“Influencia camponesa na revolução angolana,” LIGA 23 January 1963, 3;
Andrade Lima,“Voz da África: ‘Olho por olho,” LIGA 19 June 1963, 4.
434
Andrade Lima and Kamoço, “Poetas angolanos lutam pela independencia,” LIGA
6 November 1963, 3.

217
 QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.

And, as mentioned earlier, many of the Leftist newspapers frequently

analyzed anti-colonial/anti-imperialist struggles of the Cold War in terms of the

metaphor of slavery. Third World activists found the metaphor readily available to

discuss Third World independence movements, portaying the threat of the Third

World being enslaved either by the US or by Russia. For instance, one article in A

Hora (PCB) described the Interamerican Conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay,” as

an attempt by the United States to use its power to enslave the people of the Third

World. “Mais uma vez, os imperialistas norte-americanos tentam derrubar o regime

socialista de Cuba. Tentam transformar a ‘pérola das Antilhas,’ onde o povo se

encontra no poder, graças a Revolução, numa colonia submissa ao seu Departamento

de Estado, isto é, submissa aos anseios de dominação e escravização dos povos

livres.”435 Leftist groups in Brazil interpreted the actions of the US government in

Cuba as the US attempt to enslave the Third World.436 But, Russia and communism

435
“Escravos, não” A Hora 27 January – 3 February 1962, 3.
436
Since Cuba was a spotlight of international relations during the Cold War in the
early 1960s, the anti-American protests strengthened by US actions in Cuba are
perhaps another way to understand the reasons behind some of the Kennedy and
Johnson Administrations’ policies of covert actions. It is possible that the US
government understood US actions in Cuba as creating a broader base of support for

218
were also seen as a threat to Third World independence, a discourse of the Cold War

coming from the Third World but intricately connected to the US-Soviet relations.

Numerous references were made about the slavery of communist societies in the

mainstream press, editorials, and in conservative literatura de cordel. For example,

one popular poem, “Reforma Agrária e o Comunismo,” explained that in Russia,

“They are forced to work/ and no one has freedom/ they don’t even have control over

themselves/ they don’t do what they want to do/ those who say that equality exists are

lying.”437 The poem insists that communism enslaved people, and urges the audience

not to believe the “lies” that communist societies are more egalitarian, allowing poor

peasants to go to school, eat, and have access to social services such as health care.

This shows how both the left and the right, or both the anti-American and anti-

Russian political activists, used the metaphor of slavery as a political tool to express

the need for Third World independence during the Cold War.

Representations of Quilombos in Popular Culture

While much of the political discourse discussed slavery and abolition without

specifically engaging with race relations or blackness, representations of such

narratives in films cast Afro-Brazilian actors and implemented other tools to mark the

Leftist groups in Latin America and the Third World, a threat to US hegemony that
the US government could not risk for fear of other Cubas.
437
Mark J. Curran, História do Brasil em cordel (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade
de São Paulo, 1988), 168-169. Curran writes that folhetos such as História da
Reforma Agrária e o Comunismo were funded and sometimes completely created by
“pseudopoet” propagandists of the right.

219
narrative as African or black. Two important films to the Cinema Novo movement

approached the theme of quilombos in Northeastern Brazil, albeit with extremely

different techniques and objectives, and both films expressed an escape from slavery

– a resistance to slave society from slaves themselves. Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda,

a semi-documentary on a quilombo community in the hills of Paraíba, was released in

1959. Carlos Diegues’s Ganga Zumba, a feature film focused on fugitive slavews in

the seventeenth century, came out only a few weeks before the military coup. In

addition to these films, the cultural group associated with the CPC, Opinião, created

two theater productions “Arena conta Zumbi” and “Liberdade, Liberdade” in 1965.

As cultural critic Jean-Claude Bernadet claimed in 1967, these cultural productions

focused on Palmares because it was a symbol of “liberdade” or freedom.438

Before turning to an analysis of these productions, it is necessary to consider

why runaway slaves became the prevailing image of the historical legacy of slavery

in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Brazilian film. In line with Davarian Baldwin

and Tim Lake, whose work focuses on the connection between the media and the

Black Panther Party, can we, or should we read the representations of run-away

slaves as part of the “performance” of revolution?439 By analyzing the

representations found in Aruanda and Ganga Zumba and the reviews of these films, it

is possible to see another version of the “Nordestino,” in some ways different from

438
Jean-Claude Bernardet, Brasil em tempo de cinema (Rio: Civilização Brasileira,
1967): 19-21.
439
Davarian L. Baldwin, “ ‘Culture is a Weapon in Our Struggle for Liberation’: The
Black Panther Party and the Cultural Politics of Decolonization” 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 In
Search of the Black Panther Party: New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement
eds., Jama Lezerow and Yohuru Williams (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

220
that of the poor peasant or the sertanejo. The films emphasize blackness by tying the

characters to what is portrayed as “African” or “Afro-Brazilian” culture, yet this

“African-ness” holds multiple meanings, especially when placed in the historical

context of the 1960s, when the films were made. While some have argued that the

African connection was a form of resistance in that it challenged previous

interpretations that emphasized the European nature of slave society in Brazil, at the

same time, the portrayal of certain characteristics considered “African” also

reinforces certain stereotypes of blackness in the Northeast.

Paraíban journalist Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda appeared in theaters in

1960, sparking debates in the Brazilian cinema world and a wide variety of critiques.

The documentary starts with a historical reenactment of a slave who seizes his liberty

by fleeing with his family to the mountains of Serra do Talhado in the Paraíban sertão

(Santa Luzia de Sabugi), forming a community of runaway slaves. The twenty-

minute documentary shifts from the historical dramatization of a family walking to

the hills to a scene of women making pots out of clay by hand and firing them in a

rustic kiln. The community then loads the pots on the backs of burros to sell at the

weekly market (feira) and the documentary ends at the end of the market day with the

community leaving for their home.

The film is about this “marginalized” community of descendants of runaway

slaves and their daily lives, depicted as isolated, non-modern and poor. The point of

the film is to show, as one reviewer wrote, “o grupo distante e isolado da Serra do

Talhado deixou de ser escravo pela Lei Áurea, mas caiu imediatamente no grilhão

221
escravista da situação economica negligente da região.”440 According the

cameraman, Rucker Vieira, in 1960, the entire population of the community was

black, all descendents of slaves.441 According to most of the reviewers and cultural

critics, the poor production quality – editing jumps, natural lighting with high

contrasts, direct sound, hand-held camera technique – helped to emphasize the theme

of regional underdevelopment, poverty and “authenticity.”

One review criticized Noronha for not choosing to film the community during

the October festival of Rosário, which would have shown its “typically Afro-

Brazilian” culture.442 Noronha certainly knew this aspect of the story since he had

written a lengthy newspaper report on the festival of Rosário in 1958, but he chose to

portray a different version of community life.443 Instead of showing Zê Bento as

“more vibrant, agile and dancing, clapping his hands to the rhythm of the zabumba,”

Noronha chose to make a “slower” film, using the music of an old flautist (pífano)

and the cocô, as he said, depicting “outra modalidade africano no nosso folklore

musical, já raro.”444 As Noronha claimed in a 1961 interview, by using the local

music, “o filme colaborava inclusive como documento nacional sobre a arte regional

440
Elísio Valverde, “Um documentário importante: Aruanda; duas cine-reportagens:
Ouro Prêto e Diamantina,” Revista de Cultura Cinematográfica 4, no.21 (May 1961):
51-54.
441
Interview with Rucker Vieira. José Marinho de Oliveira, Depoimentos Cinema
Brasileiro, tema Nordeste. Copia de trabalho, orientação de Maria Rita Galvão.
D22515. Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo, ECA/USP, s.d., 5.
442
J. Fernandes Dantes, “ ‘Aruanda’ de Linduarte” 04430. MAM Archives. Rio de
Janeiro.
443
Interview with Linduarte Noronha. José Marinho de Oliveira, Depoimentos
Cinema Brasileiro, tema Nordeste. Copia de trabalho, orientação de Maria Rita
Galvão. D22417. Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo, ECA/USP, s.d., 8.
444
Letter from Linduarte Noronha to Maurice Capovilla. Folder: Aruanda.
FUNARTE Archives. Rio de Janeiro.

222
à mesma miséria quer servia ao tema do nosso empreendimento fílmico.”445 In other

words, Noronha saw the film as portraying the misery and poverty of both Nordestino

rural communities and filmmakers, constructing regional identity that was not simply

a documentation of rural folk culture, but more importantly, a political statement

about Northeastern poverty that ran through all levels of society, from rural workers

to filmmakers and intellectuals.

Noronha had a tightly written script for the documentary, and commented on

his use of non-professional actors, again suggesting how Aruanda is a documentary

that is also fiction. It is a documentary, sometimes described as an ethnographic film,

and yet it is a historical reenactment that also followed Noronha’s script. Noronha

used non-professional actors to interpret roles supposedly of real people. The

character of Zê Bento, interpreted by Paulino Carneiro, was described by Noronha:

“Paulino Carnero é analfabeto total, porém homem de uma sensibilidade fora do

comum para os de sua condição. Jamais recia compreender amplamente a sua

coloboração. Aliás, o ator não-profissional é muito mais produtivo. Ele obedece

subservientemente. E isto é importantissimo para o diretor criador no cinema.”446

According to one review, the character of Zê Bento symbolized “o homem

congenitalmente infeliz, descarrilhado, porque sobre uma estructura sócio-economico

disforme. Zê Bento e família (mulher, filhinho pançudo e nú e o gegue) emergidos de

um passado próximo opressivo, a escravidão, tentando a emancipação no tôpo da

445
Linduarte Noronha a Elísio Valverde, “Desfeita a Utopia na Paraíba,” Revista de
Cultura Cinematográfica 4, no.24 (August 1961): 38-42.
446
Ibid., 42.

223
Serra do Talhado.”447 Yet, as both Noronha and Vieira described, the community was

skeptical of being on film, and even thought that the filmmakers were working for the

military and were in Serra do Talhado to enlist the community members.448

Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of the film Aruanda was the

influence it had on the Cinema Novistas and the perceptions of Northeastern

filmmakers with regard to rural Northeastern society. If we consider the way that

Noronha spoke about his vision of Aruanda and of its subject and the non-

professional actors, it becomes clear that he was portraying his version of

Northeastern Brazil and of African-Brazilian culture. This version depicted the

historical legacy of slavery and connected the history to the struggles of the 1960s for

Third World independence. Instead of making it an “African” film, as Glauber

Rocha claimed he tried to do with Barravento, Noronha portrayed a runaway slave

community as “typical” of rural Northeastern communities: isolated, poor, neglected

and non-modern. The narrative of the quilombo represented an enduring struggle that

continued to oppress contemporary community members, reinforcing the static

narrative that forms a key component of regional identity.

By the end of the 1950s, the scholarly literature on the seventeenth century

quilombo of Palmares449 began to reflect the rise in Leftist social movements and

447
Elísio Valverde, “Um documentário importante: Aruanda; duas cine-reportagens:
Ouro Prêto e Diamantina,” Revista de Cultura Cinematográfica 4, no.21 (May 1961):
51-54.
448
Interview with Rucker Vieira. José Marinho de Oliveira, Depoimentos Cinema
Brasileiro, tema Nordeste. Copia de trabalho, orientação de Maria Rita Galvão.
D22515. Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo, ECA/USP, s.d., 4.
449
Palmares was the largest quilombo in Brazil. It was located in the Serra da
Barriga, in the mountains that are in the present-day state of Alagoas in Northeast
Brazil. Sugarcane plantations and processing mills have always dominated the

224
resistance in Brazil at that time. Many of the studies focused on the Marxist

interpretation of resistance as class struggle, placing Palmares and quilombos in this

context. Clovis Moura, for instance, attacked Gilberto Freyre’s idea of “benevolent”

slavery in Brazil by defining Palmares as a black resistance movement that created a

separate and free alternative society to slavery. 450 For example, the Communist Party

newspaper, Novos Rumos, reprinted in 1964 a political manifesto from 1919 in which

the Grupo Comunista Brasileiro Zumbi used Palmares as a symbol of resistance

against the Republic and global capitalism.451 Film critics described Ganga Zumba –

economy and the landscape of the mata, or fertile coastal region in this area and was a
major factor in the establishment and destruction of Palmares. Although many of the
stories differ, it is possible to estimate that Palmares began around the 1600s and
lasted until a well-armed group of slave catchers led by Domingos Jorge Velho
destroyed the quilombo and killed the inhabitants in 1694. Many accounts exist but
the leader was known as Zumbi or Zambi.
450
João José Reis and Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Liberdade por um fio: história dos
quilombos no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Das Letras, 1996), 12-13. Other authors
with this perspective include Edison Carneiro, Aderbal Jurema, Luís Luna, José
Alípio Goulart and Décio Freitas.
451
The Communist Party published a manifesto from the PCB, first written in 1919,
about the Grupo Comunista Brasileiro ‘Zumbi,’ “Manifesto de Lançamento do Grupo
Zumbi,” Novos Rumos 21 – 27 February 1964, 5.
Do you love this land where you were born? Do you wish that it takes its
place alongside other countries in the aura that has started to dawn on humanity? Do
you want a grandiose Brazil without masters and without slaves?
Do you want to contribute to our moral support for fighting against that evils
that make us unhappy, that degrade us, such as illiteracy, politics, alcoholism,
prostitution? Do you believe as we do that in Brazil, as in the world, all hope is not
completely lost? Do you believe in a more beautiful future? A dignified life that can
be lived?
Then join us immediately as a member of the Grupo Comunista Brasileiro
‘Zumbi.’
This is the name of the admirable black Spartacus of our history, that united
around himself a group of rebel slaves and formed the Republic of
Palmares.
His name will be the flag of those who rebel against the yoke of the political,
clerical and industrial syndicate, in the claws of which our loved Brazil is
caught.

225
a film based on the history of Palmares – as a form of resistance against the dominant

narrative of Brazilian history based on ideas of racial democracy. The film and

reviews of Carlos Diegues’s Ganga Zumba reveal the interpretations and debates over

how Palmares was appropriated as a symbol in the 1960s.

Carlos Diegues’s Ganga Zumba is a story of slaves who decide to flee to

Palmares after seeing a slave woman, the mother of the central character Antão,

strapped to a pole and whipped to death. Antão discovers that he is the grandson of

Ganga Zumba, the famous leader of the quilombo. Antão, Aroroba and Cipriani

escape from the sugarcane plantation. On the way they encounter a white master and

his wife whom they must kill, and Dandara, another slave woman, is forced to join

the group. Eventually, the capitães-do-mato find the runaways and Aroroba is

mortally wounded. The group makes it to the Serra da Barriga, but the capitães-do-

mato catch them again. Aroroba is killed and the group is captured, but then saved by

the Palmarinos who descend from the hills to come to the rescue.

This Cinema Novo film uses the filming techniques of hand-held camera

shots, static camera shots and natural lighting to express the reality of the subject.

Shortly, we will affiliate ourselves with the Grupo Clarte of Paris. And the
Brazilians will be able to collaborate with intellectuals throughout the world in
creating a Universal Republic, without which there is no salvation for the people of
the world.
Against the republican dictatorship, against the rule of the bourgeosie above
all the other classes, against the cult of the incompetent, against the organized
exploitation, against the official lies.
For the free man who lives on free land, for the emancipation of the women,
for the cult of the child who is tomorrow’s man, for the abolition of class privilege,
for the order originating from a mutual agreement between men for the Universal
Republic where everyone has where everyone has the right to live.
We hope to have members throughout Brazil. We are already organizing
groups in every city of the republic.

226
But, unlike other Cinema Novo productions that focused on the “realistic”

environment, Diegues shot the film in Campos. The filming techniques, as well as

the opening scene that shows pictures of slavery with a voice-over describing the

horrors of human bondage, demonstrate a quasi-documentary style characteristic of

Cinema Novo films. The film strives to engage the audience politically, as a cinema

of praxis, which will invoke transformation and revolution. As Robert Stam argues,

the film “deserves praise for its uncompromising portrait of Brazilian slavery.

Enslaved Africans are whipped, raped, murdered, and forced to work to the point of

exhaustion, a picture that refutes the Freyrean notion of a more gentle, charitable

form of Lusitanian servitude.”452 But, at the same time, certain stereotypes – of what

is considered “African”– inform the image of the black Nordestino rebel.

The very first scene of the film is perhaps most representative of the rejection

of Gilberto Freyre’s explanation of benevolant slavery in the Brazilian household.453

After the old paintings/etchings of the sugar industry and slaves, Diegues cuts to a

scene at night where the camera is held static on an almost naked black woman on her

knees, slouched in front of a pole with her arms tied around the pole. She has been

whipped to death. A group of slaves approach her, first in silence, then they start

singing, “chora papai, chora mamai” to an African drumbeat, a song that is sung

throughout the film. Diegues then cuts to the casa-grande where the masters look at

the spectacle from a distance, then Diegues does a series of close-up shots on the

452
Robert Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in
Brazilian Cinema and Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 228. Also,
see E Bradford Burns, “History in the Brazilian Cinema,” Luso-Brazilian Review 14,
no.1 (Summer 1977): 49-59.
453
Freyre, The Masters, 369. Freyre wrote a great deal on the cordial and familial
relations between the house slaves and the masters.

227
slaves’ faces. The group of slaves exits and the camera focuses uncomfortably on the

dead woman. The house slave who had been standing next to the master in the shot

of the casa-grande enters the frame with the dead woman, kneels, and begins

humming the same tune. The camera stays fixed on this scene as the film credits roll

to the side of the two women. This sequence is an uncomfortable and politically

powerful opening sequence to the film.

While Ganga Zumba opens with the pain and horror of slavery, this is not the

focus of the film. In an interview in the Diario de Notícias, Diegues explained his

intentions in making this film: “Ganga Zumba deve ser compreendido em duas

perspectivas fundamentais. A primeira, de caráter ideológico revela sua idéia central:

a liberdade, a luta por ela, sua utilidade, etc. A segunda, o fato de ser este filme a

tentativa de realizar uma fábula negra.”454 Diegues further explains that he was

interested in showing what it means to be truly free and the importance of struggle.

Antão supposedly represents this idea in that he is not interested only in being free

but he knows that it is necessary to be free to love and to live. Often in counter-

position with the masters, the strength of the slaves becomes obvious. While cutting

cane, the number of slaves and their physical strength makes the relatively small

overseer seem ridiculous in his attempts to control and whip the slaves. Whenever

slaves meet up with white people in the film, they are in a position to overpower

them. This violence was described by Diegues as the central component to the film

because the “fundamental tripod of the black spirit is sex, rhythm, and poetry,” which

454
“Carlos Diegues fala sobre “Ganga Zumba,” Diario de Notícias. Folder: Ganga
Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.

228
describes Diegues’s second objective: of making a black fable.455 This fabula negra

marked the rebel slaves in numerous ways throughout the film: as “African” through

the importance of drumming to the story, through characters who appeared to be

fortune tellers, and through the insipid love story presented as a threat to their escape.

In some aspects, this Ganga Zumba is a “road movie” or at least a journey to

attaining conscientização. In the beginning, Antão denies the existence of Palmares,

and skeptically declares, “O branco algum dia acaba com Palmares.” When the

group decides to escape, he lures the overseer away from the casa-grande through

Cipriani’s sexual powers and kills him, ripping out his heart and starting his journey

on the road and toward freedom. On the trip as the drumbeat from Palmares gets

louder, Antão becomes more and more committed to the idea of freedom. Dandara

joins Antão on this journey to become conscientizada. At first she believes that

“preto é preto, branco é branco, preto sempre é escravo de branco.” It is important

to Antão that she joins them, and he tells her that when they get to Palmares he will

be the king and he hopes that she will stay with him. After the group crosses the river

and Aroroba is wounded, they seem to lose hope momentarily. But, they are very

close to Palmares and Antão is fully realizing the meaning of freedom. He shouts,

“Adianta! Têm que lutar muito! Lutar! Muito homem que não quer ser bicho. Tem

que fazer alguma coisa!” And, the film ends at this point, before Antão arrives in

Palmares, announcing a call for armed struggle that ends without the characters truly

arriving to their final destination.

455
Tati Morães, “ ‘Ganga Zumba’ quer dizer Zumbi (dos Palmares) e liberdade…”
Ultima Hora, (Rio) 29 August 1963. Folder: Ganga Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de
Janeiro.

229
 The film was released a few weeks prior to the 1964 coup, and provoked a

great deal of criticism in the film reviews. A number of the reviewers criticized the

political messages in the film because of the depictions of resistance, violence and

race relations. Critic Paulo Perdigão strongly criticized the “fábula negra sobre a

liberdade,” saying that the film had technical flaws and that it showed Diegues’s

inexperience as a filmmaker.456 Perdigão claimed the film was racist in that it showed

all whites as villains and slave owners and blacks as the oppressed heroes. Luiz

Alberto claimed it was a disappointing film in that the final solution is a battle

between blacks and whites, a fight for freedom by the blacks against the whites,

instead of a fight of the exploited against the oppressors.457 And while this was how

these film critics analyzed the theme of race relations, the film itself provides a more

nuanced perspective, vilifying the system of exploitation more than the actual

characters who operate within this structure.

Claudio Mello e Souza claimed that the poetics of the film had been lost in its

attempt to rationalize a political problem.458 He found the argument unpersuasive and

claimed that it is impossible to convince someone to fight for individual and

collective freedom simply with shouts of, “é preciso fazer alguma coisa” and “não

podemos mais continuar assim.” Mello e Souza argued that “A aventura dos negros

de então e a situação do operariado e do campesinato de hoje – entre os quais Carlos

456
Paulo Perdigão, “Ganga Zumba, Rei dos Palmares,” Diario de Notícias, 10 March
1964. Folder: Ganga Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.
457
Luiz Alberto, “Ganga Zumba,” Jornal do Comercio (Rio) 20 March 1964. Folder:
Ganga Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.
458
Claudio Mello e Souza, “Ganga Zumba: O problema é a guerra,” Jornal do Brasil
12 March 1964. Folder: Ganga Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.

230
Diegues pretendeu estabelecer traços reivindicatórios comuns – colocarm-se, ao meu

ver, num plano epopéico que Ganga Zumba está bem longe de atingir.”459

Cultural critic Jean-Claude Bernardet also declared the film to be an

“idealistic aspiration, purely theoretical and utopic.”460 In Bernardet’s 1967 analysis,

he argued that it was completely out of touch with the majority of films produced in

this era in Brazil because it was the only film in which the problems of the “povo

revoltado” were not resolved by a leader who spoke to the people and the dominant

classes, and had nothing to do with a leader who was a part of the community or who

was interacting with the state and legal institutions. As Bernardet claims, “Palmares is

a rupture with the colonial world of the fazendeiros. It is a different social

organization that forms itself as parallel to the colonal world, but does not have any

understanding, any fit, any conciliation with the world of the fazendeiros.”461

Bernadet claimed that the film focused on the establishment of a new leader in a new

type of society, apparently completely separate from mainstream society, in what

Bernadet described as an entirely “mystic,” apolitical idea of community formation.

For this reason, he labeled it an idealistic film, especially when, according to

Bernardet, it was read in the political context of the era (March 1964).

The Cineclube interpretation of the film, published after 1964, exemplifies the

Leftist interpretation of Ganga Zumba, emphasizing the theme of slave resistance

against the colonial exploitation of the Portuguese. The pamphlet quoted Diegues’s

idea of history: “Os homens são vítimas de sua própria história, até que cada um

459
Ibid.
460
Jean-Claude Bernardet, Brasil em tempo de cinema (Rio: Civilização Brasileira,
1967): 59.
461
Ibid., 58.

231
mude seu destino. Ganga Zumba é um filme simples e vivo, um verdadeiro filme de

aventuras. A violência que aparece é uma conseqüencia natural da opressão. A

violência prepara então a chegada da justiça.” The cineclube pamphlet reprinted

foreign reviews of Ganga Zumba that described the film as showing how “ideas of

freedom sing through the tropical night, a diverse resistance that organizes itself in

spite of torture. Black Brazil knows its first guerrilla leader, Zambi, and its first land,

Palmares.” According to a 1968 report on the reception of Ganga Zumba in Paris in

1968, the film provoked debates in the forum of the group Jeunne Afrique that had

gathered to discuss racial problems, and Diegues lectures attracted a diverse group

including Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alain Robbe-Grillet,

Edgar Morin, Roger Bastide, and Celso Furtado.462

Most analyses of Aruanda and Ganga Zumba focus on how these films

influenced the Cinema Novo movement or on the representations of blackness in

film. When read in the historical context of the struggle for land in Northeastern

Brazil, the films acquire a different meaning because the representations of slaves, the

fight for abolition and quilombos formed part of a broader metaphor used by the rural

social movements to challenge the dominant historical narrative. What this analysis

of the representations of slavery, abolition and quilombos has shown is the power that

these historical narratives held, especially for those groups that supported efforts for

agrarian reform. The use of the historical symbols challenged the legitimacy of the

violence associated with the latifundio system and the police, and in some instances,

legitimized the use of violence by the social movements themselves. Social

462
Celina Luz, “Ganga Zumba conquista Paris,” 4 January 1968. Folder: Ganga
Zumba. MAM Archives. Rio de Janeiro.

232
movements drew connections to African independence movements and other

struggles by African diaspora communities involved in struggles for rights and

freedom. And, a fluid racialized narrative implicitly and explicitly depicted the

landowners as “white” and the peasants as “non-white,” attaching new meanings to

these racial classifications.

At the same time, none of the rural social movements moved to create a

specifically “black” movement or identity. In fact, many of the references to

Nordestinos as slaves drew a contrast between Nordestino slavery and what they

called “black slavery.” This may be related to entrenched racialized understandings

in the countryside and in the Northeast that would have narrowed popular support for

the movements. If “race” and the process of Othering in Brazil shifts from the Other

being “black” to the Other being “rural” and “Nordestino,” then the power of the

symbol of slavery shows how and why the rural social movements used this symbol

to denounce oppression and exploitation of Nordestinos. While the narrative was

racialized, it helped to form an identity of the Nordestino, to create a “consciousness”

of the exploitation seen to afflict this ethnic/regional group. And this in itself

challenged the dominant national and international narrative of Brazilian race

relations, threatening the long-standing assumptions that dehumanized Nordestinos

and legitimized their exploitation. But, as the concluding section of this chapter

illustrates, these newly formed narratives and the political struggle for land in

Northeastern Brazil faced strong opposition following the 1964 coup. While the story

of the Engenho Massangana is only one example, it reflects the shift in the politics of

agrarian reform that occurred during the dictatorship and the views on rural workers.

233
Only a few years after the coup, it was as if the memory of the rural social activism in

the Northeast had been erased. Once celebrated as the jewel of national agrarian

reform by President João Goulart, the 1967 narrative focused on the failure of the

agrarian cooperative by placing the blame on the workers, their lack of solidarity, and

their incapacity to understand the cooperative system instead of on the policies that

had slowly been eroding the financial feasibility of the cooperative project.

The Case of the Engenho Massangana

Figure 3

234
Photograph: “Da Casa-Grande Massangana,” Diario de Pernambuco 31 July

1963, p.3.

The above picture appeared in the Diario de Pernambuco on 31 July 1963, depicting

the celebration of the expropriation of the Engenho Massangana, the engenho of

abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco. President João Goulart, accompanied by Miguel Arraes

and Celso Furtado, spoke in front of the Casa Grande of the Engenho Massangana in

the inaugural ceremony that turned the five engenhos of the Usina Santa Inácio into

the Agrarian Cooperative of Tiriri.463 According to an editorial in the Diario de

Pernambuco on 31 July 1963, the proposed cooperative went back to the historical

roots of sugar cane production in Pernambuco, “uma coletivização orginal,” first

introduced in 1549, that allowed the cane workers to grow their own cane and process

it in the local usina. The pilot project of Tiriri, financed by the State government and

463
“Jango presidiu entrega de terras aos camponeses da cooperativa de Tirirí,” Diario
de Pernambuco 31 July 1963, 3.

235
SUDENE, would provide credit and technical assistance to the Cooperative with

hopes of creating a more lucrative situation for the cane workers by removing the

large landowner from the production process. A month after the celebration, the

cooperative had 3,500 peasants as members on the five engenhos that totaled 6,000

hectares of land. Tiriri was declared the “great test” that could bring triumph to the

agrarian problems of the Northeast.464 The Ligas published an article declaring the

cooperative a sign that the “latifundio has its days numbered.”465

At the ceremony, João Francisco, President of the Liga Camponesa do Cabo,

met and spoke with President Goulart. He was described as smiling because as a 48-

year-old man, he had worked “for 34 years for the latifundiarios without having any

power, or even being able to approach those with power, and now he could hardly

believe he was standing in front of the President of the Republic.” João Francisco

talked about the history of the Ligas in Cabo and said that the workers appreciated

when Padre Melo took over the organization of the Liga.466 Emphasizing the violence

of the latifundio system, João Francisco pointed to a young boy and told the story of

the boy’s father who had been killed for stealing a few coconuts from a tree.

What is notable about this case is that the reference to abolition was not

simply a coincidence, but a political statement that compared agrarian reform to

464
“Jango presidiu entrega de terras aos camponeses da cooperativa de Tirirí,” Diario
de Pernambuco 31 July 1963, 3.
465
“Latifundiários em desespêro fazem sua ‘Reforma Agrária,’” LIGA 12 June 1963,
4.
466
“A cooperativa de Tiriri,” Diario de Pernambuco 31 July 1963. Melo was later
quoted as having said: “A organização será, aqui, uma triplice força. O usineiro dará a
terra. O camponês, o trabalho. O Governo dará a técnica. Onde houver o latifundio, o
cooperativismo diminuirá as tensões sociais; onde houver minifundio, desviará a mão
de obra para atividades correlates e permitirá a reorganização da exploração da terra.”
Costa Porto, “Tiriri,” Diario de Pernambuco 14 June 1964, 2.

236
abolition in Northeastern Brazil. Supposedly, João Goulart was profoundly moved by

being the “first President to have spoken directly with a peasant.” From the Engenho

Massangana in the Northeast, Goulart declared national support for agrarian reform,

stating, “O que a nação precisar era realmente de uma reforma que beneficiasse todo

o Brasil rural, para aproveitamento do vasto solo nacional no desenvolvimento e

progresso do país.”467 The new administrator of the Usina, Rui Cardoso, presented

the Casa Grande of Engenho Massangana with a bronze plaque with the inscription:

“Nas terras de massapê do velho Engenho Massangana, onde Joaquim Nabuco viveu

a infância e inspirou-se para a campanha libertária dos escravos, realizou-se hoje, um

século depois, a campanha libertária de terras sob a inspiração do presidente João

Goulart, através da SUDENE e do entendimento cristão e democrático dos

trabalhadores rurais e dos proprietários deste engenho.” The symbolic reference of

the creation of the cooperative explicitly compared agrarian reform to the abolition of

slavery, nine months before the military coup. But then, the “triumphant” story took

a different twist.

In June of 1964, a few months after the coup, the Diario de Pernambuco

published a number of reports on the Cooperative of Tirirí, stating that less than a

year after its inauguration, the cooperative faced serious financial problems. By the

end of June, the workers had decided to go on strike after not receiving pay for more

than three weeks.468 According to Padre Melo, the Banco do Brasil was not giving

the cooperative the financial credit that was given to any other landowner in the

467
“Jango presidiu entrega de terras aos camponeses da cooperativa de Tirirí,” Diario
de Pernambuco 31 July 1963, 3.
468
“Ainda Tiriri,” Diario de Pernambuco 23 June1963, 4.

237
region. While President Castelo Branco spoke in support of the cooperativist

movement, Melo claimed that he did nothing to help with the bureaucratic problems

in releasing credit for the cooperative.469 In addition to this problem, Padre Melo

expressed concern about the directors of the cooperative and their understanding of

the cooperative system. The leaders of the movement did not allow for the

participation of the majority of the members, which, according to Padre Melo, led the

peasants to believe that no real change had occurred. Padre Melo felt that the solution

was to create a larger rural middle class, a gradual process that would lead to actual

liberation, education and progress.

Tiriri’s days seemed numbered. In December of 1967 – alongside stories on

the PCB rural union leader Gregório Bezerra’s trial470 and stories celebrating General

Alfredo Ovando for having captured and killed “the second biggest threat to Latin

America” (Che Guevara)471 – the Cooperative project appeared to have failed. The

property was returned to the hands of the original landowners, becoming

reincorporated into the property of the Usina Santo Inácio.472 To analyze the failure,

the state set up a commission of deputies with the objective of arriving at a project for

469
“Ainda Tiriri,” Diario de Pernambuco 23 June1963, 4. The end of the editorial
states: “Pois o Gôverno – que só lhes pode dar palavras – não é capaz de ir além das
palavras de Nabuco, ali mesmo em Massangana e há quase cem anos, pronunciadas.”
470
“STM julgará sexta-feira a apelação de Gregório Bezerra,” Diario de Pernambuco
9 December 1967, 1. Bezerra was sentenced to 19 years in prison by the military
court for having tried to reinstate the Brazilian Communist Party and leading peasants
and rural workers to invade lands and go on strike.
471
“Guevara não foi fuzilado e falou muito antes de morrer,” Diario de Pernambuco
10 December 1967, 8.
472
“Justiça faz voltar terras à posse da Usina Santo Inácio,” Diario de Pernambuco 5
December 1967, 12; “Usina já de posse das terras de Tiriri e IBRA nega participação
na transação,” Diario de Pernambuco 6 December 1967, 3.

238
“authentic agrarian reform.”473 According to the commission, the area of Cabo, well

known by international groups such as UNESCO, was in need of finding a true

solution to the “human, agrarian and social problems.” The deputies claimed that the

people of Cabo “suffered from the quotidian lack of consciousness of the magnitude

of their problems.”474 Fully esconced in modernization theory, they made the

following suggestions for the Cooperative: “1. To preserve at all costs the access to

land for the rural workers with the goal of maintaing their trust in the government’s

protection; 2. To apply the Estatuto da Terra, locating the agrarian problems and

solving them; 3. Avoid the situation of Agrarian Reform becoming Agrarian Business

without benefiting the majority of the people; 4. To plan and implement the ways to

obtain the highest productivity and use of the land without being prejudiced by taking

into consideration the human and social problems; 5. To educate the rural worker

about modern technology and crop diversification; 6. To increase the use of

instruments and machines needed by the rural worker for a more effective

exploitation of the land; 7. To offer credit in an accessible form to finance such

projects; 8. To secure a constant market for the commercialization of the agricultural

products.”475 Such measures illustrate the mechanization and modernization of

agriculture that the military government pursued throughout the Northeast in lieu of a

program for agrarian reform based on the redistribution of land. They also reflect one

of the primary criticisms of programs for agrarian reform during the dictatorship: The

473
“O assunto é politica…” Diario de Pernambuco 20 December 1967, 10.
474
“O assunto é politica…” Diario de Pernambuco 20 December 1967, 10.
475
Ibid.

239
preponderance of studies, committees and projects that were often declared a

“failure” before actually initiating any project for rural workers.476

Padre Melo continued to fight for the agrarian cooperative project of Tiriri.477

He claimed that the problem was not in the project, but in its administration, arguing

that the SUDENE administrator was corrupt and had the same characteristics of a

traditional usina owner, which created the problems of the cooperative system since it

was not run like a cooperative.478 Padre Melo referred to other cases in which the

latifundiarios has reseized their expropriated land: “vai fazer o que fêz com Tabatinga

e Garapu: abandonar os operários ao desemprego, vendendo as terras

supervalorizadas.”479 Melo declared that the “peasant of Tiriri would only leave their

lands with violence and blood.”480 He told reporters that he would resist and rebel,

even if it meant his own death, but the commentary on his words is that they were

useless means to preach violence instead of supporting the rural workers find a

peaceful path to agrarian reform.481

The state institutions for agrarian reform (IBRA and INDA) tried to wash their

hands of any alleged involvement in the judicial case of Tiriri. The newspaper

476
Pereira, The End of the Peasantry.
477
The trajectory of Tiriri is extremely complicated. Although the original project
was declared a failure, Padre Melo continued to support efforts to keep a cooperative
alive in Tiriri, trying to work with different agricultural industrial companies.
Although the name remained the same, the original project has gone through
complete transformations from the 1960s to the present day. Tiriri was not included
in the project of the Liga das Cooperativas Americanas promoted by the Church
during the dictatorship but a separate project of Padre Melo.
478
“Padre Melo critica gerente da Tiriri,” Diario de Pernambuco 15 December 1967,
8.
479
“ ‘Somente Deus tirará gente de Tiriri sem violencia e sangue:’ Padre Melo,”
Diario de Pernambuco 7 December 1967, 3.
480
“O padre e o camponês,” Diario de Pernambuco 8 December 1967, 4.
481
Ibid.

240
reports on the entire incident were overly vague and illusive, which may be read as a

way the military government and the agrarian reform institutions tried to shift the

focus from the actual issue of landowners reclaiming their lands and expelling the

rural workers from their lands.482 In an article that suggests how the government was

trying to spin the incident into a positive step toward agrarian reform in terms of

education, the National Institute of Agrarian Development (INDA) was sited as

allocating NCr $60,000 to courses in cooperativism at the Universidade Federal Rural

de Pernambuco and the Escola de Agronomia in Paraíba.483 The courses were

supposed to teach peasants about the concept of cooperativismo.

Another story in the Diario de Pernambuco about Tiriri clearly exemplifies

the military government’s discourse in the late 1960s on agrarian reform and

historical symbols that invoked patriarchal metaphors to legitimize their power. A

group of young women of the Cruzada Democrática – one of the groups who partook

in the rosary marches in March 1964 – sent the Diario de Pernambuco a statement to

be published, lamenting the failure of the Cooperative of Tiriri. The women claimed

that the lack of technical preparation and the lack of solidarity amongst the rural

workers led to the failure of the cooperative. The women asked the government not

to give up on the project of coopertivism; they hoped that educational programs could

482
For instance, when asked about the Cooperative of Tiriri, the judge of the comarca
of Cabo from 1951-1961, Jeová da Rocha Wanderley, stated: “o meu conhecimento
[de Tiriri] é através de noticiários, muitas vezes distorcido, hora a favor, hora contra.”
Jeová da Rocha Wanderley, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, 20 January 1986,
CEHIBRA da Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, Recife, 7.
483
“INDA fornece NCr $ 60 mil para cursos de cooperativismo,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 December 1967, 3. President Costa e Silva was in Mossoró, Rio
Grande do Norte to inaugurate a new school of agronomy and electification services.

241
be initiated to teach the rural workers how to participate in cooperatives. And, the

statement made a direct reference to slavery and abolition:

“Há, na história do Brasil, um fato muito expressivo. Os

senhores que voluntariamente alforriaram os seus escravos muito antes
da abolição já se haviam recuperado do prejuizo quando esta foi
decretada, ao passo que muitos outros se arruinaram por não terem
sido generosos.
A experiencia de Tiriri não pode perder-se. Haja, quanto antes,
uma conjugação de esforços para salvar esse exemplo de solidariedade
cristã. Ninguém se omita, pois o serviço de salvação desse magnifico
projeto é missão e encargo de toda a comunidade, não só do Nordeste,
como de toda a nação.”484

What is striking about this published statement is how it compares to statements made

about abolition before 1964, urging large landowners to replicate the visionary stance

taken by slaveowners who freed their slaves before formal abolition by supporting the

cooperative project. But, in what followed in the article suggests that the objective

was not agrarian reform in the sense of the redistribution of land. The goals of

supporting Tiriri seemed to be to strengthen bourgeois lifestyle, and to preserve the

“folk” culture of the rural Northeast.

The article continued, with a commentary about the the women of the Cruzada

Democrática, who were taking courses on “Domestic Arts” that prepared them for

making the traditional costumes of the Northeast:

Foi realmente emocionante sentir o cuidado da Diretoria do

referido educandário, procurando fazer um elo entre o passado,
representado pelas Sinházinhas e o presente, representado pela
mocidade do Colégio Militar, incutindo assim nos jovens de hoje, a
beleza das nossas tradições, a riqueza da nossa história e a certeza de
que sómente poderemos construir um Brasil grande e forte,
alicerçando o progresso na nossa formação cristã e na grandeza dos
feitos dos nossos ancestrais.

484
“Cruzada Feminina lamenta o fim da cooperativa de Tiriri,” Diario de
Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.

242
 Causou enorme realce a entrada do bolo de Formatura, trazido
por alunos, representando os escravos, como a lembrar aos presentes, a
formação da nossa raça e a beleza da Democracia que possuimos, sem
a condenável distinção de raças, uma vez que somos iguais perante
Deus, Supremo Criador do Universo.”485

The story exemplifies how the military combined the discourse of a certain type of

modernization – through education projects – with a value attached to “traditional”

customs and gender relations. The historical symbol of slavery as a way to talk about

and organize rural workers belonged to groups who opposed the military government;

namely, in the late 1960s, the Catholic Church. According to the military and its

supporters, the “tragic” history of slavery in Brazil was best remembered in the form

of a “traditional” cake for the middle-class that showed the progress and unity among

all Brazilians under the cloth of the idea of racial democracy. But, even though cake

is deliciously tempting and sweet to eat for a time, it also has relatively no nutritional

value and a short shelflife.

485
“Cruzada Feminina lamenta o fim da cooperativa de Tiriri,” Diario de
Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.

243
Chapter 5: The Return of Lampião to the Terra do Sol, 1955-
1965

“Aquilo é que era um padrinho bom,” lembra Ana Maria dos Santos
(Dona Nô), 77 anos, afilada de Lampião. Ela só guarda boas
recordações desse mito tão polêmico e prefere invocar seu perfil
heróico. Há quem discorde e o trate como um bandido cruel. Há que
o critique pela violência, mas veja sua luta como uma forma de
resistência a um sistema oppressor. Ninguém o ignora.
“Histórias do cangaço movimentam turismo,” Jornal do
Commercio, 1997

One of the symbols of regional identity that turned into a site of contestation during
486
the Cold War was the cangaceiro, or backlands bandit. The symbol of the

cangaceiro carries numerous meanings, as the article from O Jornal do Commercio

suggests: honor and ruthless violence, resistance and barbarity, the “cabra macho”

and the tragic victim of unequal social structures, a hero and a criminal. The

cangaceiro has been used as a metaphor for the Brazilian nation, the Northeast, as

well as specific individuals, functioning as an empty signifier since the meaning

attached to the symbol depends on the historical context. This chapter examines how

social actors in the 1950s and 1960s appropriated and politicized the symbol of the

cangaceiro, and how, in doing so, they redefined the regional identity of o Nordeste.

The ways in which social actors appropriated the symbol of the cangaceiro

cannot be simply categorized into Left or Right, or popular or elite. For the Ligas
486
Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior, A invenção do Nordeste e outros artes
(Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Editorial Massangana/São Paulo: Cortez Editora,
2001). According to Albuquerque, o Nordeste is composed of four major themes: the
cangaceiro, the coronel (rural political boss), droughts, and religious fanaticism.

244
Camponesas (Peasant Leagues), the cangaceiro was a hero, a “father” of agrarian

reform, compared to the “guerrilheiros” of Cuba and China. The Brazilian

Communist Party (PCB-Partido Comunista Brasileira) employed the symbol of the

cangaceiro to emphasize their views of a progressive history, describing the

cangaceiro as a primitive rebel of the past. Filmmakers of the era portrayed the

cangaceiro as a symbol of the “authentic” Nordeste as well as a symbol of Brazil and

of the Third World. On the political right, discourses that criminalized the rural

social movements recalled discourses that criminalized the cangaceiros. What is

fascinating about the symbol of the cangaceiro during this period is that it illustrates

the how numerous groups and individuals vying for power approached the matter of

the regional history-identity of o Nordeste.

A few key studies in the rich historiography on the cangaço provide further

explanations about issues of representations of the cangaceiro. One historical debate

stemmed from Hobsbawm’s Bandits (1971) because of the controversial sources

Hobsbawm used to argue that bandits were “primitive rebels” that disappeared in
487
modern society. Hobsbawm based his research on cangaceiros primarily on

literatura de cordel (popular pamphlet poetry) and even used a still from Lima

Barreto’s 1953 film, “O Cangaceiro,” to provide readers with a visual image of the
488
cangaceiro. What is interesting about Hobsbawm’s choice of sources is that he

487
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.
488
Lima Barreto’s film was not greatly celebrated in Brazil although the film won two
awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953. Brazilian critics saw “O Cangaceiro” as

245
chose to use representations of the cangaceiro instead of actual accounts, interviews,

film footage and photographs of Lampião and other cangaceiros, all of which were

readily available.

In response to this type of research on representations of the cangaço, Linda

Lewin studied how the representations of cangaceiros in popular culture reflected

elite politics and popular poets’ own politics more than factually recounting the
489
history of the cangaço. Lewin showed a separation between historical fact and the

politics of representation of the cangaço in popular culture. Expanding on the idea of

representation, Maria Isuara Pereira de Queiroz categorized the types of

representations of the cangaceiro into three fields: as a symbol in art, in sociology

and in politics.490 Queiroz argued that after World War II, the cangaceiro became a

national symbol, that represented three important ideologies of the era: first, the idea

of national versus foreign. Connected to this idea, the cangaceiro represented the

inequalities and relations of dependency between the industrialized, modern South

lacking “authenticity” because it was filmed in São Paulo and not in Northeastern
Brazil, because the cangaceiros rode horses, and because the film seemed more like a
U.S. cowboy western than a Brazilian film on cangaceiros. By using the still from the
film, Hobsbawm then exposed himself to the criticism that his understanding of the
cangaceiro was based on foreign models and not on the specific context of
Northeastern Brazil.
489
Linda Lewin, “Oral Tradition and Elite Myth: The Legend of Antônio Silvino in
Brazilian Popular Culture,” Journal of Latin American Lore 5: 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. These studies show
how the myth of Lampião grew because of the folhetos, and also that he played an
active role in shaping his popular representation in the popular poetry. See Gustavo
Barroso, Terra de sol (Rio de Janeiro, 1956); Augustus Young, Lampion and his
bandits: the literatura de cordel of Brazil (London: Menard Press, 1994).
490
Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, O messianismo no Brasil e no mundo (São Paulo:
Dominus, 1965).

246
and the feudal, backwards Northeast. The cangaceiro as the symbol of the Brazilian

nation also rose in importance because of the “new” significance of the “povo,” or the

miserable, poor, illiterate masses, as the heart of national identity. The cangaceiro

turned into a symbol of the struggle of the poor against the rich. The

“national/regional” characteristic of the symbol of the cangaceiro is critical to this

study because it helps to explain why the cangaceiro – associated primarily with the

sertão – was connected to the rural social movements in the 1950s and 1960s –

movements located mainly in the agreste and mata. In other words, the 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,

in certain instances.

A number of recent studies have shown how communities in the sertão have

used popular symbols in contemporary struggles by communities. These studies

illustrate how community groups interpret and employ symbols such as the

cangaceiro to form community identity and to mobilize politically. For example,

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, such as a carnaval play in Paulo Afonso, Bahia. The community group

performs the play each year to narrate present-day struggles through the history of
491
Lampião. Although not focused specifically on the symbol of the cangaceiro,

491
Marcos Edilson de Araújo Clemente, “Lampiões acesos: A associação folclórico e
comunitária dos ‘Cangaceiros de Paulo Afonso’ -- BA e os processos de constituição

247
Patricia Pessar’s recent work broadly examines the relationship between identity and

resistance in Northeastern Brazil, looking at the changing representations that a

millenarian community in Bahia produced in relation to historic millenarian

492
communities such as Canudos. Pessar describes how a number of groups and

individuals mobilized different representations of the community’s religious leader

from the 1970s to the 1990s, and suggests reasons for these changes, such as the

increase of religious “folk” tourism.

This chapter combines diverse sources such as film, newspapers, testimonies

and/or oral history, and scholarly studies to provide an intertextual understanding of

the process of how the symbol of the cangaceiro entered into the political struggles in

Northeastern Brazil in the 1950s and 1960s. The first section describes

representations of cangaceiros in popular culture, examining literatura de cordel and

a genre of Brazilian film known as the Nordestern. The next section discusses a

series of newspaper reports and Pernambucan congressional hearings on the death of

the famous cangaceiro, Lampião, regarding the burial of cangaceiro heads. These

debates took place in 1959 at the same time as the congressional debates over the

expropriation of engenho “Galiléia,” the declared birthplace of the Ligas

Camponesas. The third section examines how social actors on the political “left”

used representations of cangaceiros in their struggles to change the dominant idea of

o Nordeste. These groups include Francisco Julião’s Ligas Camponesas and the

da memoria coletiva do cangaço (1956-1988)” Master’s Thesis (Campinas, São

Paulo, 2003).
492
Patricia Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular
Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

248
Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). After this, I show what happened to the heads and

to the symbol of the cangaceiro during the dictatorship.

The Cangaceiro in Popular Culture

Cultural production of the cangaceiro played a key role in defining public opinion

about the symbol of the cangaceiro in the 1950s and 1960s. In popular poetry, stories

of the cangaceiro reached local rural audiences in Northeastern Brazil. But, the

stories of the cordel did not remain isolated in Northeastern Brazil. Not only were

folhetos with the theme of the cangaceiro sold and written throughout Brazil, but

filmmakers also chose to narrate films through literatura de cordel such as in Glauber

Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, or depict local markets and literatura de

cordel in films of the cangaço such as in Carlos Coimbra’s Lampião, o rei do

cangaço, and Paulo Gil Soares’ Memoria do cangaço. In these films, the cangaceiro

symbolized o Nordeste, but it also symbolized Brazil and the third world. Focusing

on the connection between representations in one of the better-known folhetos, José

Pacheco’s “A chegada de Lampião no inferno,” and the aforementioned films

provides a lens to examine the construction cangaceiro as hero or bandit in the 1950s

and 1960s.

José Pacheco’s “A chegada de Lampeão no inferno” appeared in the Ligas

Camponesas newspaper, Liga, in 1963. According to the preface published in the

newspaper, the folheto shows the “admiração dos camponeses nordestinos por

249
Lampeão, esse inteligente guerrilheiro, cuja verdadeiro história ainda se contará um
493
dia.” The preface states that in this popular poem Lampião is a figure that allows

the rural population to face or to protest against their actual situation. “O inferno,

descrito nestes versos é a casa-grande do latifundiário.” Lampião suposedly creates a

real revolution in hell, battling against all the devils. Upon his victory, (according to

the author of the preface), Lampeão declares: “se não houver fartura para todos

ninguem tem direito a nada.” The author of the preface emphasized the socialistic

motives behind Lampião’s struggles in hell, presenting him in LIGA as a hero.

According to the story, 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

Lampião é um bandido
Ladrão de honestidade
Só vem desmoralizar
A minha propriedade
The devil then tells the watchman to gather three dozen negros, “a tropa armada” to

defend the Devil’s property. There was a great battle, but in the end Lampião

493
José Pacheco, “A chegada de Lampeão no inferno,” LIGA 20 March 1963: 2.

250
triumphed by setting a fire that burned the cotton warehouse and all the money that
494
the Devil possessed.

The confusing part of the interpretation in the preface in LIGA is that Lampião

did not make the statement that supposedly signified: if there is not enough for all,

then no one will have anything. After Lampião burned the Devil’s money and cotton

warehouse, the Devil declared: “Se não houver bom inverno/ Tão cedo aqui no

inferno/ Ninguém compra uma camisa.” While the idea of the Devil symbolizing the

large landowner and hell symbolizing the latifúndio seems logical, Lampião’s role as

a socialist hero is more incongruous, typical of representations of Lampião in

495
literatura de cordel.

Lampião represented as hero/bandit appears in many of the films of the

cangaço that were popular during this period. Glauber Rocha’s political film, Deus e

o diabo na terra do sol (Black God/White Devil, 1964), supposedly was based on a

combination of José Pacheco’s cordel and of Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões. The

cangaceiro in Deus e o diabo supposedly represents a stage in the process of the

peasant gaining a revolutionary consciousness. After messianism dies, the peasant

turns to the cangaço, which according to Rocha, is the anarchist stage of rebellion. In

the film, the cangaceiro Corisco explains to peasant Manoel/Satanás: “Homem nessa

494
The Ligas Camponesas and “communists” were continually accused by the
landowners and mainstream media of setting cane fires throughout this period.
495
Another example that appeared in Liga that did not depict Lampião as a hero is
José Pacheco’s “Debate que teve Lampião com São Pedro,” LIGA May 1963, 5. The
popular poem was prefaced by explaining how this poetry is the true poetry of the
masses. The poets tell simple stories, full of mysticism, that “agradam ao espírito
simples do nordestino.” The story described how all the saints in heaven had to fight
to keep Lampião out, even using thunderbolts, to expel him.

251
terra só tem vaidade quando pega nas arma pra mudar o destino. Não é com rosário
496
não, Satanás. É no rifle e no punhal!” Corisco is violent without preference,

killing the rural poor then attacking the rich, torturing, robbing and killing. As

Antônio das Mortes, the “matador de cangaceiros,” draws close to the cangaceiros to

fulfill the destiny that he is condemned to, the blind narrator asks him if killing

Corisco is the way that he helps his brothers, the povo. Antônio responds: “Um dia

vai ter uma guerra maior nesse sertão...uma guerra grande, sem a cegueira de Deus e

do Diabo. E pra que essa guerra comece logo, eu, que já matei Sebastião, vou matar
497
Corisco.” According to Rocha, the “cangaceiros and fanatics” have to die before

the true revolution can come to Northeastern Brazil.

The representations of the cangaceiro employed by Glauber Rocha

unmistakably coded the film as o Nordeste. The figure of the cangaceiro in film

always is represented 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 torso, and leather sandals.498 For Rocha, the cangaceiro was a

symbol of primitive rebellion but not of social revolution, a type of rebellion that had

to be rejected and overcome in order for nordestinos to acquire the political

496
Script, 281.
497
Script, 279.
498
According to Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, the cangaceiro/cangaço stems from
the term “canga” which was the “nome dado ao armamento de indivíduo que andava
de bacamarte passado sobre os ombros, tal qual um boi no jugo, e sobrecarregado
ainda de uma quantidade de outras armas. …já em 1834, se apresentava de ‘chapéu
de coiro, clavinotes, cartucheria de pele de onça pintada, longas facas enterçadas
batendo na coxa’” quoted from Gustavo Barroso, Herões e bandidos (Rio de Janeiro:
Livraria Francisco Alves, 1917) in Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, “Notas
Sociológicas sobre o Cangaço,” Ciência e Cultura 27: 5 (1975): 495.

252
consciousness that would make them actors in a social revolution. Although this

film was filmed and released at a time when rural nordestinos seemed as

revolutionary as their counterparts in Cuba and China, Deus e o diabo does not depict

a situation of triumph for the rural population. Change was insinuated at the

conclusion, with Manuel and Rosa running away from the cangaceiros, but the
499
representation of change is open-ended, undefined, and shakily uncertain. The

final dialogue between Manoel and Rosa suggests this uncertainty of change and

possibility of continuance with Rosa’s announcement that she is going to have a baby,

an announcement that follows the love scene between Rosa and Corisco and suggests
500
the possibility of a future for the cangaço.

One of the common themes in Deus e o diabo and in José Pacheco’s cordel is

this possbility for continuance of the cangaceiro in Northeastern Brazil even after the

final band was killed, imprisoned and/or dispersed. In Deus e o diabo, Corisco is not

simply Corsico but a combination of Lampião and Corisco (and also the messianic

leader, Sebastião). In Corisco’s first monologue in the film, this is clear as he has a

499
This style of ending has often been interpreted as part of the revolutionary style of
these films in that it forces the audience to decide, thus provoking political
consciousness. Exemplied by a reaction statement by Francisco Clodomir Rocha
Girão, “É nesse tempestade de revolta, que G.R. joga o seu heroi. Heroi que
representa e simboliza o caboclo nordestino, o homem do povo, o vaqueiro, o
camponês, queu injustificado pelas leis da classe dominante, procura refúgio onde
possa protestar, e nessa caminhada, ele atravessa por diversas fases, até correr,
desesperadamente, para uma nova afirmação, que o diretor resolveu omitir, talvez,
para deixar que o próprio espectador responda: Para onde irá Manuel? Qual a posição
que Manuel assumirá? Qual a nova dimensão de luta em que se empenhará?”
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.
Pasta “Deus e o diabo na terra do sol” FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.
500
Ismail Xavier...

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dual personality of Corisco and of Lampião. Lampião has physically been killed, but

as Corsico/Lampião declares: “Lampião will never die.” The idea is clear that

Lampião will never disappear from the sertão or from the minds and actions of the

Nordestino. This same conclusion also appears in the final stanza of José Pacheco’s

cordel, a phrase has become a common saying throughout Northeastern Brazil:

No inferno não ficou

No ceu também não chegou
Por certa está no sertão

Lampião continues to live in the sertão, as a symbol and figure in popular culture,

perhaps more popular after his death than during his lifetime.

In 1965, Paulo Gil Soares’s media-metragem Memória do Cangaço, presented

a political documentary on cangaceiros and their relationship to present-day cowboys.

Although this was Soares’s first film, he had previously worked with Glauber Rocha

on Deus e o diabo as the assistant director, and Rocha referred to Soares as the person

on the film making team who knew the most about Northeastern Brazil. Similar to

many films about Northeastern Brazil, the film opens in a typical market and uses

traditional Nordestino music of men performing literatura de cordel. A voice-over

states that in the nineteenth century, groups of cangaceiros emerged to construct o

Nordeste, performing acts of heroism and goodness in constructing agrarian

organizations, in spite of having to combat their constant enemy, the soldiers. The

film shifts suddenly to the Instituto Médico Legal Nina Rodrigues in Bahia. Images

of the white courtyard and European-style statues appear on the screen while Dr.

Estácio de Lima explains about the cangaço. The cangaceiro expert argues that the

254
cangaceiros existed because of a criminal predisposition: “distúrbios endócrinos e

fatores morfológicos tipicamente caraterizados naqueles individuos.” He described

biological reasons for their criminal predisposition such as glands and testicles that

created “extremely dangerous” men. As the university doctor provides this “expert”

testimony, Soares shifts from images of the university to images of present-day

vaqueiros 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, putting himself in the film as

the interviewer, talks with an old vaqueiro mounted on his horse, Seu Gregório. Seu

Gregório explains that he doesn’t earn monthly wages, he is illiterate and there are no

schools near his home. His wife died because the folk medicine he could afford to

buy to heal her didn’t work. As Seu Gregório rides off into the sertão, another voice-

over counters the biological explanation given by Dr. Estácio for the emergence of

the cangaceiro. The voice-over claims that the sertanejo has been abandoned by the

state. Rebellion can only be explained as resulting from the lack of justice and

precarious material conditions for sertanejos. “E quando se formavam em cangaceiro

a sociedade usava contra eles o pior dos remedios—a polícia.” The documentary

interviews Zé Rufino—the coronel responsible for killing and beheading over twenty

cangaceiros, Ângelo Roque—one of Lampião’s cangaceiros who now works as a

security guard, and Dadá—the surviving wife of Corisco. Soares was the first

filmmaker to splice in cuts from Benjamin Abrahão’s 1936 actual footage of

Lampião’s band, a film that had supposedly been “lost” in the Departamento de

Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP) after being seized by the polícia federal upon its first

255
showing in 1940. Abrahão’s film was discarded in a moldy, humid environment,
501
only partially recovered and restored in 1957. Within the context of the “defeat” of

the Ligas Camponesas and the recently instated military regime, Soares’s use of this

footage, of which it is more than likely he knew the history, along with his choice of

images and voice-overs used to describe the history of the cangaceiros illustrate a

way in which memory was used as a form of denouncement and resistance.

The planned but never filmed third sequence of “Deus e o diabo” was

supposed to have been about the then present-day rural activism and peasant

movements, and this sequence supposedly would have been filmed by Paulo Gil

Soares. Taking this into consideration, it is likely that his first film Memória do

cangaço was not only a documentary about the history of the cangaceiro, but it also

held broader implications of memory versus history. The film subverted the official

history and “expert” explanations for the cangaceiro while at the same time providing

the space to suggest how social and economic conditions continued to create a

situation of misery for the present-day rural population. As in the time of the

cangaço, the police continued to be the “worst medicine” for the problem, and the

state continued to abandon the rural population.

But the political films associated with the cinema novo movement were not

the only films released during this period that dealt with the theme of the cangaceiro

in the Nordeste. From 1960 to 1976, over forty films associated with this genre were

501
Screened in Fortaleza in 1940, Abrahão’s film supposedly caused an extreme
reaction in the audience, expecially the scenes that “revelavam atrocidades da polícia,
estupros, cabeças cortadas, propriedades violadas, etc.”José Umberto, “Benjamin
Abrahão, o mascate que filmou Lampião,” in Cangaço: O Nordestern no Cinema
Brasileiro (Brasília: Arathar Soluções Gráficas, 2005): 30.

256
produced in Brazil, making the Nordestern one of the most prolific types of films

produced in Brazil.502 These films cast the same standard characters: soldiers,

religious fanatics, poor peasants, rural political bosses or large landowners, and

cangaceiros.503 In the early 1960s, Carlos Coimbra released two extremely popular

films—in terms of ticket sales—about the cangaço: A morte no comando do cangaço

504
(1960) and Lampião, o rei do cangaço.(1962)

A morte no comando do cangaço established Coimbra as the prominent

505
director of commercial films of the cangaço. The film begins with the line of

cangaceiros coming over the top of a hill, (referring to O Cangaceiro), who then

proceed to engage in a battle with a family of small holders. The family loses the

bloody battle against the cangaceiros and their heads are severed and impaled. After

the gruesome battle, the male protagonist enters the story, returning to his burned

house and dead family. The story traces the hero’s travails in gathering forces and

going in pursuit of revenge. In A morte, Milton Ribeiro interpreted the “bad”

cangaceiro, an actor who interpreted the cangaceiro as antagonist in numerous films,

including O Cangaceiro, Entre o Amor e o Cangaço, O Cabeleira, Três Cabras de

502
Also, it must be noted that cangaceiros were real figures in Brazilian history that
existed until 1940 when the final cangaceiros were killed or imprisoned.
503
The character of the prostitute is more common in the commercial productions
than in the political films. At times the poor peasant is replaced by townsfolk or
cowhands.
504
Coimbra was not a Cinemanovista or political filmmaker but it is important to note
that a later film, “Os inconfidentes” was used as propaganda for the military regime.
505
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.

257
 506
Lampião, and A Lei do Sertão. What is particularly interesting is that by the end of

the story, the hero (Alberto Ruschel—also the protagonist in O Cangaceiro) and the

female protagonist (Aurora Duarte—producer and well-known actress from

Pernambuco) become cangaceiros, dressed in the typical clothing and hats, as they

make their way through the caatinga to the final battle scene. The scence suggests

that they had to become cangaceiros to engage in the violent battle in the sertão. In

the final battle, the bad cangaceiro (Ribeiro) and the hero (Ruschell) engage in a

battle with machetes, and his wife ends up shooting the bad cangaceiro to save the

hero’s life. In the final scene, resembling so many other Westerns, the couple rides

off into the sunset.

Coimbra’s second “nordestern” film, Lampião, o Rei do Cangaço, starts in a

local fair, with a blind man reciting literatura de cordel, a common scene in many

films about Northeastern Brazil. Throughout the film, Coimbra used the clay

figurines typical of the artisan in Pernambuco to precede major shifts between scenes.

Coimbra’s Nordeste is folkloric, containing elements such as the clay figurines,

literatura de cordel, bumba-meu-boi, and the cangaceiro to code the film as being

“authentically” Northeastern. According to Coimbra, he conducted research for two

months before filming Lampião, conducting interviews with people in Bahia and

Pernambuco who knew Lampião. Coimbra claimed that the film was based on the

testimonies of the rural people, who, according to Coimbra, spoke of Lampião in the

present tense and only referred to Lampião and Maria Bonita as heroes. Thus, the

506
Lucila Ribeiro Bernardet and Francisco Ramalho Jr., “Cangaço--Da vontade de se
sentir enquadrado,” in Cangaço: O Nordestern no cinema brasileiro org. Maria do
Rosário Caetano, (Brasília: Avathar, 2005): 34.

258
film depicted Lampião as a hero and a “Robin Hood.” He saved women from being

raped, he only killed people who wanted to kill him, and everyone revered him in the

sertão except for the soldiers. In this film, the cangaceiros all had nuclear families,

emphasizing the version of the cangaceiros as ordinary heroes of the Nordeste. But,

the fight of the cangaceiros seemed to be in vain. As Lampião explained to Maria

Bonita: “vinte e um anos de luta. Pra que? O sertão continua o mesmo. O mundo
507
pra melhorar precisa fazer outro.” The final battle scene between the cangaceiros

and the volantes follows this declaration, dramatically ending the lives of Lampião

and Maria Bonita.

Although the representations of cangaceiros in the commercial films of

Coimbra differed from the political films of the cinemanovistas, the films shared

certain characteristics. One of these was the relationship of the cangaceiro to

508
Brazilian national identity in film. The films of the cangaço in the late 1950s and

early 1960s emphasized the idea of authenticity. Filmmakers traveled to the sertão of

Northeastern Brazil and shot the films for months on location. The directors

interviewed and studied the subject in order to portray a realistic view of the

cangaceiros. What is interesting is that even though the objectives and politics of the

filmmakers differed, the films (re)produced certain key codes that meant o Nordeste,

such as the cangaceiro but also the themes of “feudal” violence, the harshness of the

507
Lucila Ribeiro Bernardet and Francisco Ramalho Jr., “Cangaço--Da vontade de se
sentir enquadrado,” in Cangaço: O Nordestern no cinema brasileiro, org. Maria do
Rosário Caetano (Brasilia: Arathar, 2005): 47.
508
As Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz argued, the intellectual elite portrayed the
cangaceiro in art as a national symbol, a “simbolo de liberdade contra a sujeição.”
Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, “Notas sociologicas,” 509.

259
geography in terms of the climate and the vegetation, and the general poverty of the

region, exemplified by illiteracy, hunger, misery. The popular or folk culture of o

Nordeste such as literatura de cordel, bumba-meu-boi, xaxado and other rhythms, and

outdoor markets (feiras) also coded o Nordeste in the films.

In Brazilian Nordesterns, directors claimed to be providing the authentic

version of history, often connected to film aesthetics, costumes, and location. This

was in part a reaction to the studio productions from a previous era such as Lima

Barreto’s Cannes film festival prizewinner, O cangaceiro (1953), which was

criticized as being a “Hollywoodization” of the Third World. The attention given to

authenticity also reflected the influence of neo-realism as well as Italian Westerns’

depiction of realism in terms of bodies and scenery.509 In the context of the Cold War,

this interest in authenticity also connects to the rise in nationalism and nationalist

projects in the Third World, and filmmakers’ desires to reject the Hollywood and

European exotic versions of the Third World. A claim to authenticity signified that

directors from the Third World painted themselves as the legitimate authority in

depicting the “reality” of the Third World.

The directors of the Nordesterns based their claims to authenticity on the

research they conducted for the films, such as numerous interviews with people in

rural Northeastern Brazil. For instance, Glauber Rocha based Antônio das Mortes on

Coronel José Rufino from Bahia. Furthermore, filmmakers gave attention to details
509
Ignacio Ramonet claims “Extreme realism of bodies (hairy, greasy, foul-smelling,
cloths 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 off American Westerns are replaced by large, deserted canyons
(located in southern Italy or Spain).” Ignacio Ramonet, “Italian Westerns as Political
Parables,” Young Cinema and Theatre 2/3 (1988): 13.

260
such as dialogue, costumes, and scenery. In a debate about Deus e diabo in 1964

before the Cannes Film Festival, 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.”510 Paulo Gil Soares claimed that the reason why they paid attention to these

details was to “implodir os limites entre ficção e realidade, confundindo

representação e real.”511 In addition, older residents of Monte Santo were interviewed

about whether they thought the characters appeared “real” or not.512 Coimbra worked

with one of the actual ex-cangaceiras, Dada, to reconstruct the story of the “blonde

devil” Corisco (Dada’s partner). Dada sewed the costumes of all the male and female

cangaceiros, a detail that was greatly praised in terms of showing the authentic story

of the cangaço in all the major Brazilian newspaper film reviews. Many of the film

reviews of Nordesterns commented on how well the films reproduced the Nordestino

accent; for example, in a review on Coimbra’s A morte comanda o cangaço, a critic

510
“Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr., David Neves, 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): 77.
511
Bernardo Carvalho, “Sertão” Folha de São Paulo 16 Outubro 1994. MAM-RIO:
file on Deus e o diabo.
512
In film reviews of Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, Rocha commented on how a
older woman from Milagreiros thought Othon Bastos was the spitting image of
Corisco, which reflects the importance given to authenticity. Paulo Gil Soares also
described one of the older residents in beliving that the actor who played Sebastião
was really a religious beato: “A dona Eduíge, por exemplo, acreditava que o Lídio
Silva, que interpretava o personagem do beato Sebastião, era realmente um beato.”
Bernardo Carvalho, “Sertão” Folha de São Paulo 16 Outubro 1994. MAM-RIO: file
on Deus e o diabo.

261
wrote that “o linguajar é puro nordeste, no sotaque bem ensaido e bem empregado, na

construção da frase, na doçura do cantar a palavra, na terminologia.”513

Many filmmakers shot Nordesterns in the style of documentaries or cinema-

verité, producing what they claimed were scenes of authentic Northeastern culture.

Paulo Gil Soares’s documentary, Memória do cangaço (1965), filmed interviews with

sertanejos, ex-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.”514 Even commercial productions such as

Coimbra’s films focused on local/regional culture such as clay sculptures, regional

dances and music such as bumba-meu-boi, and local foods. As Paulo Emilio Salles

Gomes observed, “in the film world of the cangaço, everyday life was filled with

profane and sacred ceremonies. There are constantly festas with dancing, singing and

eventually, some orgies.”515 Often, these films started with voice-overs explaining

the social and political history of Northeastern Brazil. Aesthetically, many of the

films – and most of the political films associated with the Cinema Novo Movement

such as Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol and Paulo Gil Soares’

Memória do cangaço – employed what have been labeled “realistic” techniques.

These filmmakers used hand-held camera shots, non-professional actors, natural

lighting; oftentimes they were shot in black and white and used direct sound.

Another important aesthetic element used in judging the authenticity of a Nordestern

513
Salvyano Cavalcanti de Paiva, “A morte comanda o cangaço” June 1961. MAM-
Rio, file on A morte comanda o cangaço, #27.
514
Miriam Alencar,“Cinema Novo, última safra (II): Memorias de um Bahiano”
Jornal do Brasil, 12 January 1966.
515
Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “O universo fílmico do cangaço, anotações para
aulas.” Cinemateca Brasileira/Arquivo Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes. Doc: PE/PI.0486.

262
had to do with horses. The American Cowboy always appeared on horseback, but

supposedly, the cangaceiro never used horses, relying only on travel by foot. Thus, if

horses were used in a Nordestern, the film was being flagged as an inauthentic copy

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).

Debates also ensued between the filmmakers and critics about what was

“realistic” and “authentic,” often basing the distinction on a film’s similarity to

Hollywood or Italian Westerns. While some critics claimed that Carlos Coimbra’s

productions were authentic and praised his realistic depiction of Nordestino culture

and history, more frequently, critics compared the commercial productions to the

political productions, arguing that the political films portrayed “reality.” Critics based

this reality not only on the film aesthetics, production costs, on authentic

representations of Northeastern Brazil, and the presence or absence of horses, but also

on the film’s intended audience. Coimbra and other directors supposedly made their

films with a “foreign” audience in mind and aspired to gain recognition at foreign

film festivals.

Another theme associated with the cangaceiro in Nordesterns was violence.

For example, most of the promotional material for Nordesterns emphasizes violence.

The poster for Deus e o diabo portrays 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

263
hair, screaming mouths and holding large knives covered in blood. The films and

posters advertise severed heads, perceived as a “typical” occurrence in Northeastern

Brazil in battles between soldiers and cangaceiros because of the famous case of the

beheading of Lampião and his band and Corisco, but nonetheless, a spectacle of

violence.516 The promotional materials for Faustão (1971) drew a quote from

Glauber Rocha: “O mais violento, o mais humano, o mais agressivo, o melhor filme

de cangaço feito no Brasil.”517 The posters also promised that “vai correr tanto

sangue que nem eu quero estar vivo quando acabar.” (so much blood will run that I

won’t even want to be alive when it is over) These films promoted violence, both as

an aesthetic and as a means to bring people to the theaters.

Whereas violence in the Italian Westerns functioned as a way for men to show

their manliness, violence in the Nordesterns attempts to portray either a revolutionary

struggle or a spectacle. While those who kill are defined in the Nordestern as machos

or “cabra macho,” a difference is drawn between the perverse and the good macho in

scenes of torture. In Carlos Coimbra’s Corisco, o diabo louro and Fernando de

Barros’s Riacho de sangue, scenes of women being tortured and whipped

differentiate the macho from the perverse. In Deus e o diabo, the scenes of the raid

on the large landowner’s house show the cangaceiros raping, torturing and murdering.

This coincides with race or religion: those characters who are darker skinned or who

are religious fanatics are more likely to partake in sadistic violence. As Gail

516
The heads were cut from the bodies of Lampião, Maria Bonita and the other
members of his band, photographed and then went on tour throughout Brazil. They
were later held on display and for scientific (criminal) research in Salvador, Bahia
until 1968 when family members were granted the right to bury the heads of their
relatives.
517
Folder on Faustão at FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

264
Bederman has argued, this is not by coincidence. The discourse of civilization and

manliness is rooted in ideas of (Christian) white supremacy and in Nordesterns the

difference between “just” and “sadistic” violence separates the real men from the

savages.518

As critic Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes pointed out in critiquing the films of the

cangaço, since the film industry was located in southern Brazil, many of the

filmmakers were as guilty of exoticizing the Northeastern region as European or

Hollywood filmmakers were in exoticizing the Third World. According to Salles

Gomes, the authenticity was a product of the South “using, interpreting and

industrializing the folklore of the Northeast.”519 In a study slated for publication in

1967, one of most important film critics from Northeastern Brazil argued that the

genre of the Nordestern was based on a denial of the “authentic” Northeast: “o gênero

filme-do-cangaço representa uma só e única coisa: a negação dos autenticos valores

culturais nordestinos, valores politicos, sociais, humanos, folclóricos, e

geográficos.”520 The “real” Nordeste that these directors reproduced was the sertão,

based on filming a few key locations that expressed this type of Nordeste. Taken

together, the Nordesterns constructed the folklore, the towns, and even the “accent”

518
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and
Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
This relates especially to Bederman’s final chapter, “Tarzan and after.”
519
Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “O universo fílmico do cangaço, anotações para
aulas.” Cinemateca Brasileira/Arquivo Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes. Doc: PE/PI.0486.
Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes used structuralist analysis associated with dependency
theory to examine cultural production and film in Brazil, which is clear in his analysis
of the films of the cangaço. See, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, Cinema: Trajectória no
subdesenvolvimento (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1980).
520
Wills Leal, O Nordeste no cinema (João Pessoa: Editora Universitária; Salvador:
Universidade Federal da Bahia, 1982): 89.

265
of Northeastern Brazil, a region that is actually much more diverse and varied than

what appeared on screen. In the 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 more realistic or less of a representation than the European, Hollywood

and studio films. As one recent study on the “rural” in Brazilian film argues, with the

Nordesterns, the cultural industry imported the format and selected an “other”

[sertanejo] to affirm Brazilian national identity.521 The question that remains is how

such representations of the cangaceiro related to the struggle for land in the 1950s and

1960s, and to do that, we must begin with severed heads.

A Few Embalmed Heads

From April to September of 1959, the Diário de Pernambuco published a series on

the cangaço, interviewing ex-cangaceiros, surviving family members, politicians,

soldiers and others. Sensationalist journalism certainly was a factor in the attention

these stories were given, since most of the stories ran alongside gruesome

photographs of severed heads, but beyond the sensationalism, the rise in rural
522
activism at this time probably influenced the newsworthiness of the stories. The

521
Celia Aparecida Ferreira Tolentino, O rural no cinema brasileiro (Sao Paulo:
Editora UNESP, 2000): 94.
522
In the first report in the series, Barbosa raises the point that these debates about
the cangaceiro heads started in 1953, published in O Cruzeiro. This makes sense as
1953 was also the year that Lima Barreto’s film, O Cangaceiro was released and won
international awards at the Cannes film festival. The debates about the heads was not
newsworthy, however, at least for the Diario de Pernambuco; no articles on

266
series started with coverage of debates in the Pernambuco state legislature about the

legal right of the Instituto Médico Legal Nina Rodrigues in Bahia to continue to hold

severed heads of cangaceiros on public display at the Museu Etnográfica e

Antropológico Estácio de Lima (connected to the Instituto), a display that included

523
the heads of Lampião, Maria Bonita and Corisco. While this was not the first time

the issue arose in Pernambucan politics – a governor of Pernambuco denounced the

display of the heads as early as 1938 – the timing, coinciding with the legal struggles

for expropriation of the Engenho Galileia, must be taken into consideration.

One of the consistent themes in this series appeared in the first article:

Brazilian law versus scientific rights. The newspaper report stated that an article in

the Brazilian Penal Code declared it illegal to disrespect cadavers, a crime punishable
524
by prison and monetary fines. According to the article, the families of the

cangaceiros were trying to use this law to obtain the right to bury the embalmed

heads. On the scientific front, the director of the Nina Rodrigues Institute, Dr.

Estácio de Lima, argued that the heads were “anatomic pieces,” comparable to

cangaceiro heads were published in the Diario in 1953. Although there is no

conclusive evidence on the matter, the “newsworthiness” of the topic in 1959 may be
related to the increase in rural social activism in rural Pernambuco in 1959, as well as
the expropriation of engenho “Galiléia.” (While Ligas Camponesas existed in 1953,
the movement became much more powerful in 1959.)
523
Although it is not clear exactly why this was a matter for the Pernambucan state
legislature (it may have been because Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, “Lampião,” was
born in Peranambuco), the debates and subsequent “special reports” by the Diário
provide an interesting perspective about state politics and opinions about the rural
population and the increasing rural social activism in 1959. Also, since the Diario
published a great deal on Lampião when he was alive, this may have influenced the
decision to make the topic newsworthy.
524
Severino Barbosa, “Familia de Lampião reclama a sua cabeça” Diario de
Pernambuco 12 April 1959, 10.

267
 525
mummies in Egypt. Alongside the second article in the series appeared a

photograph of the director of the Nina Rodrigues Institute holding the heads of Maria

Bonita and Lampião under his arms as if they were soccer balls. The caption

explained: “Completamente deformadas, essas cabeças não podem servir para

526
estudios.”

It is important to further explain a few factors of this debate. First, the

Instituto Nina Rodrigues was associated with studies on criminality based on ideas of
527
scientific racism. The heads were studied and measured to better understand what
528
biological traits the cangaceiros possessed to make them criminals. By 1959, the

525
These claims also appeared in a report in O Cruzeiro 6 Junho 1959, when Estácio
de Lima stated: “Compreendo perfeitamente os sentimentos da família de
Lampião.Mas precisamos, principalmente no campo científico, nos guiar pela razão,
em vez de nos deixar dominar pelo sentimento. As cabeças estão conservadas pelo
método egípcio de mumificação. Elas são documentos inestimáveis de uma época da
criminalidade brasileira.”
http://memoriaviva.digi.com.br/ocruzeiro/06061959/060659_2b.htm
526
Severino Barbosa, “Colecionar cabeças humanas é crime!” Diario de Pernambuco
19 Abril 1959, 14.
527
Nina Rodrigues was well-known for his criminology studies and his theis on the
degenerate “mestiço” of Brazil.
528
The heads had quite a journey before their arrival at the Nina Rodrigues institute.
Supposedly, after being severed in 1938, they traveled throughout the states of
Northeastern Brazil, attracting large crowds. Then they were measured, weighed, and
examined at the Medicina Legal in Maceió, then they went to the south of Brazil.
Afterwards, they spent six years at the Faculdade de Odontologia da Universidade
Federal da Bahia, again, studied, measured, and weighed for criminology studies on
pathologies. After this, they ended in the Instituto Nina Rodrigues in Salvador,
Bahia. Semira Adler Vainsencher, “Lampião (Virgulino Ferreira da Silva),
http://www.fundaj.gov.br:8080/notitia/servlet/newstorm.ns.presentation.NavigationSe
rvlet?publicationCode=16&pageCode=308&textCode=976&date=currentDate.
Accessed: 7 September 2005. The Museu Antropológico Estácio de Lima in
Salvador, part of the Instituto Médico-Legal Nina Rodrigues, now holds a collection
of cangaceiro artifacts. Maria do Rosário Caetano, “ ‘Nordestern’: luz, câmera,
cangaço,” Revista de História da Biblioteca Nactional no. 3 (September 2005): 27.

268
validity for this type of scientific research was questionable at best. (Even in 1938,

this type of research was questionable.) Élise Grunspan-Jasmin argues that the

preservation of the heads was specifically linked to Estácio de Lima and his personal

campaign to preserve the heads, for “scientific purposes,” and hold them on display

as museum pieces.529 The heads were in a display case in the Museu, alongside their

clothing, weapons and other personal items to show, according to Grunspan-Jasmin,

“the power of repression.”530 The photograph of the director with the heads, while

extremely disturbing, also merits attention. The way the caption was phrased

“completely deformed, these heads can no longer serve for studies” suggests that if

the heads were not completely deformed, they might be useful to the progress of

scientific knowledge, which leads one to believe that ideas of biological “criminality”

were still somewhat accepted or acceptable. At the same time, both the scientific

rigor and the respect for human beings was attacked by the image of the director

holding the heads under his arms. The photograph questioned the claims of scientific

preservation since it was clear that no special protection from deteriorating conditions

existed, further emphasized by the casual handling of human heads.

By cutting the heads off the bodies of the famous cangaceiros and holding

them on public display, the Brazilian government, the directors of the Nina Rodrigues

Institute and those people who wished to see the cangaceiros “punished” for their

crimes, were “instructing” the rural population about the tolerance and consequences

of rural rebellion in Brazilian society. As Foucault explains, “the body is directly

529
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), 337-338.
530
Ibid., 341.

269
involved in a political field; power relations have immediate hold up on it; they invest

it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit
531
signs.” Although the heads appear to contradict Foucault’s argument about the

disappearance of physical punishment with the modern prison system, I believe that

the heads represent the dominant classes’ views of o Nordeste and of the rural

population. I am not making the argument that the heads prove that Northeastern

Brazil was in fact a “pre-modern” society—a familiar argument used to explain the

backwardness of this region. The treatment of the severed cangaceiro heads by the

dominant classes and the Brazilian government shows that at least among the

dominant groups, o Nordeste and its inhabitants were considered pre-modern.

Punishing the cangaceiros and, to some extent the rural population, bore little

difference from the serfs public punishment in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.

Modern disciplinary methods would not work on people considered feudal. But, the

fact that the heads were held at the Nina Rodrigues Institute, borrowing from

Foucault—a “specialized” institution that uses its power to discipline society—

demonstrates that this supposedly pre-modern form of punishment existed within a

modern system of discipline.

What the debates published in the Diario de Pernambuco illustrate was the

challenge that existed not only for the legitimacy of the heads being held on display

but also for the legitimacy of the dominant classes’ power. One narrative of

resistance in the series on the cangaceiro heads proclaimed the right of the family as

Christians to bury the heads of their deceased family members. Lampião and Maria
531
Michel Foucault, “The Body of the Condemned, from Discipline and Punish,” in
Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984): 173.

270
Bonita’s daughter, Expedita Ferreira, claimed to pray every night for her parents’

souls and made promises to saints, exemplifying how she used her faith to fight for

the burial of the heads. In an interview with reporter Severino Barbosa, Expedita
532
Ferreira described her parents as good, caring parents. Photographs portrayed

Expedita smiling with her own children, and emphasized her legal marriage and her

“poor but happy” home. She made a plea to those with power in the newspaper

report:

“Não sei porque os homens de cultura desta terra não compreenderam

ainda o tamanho de seu êrro. No Brasil, não existe pena de morte. No
entanto meus pais foram mortos. E ainda mais cortaram sua cabeça,
atriram os seus corpos aos urubus e há vinte e um anos, proibem um
direito que é nosso, parentes de Lampião, sepultar seus restos mortais.
Não sei porque fazem isso. Senhores, como filha, eu lhes peço
enterrem a cabeça de meus pais pelo amor de Deus. Eles tambem
533
foram seres humanos.”
Expedita’s plea for the burial of her parents’ heads bears a resemblance to other

stories of resistance in Northeastern Brazil at this time. The newspaper article

emphasized her qualities as a legally married, “good” Christian. Although she lacked

the power or education of the “homens de cultura,” Expedita positioned herself as

morally superior to those with power. Her plea insinuated that the government and

the directors of the Nina Rodrigues Institute lacked Christian values and morals since

they continued to display the heads of her parents, not only disrespecting the bodies

and the bond between parent and child, but also disrespecting the right of burial. The

plea also is similar to the “origin” story of the Ligas Camponesas, illustrating the

532
Severino Barbosa, “Pelo amor de Deus, sepultem a cabeça de meus pais!” Diario
de Pernambuco 3 May 1959, p.22.
533
Severino Barbosa, “Pelo amor de Deus, sepultem a cabeça de meus pais!” Diario
de Pernambuco 3 May 1959, 22.

271
broader implications of such a narrative of resistance. The Ligas Camponesas

supposedly originated on the engenho “Galiléia” in 1955 as the Sociedade de

Plantadores e Pecuaria de Pernambuco (SAPPP), a sociedade that had formed to

provide the rural workers with means to have proper burials instead of having to

borrow a communal coffin from the municipality. Landowner Beltrão supposedly

forbid the SAPPP and began to expel families from his lands, which is when the rural

workers went to lawyer Francisco Julião who took on their case and argued for the

legal right for the workers to obtain the title to “Galiléia.” Central to both Galiléia

and Expedita’s plea was the idea that the poor, as good Christians, have the ability to

use their moral superiority to resist, or at least, question the power of the large
534
landowner, the government, or the directors of a research institute.

The topic of violence figured prominently throughout the series on the

cangaceiros, with soldiers—the instrument of enforcing state’s/elite classes’

disciplinary power—portrayed as more violent and less honorable than the

cangaceiros. As one report explained:

Os cangaceiros representavam o crime, a violência, a justiça pelos

proprios mãos. Os soldados de volante deveriam representar a Lei,
mas simbolizavam coisa muito diferente.
Mocinhas perderam a virginidade, nas mãos da policiais. Fazendas e
plantações foram incendiadas por soldados de volante, que em
violencia e sêde de sangue, muitas vezes superaram os cangaceiros.

534
Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz also makes this argument in relation to the symbol
of the cangaceiro in the post-War period in the artistic representations, claiming that
the cangaceiro meant: “Somos os pobres e injustiçados, mas somos também os
verdadeiros e os bons.” Queiroz connects this argument to national identity. Maria
Isaura Pereira de Queiroz, “Notas Sociológicos sobre o cangaço,” Ciência e Cultura
27: 5 (May 1975): 514.

272
 As cabeças cortadas, os corpos de Lampião, Maria Bonita e outros
bandoleiros deixados aos abutres, é um exemplo [of the lawlessness of
535
the soldiers].
Descriptions of violence discredited the reputation of the soldiers as exemplified by

reports on the final expedition against Lampião at Angicos. Criminalist Wandenkolk

Wanderly, a military official and declared lifetime opponent of cangaceiros, entered

the discussion with a provocative lecture about his doubts as to how Lampião’s band
536
died. He claimed to have visited Sergipe shortly after the death of the cangaceiros

in the famous battle of the Valley of Angicos. Wanderley stated that the povo had

said that “Lampião e Maria Bonita ainda estrebuchavam, quando os soldados lhes

cortaram as cabeças” because they were poisoned by the ex-comerciante and coiteiro
537
Pedro Cândido. According to the testimonies of Cândido and a soldier who fought

at Angicos, the already dead bodies were unearthed by the soldiers of João Bezerra’s

troop.

“Os soldados, como em festim macabre divertem-se metralhando os

cadáveres, já apodrecidos. De repente, um deles identifica Maria
Bonita, rasga-lhe a roupa e avança sobre os restos nús, enterrando uma
538
planta de facheiro em sua vagina.”

535
Severino Barbosa, “Colecionar cabeças humanas é crime!” Diario de Pernambuco
19 Abril 1959, 14.
536
From oral history at CEHIBRA. Severino Barbosa, “Lampião e Maria Bonita
foram envenenados” Diario de Pernambuco 25 Abril 1959.
537
Severino Barbosa, “Lampião e Maria Bonita foram envenenados” Diario de
Pernambuco 25 Abril 1959.
538
Ibid.

273
Violence initiated by the soldiers against the cangaceiros and the rural population was
539
emphasized throughout this series of reports. The emphasis placed on the violence

against women attacked the soldiers’ honor.

At the same time, the life of the cangaceiro was not considered honorable

either. One ex-cangaceiro, “Vinte Cinco,” who worked as a civil guard for the

Tribunal Regional Eleitoral in Maceió at the time of the interview, declared the time
540
he spent in the cangaço was a nightmare. He refused to speak much about his past,

stating that “por mais castigado fora da lei nunca é bem olhado pela sociedade,

mesmo sabendo-se que, na sua maioria, os criminosos são vitimas do desequilibrio

social.” Unlike the soldier de volante, the cangaceiro was depicted as a product of the

culture and the unjust social structures. One soldier who fought against the

cangaceiros for 20 years, Coronel Higino José Belarmino, placed the fault of the

cangaceiros on the large landowners:

Culpa os fazendeiros ricos do sertão, os “empresários” de cangaceiros,

algumas vezes chefes políticos. Eram os homens poderosos que
botavam delegados e juizes debaixo do braço. Para manter sua força,
contratavam assassinos. Os cabras de sua confiança.
O lavrador pobre, por uma questão qualquer matava um sujeito.
Corria para o alto das serras a se esconder. Perseguido, enfrentava a
polícia. Marcado pela polícia, tinha que se refugiar no cangaço.

539
Another example of this appeared in a report in September with numerous photos
depicting soldiers with cangaceiro heads at the “massacre of Angicos.” Some of the
soldiers denounced their collegues, accusing them of crimes such as theft and murder:
“Essa fase da história do Nordeste não foi negra, porque ficou marcado pelo sangue
vermelho dos sertanejos.” Severino Barbosa, “Final sangrento da epopéia do
cangaço: morte de Lampião na Grota de Angicos,” Diario de Pernambuco, 20
September 1959, 11.
540
Sosthenes Jambo, “É ‘Barnabé’, em Alagoas, um ex ‘cabra’ do grupo de Lampião”
Diario de Pernambuco, 10 Maio 1959, 6, 2nd Cad.

274
 Surgia então o protetor, o coiteiro, o cornelão, o fazendeiro, e o
chamava para seu trabalho. Transformavam um homem que merecia
541
castigo num bandido que devia ser morto.
According the article, this is how Coronel Higino faced the “problem of

canagceirismo” in the military campaigns against them for 20 years.

The blame placed on large landowners and unjust social structures for cangaceirismo

is particularly interesting within the historical context of mid-1959. In rural

Pernambuco, numerous land invasions occurred. Reports on rural violence and on the

subversive nature of the Ligas Camponesas attempted to criminalize and delegitimize

the push for agrarian reform. But, at this same time, the legal case for the

expropriation of the engenho “Galiléia” moved forward. The power of the large

landowner, the “latifundia,” was being questioned both in the past, as suggested by

the series on the cangaceiro, and in the present, by the legal expropriation of

“Galiléia” in January 1960 and the expansion of rural social movements fighting for

radical agrarian reform.

In mid-May 1959, Francisco Julião, leader of the Ligas Camponesas, drew a

connection between Lampião and the struggle for agrarian reform first in the state

legislature and later in an interview with Severino Barbosa. While a state deputy was

making arguments for making an appeal to the governor of Bahia to return the heads

to the families, Julião supposedly interjected to state that Lampião was one of the

main victims of the latifundiarios because he had revolted against the “desumanos”

large landowners. In the interview, Julião said that “Lampião foi o primeiro homem

do nordeste, oprimido pela injustiça dos poderosos, a batalhar contra o latifundia e a

541
Severino Barbosa, “Durante vinte anos perseguí Lampião” Diario de Pernambuco,
24 May 1959, 3.

275
 542
arbitrariedade. Lampião teria sido um simbolo de resistencia.” Julião effectively

cast Lampião as a homem de guerrilhas and a symbol of resistance against the large

landowners. The state’s use of the rural rebels’ bodies as a sign of disciplinary was

met with resistance that challenged state laws—such as the right to private property

and the limited political rights for illiterates—and turned the cangaceiro into a symbol

of resistance.

The Cangaceiro and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform

In a 1963 series in LIGA, the newspaper of the Ligas Camponesas, an article on

“cangaceiros” further described the statement that Julião made about Lampião in the

Assembléia Legislativa. The article described the cangaceiro as a revolutionary

figure in the past who fought against the latifundia, founding class struggle in

Northeastern Brazil. According to this article, the cangaceiro:

era uma espécie de coluna revoltoso, que se fazia respeitar por todos
quantos habitassam aquelas causticantes terras dos sertões de nossa
pátria.
...Que queriam os cangaceiros?
Desmorarlizar o então poder constituído, emplice do desajustamento
social, da discriminação espoliativa imposta por uma minoria de
privilegiados a maioria da poplução brasileira.
E era justamento por isso, que os governos eram impotentes para
sofocar a rebêldia no Nordeste. Por mais de 30 anos, Lampeão e o seu
bando percorreram as terras da Bahia ao Ceará.

542
Severino Barbosa, “Parlamento Pernambucano exige o sepultamento da cabeça de
Lampião” Diario de Pernambuco 17 May 1959, 8.

276
 ...Os cangaceiros eram alvo de comentários da população que vez por
outra era beneficiada com a ação confiscadora dos capitães Antônio
Silvino e Lampeão. Quase sempre os cangaceiros não faziam mal ao
povo, porque sua ira era contra o latifundia.
Conta-se que muitas vezes, Antônio Silvino tomava aos ricos e
distribuía aos pobres. Daí se conclui que mesmo de forma bandoleira,
a luta dos cangaceiros tinha no fundamental, uma origem de classe.
As forças do govêrno que perseguiam os bandidos foram cumplices de
inúmeras atrocidades. Pelo fato de serem constantamente logrados,
pela tática dos bandidos, os soldados descarregavam sua raiva,
cometendo as maiores perversidades contra a pacata popluação
sertaneja. A presença do govêrno dava motivo ao desespero de todo o
povo. Diz-se que os soldados eram mais bandidos do que os
543
cangaceiros da região.
This example shows how the history of Lampião was interpreted by the leaders of the

Ligas Camponesas: a hero, a Robin Hood, and a rebel who fought against the

dominant class. In this section of the paper, I describe how the Ligas Camponesas

and the PCB—groups on the political left that were actively involved in the struggle

for agrarian reform in the late 1950s and early 1960s and that faced repression

following the military coup in 1964 -- used and interpreted the symbol of the

cangaceiro. Through this symbol, it is possible to perceive some of the underlying

differences between the Ligas and the PCB in terms of how leaders used the image of

the cangaceiro to mobilize the rural population and to define the objectives of

agrarian reform.

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 António Conselheiro, Felipe dos Santos, Antonio Sílvino or

Lampião; and then he is written off as a bandit or fanatic threatening the latifundia

543
“Brasil por dentro: Os Cangaceiros” LIGA 11 September 1963, 5.

277
and the “Christian” family, law, order and everything else corrupt; but he becomes a

ray of hope for the poor; a revenger for the crimes which are visited on him from the
544
day of his birth.” According to Julião, similar to other historic figures, the

cangaceiro symbolized resistance against the latifundia. The cangaceiro, for Julião,

was not just a part of history but a historic symbol that continued to fuel revolutionary

sentiment in the countryside. Thus, the symbol was useful for mobilizing

camponeses to fight for radical agrarian reform, a reform project defined by the

slogan of the Ligas: “Reforma agrária, pela lei ou pela marra.” Furthermore, as

repeated in numerous speeches and articles, the “true” history of the cangaceiros had

yet to be written. The history of the cangaceiro (and of Brazil) had only been told by

the dominant classes and this elite history described the cangaceiros as bandits and

violent outlaws. According to Julião, Brazilian peasants had a different version of

history.

Volta Sêca, an ex-cangaceiro, explained in an interview in Liga that “Lampião

was a protector of the poor against the injustice of the coroneis.” In this article the

cangaceiro was likened to the Ligas Camponesas and to the Cuban or Chinese

guerrilheiro, demonstrating the connection between regional history, the struggle for
545
land in the 1950s and 1960s, and revolutionary movements of this period. Volta

544
Francisco Julião, Cambão - The Yoke: The Hidden Face of Brazil (Penguin): 144-
145.
545
“Volta Sêca: Um Guerreiro em reposo. Entrevista com Jorge Brandão (Exclusiva
para “Liga”),” LIGA 20 November 1962, 5. This contrasts with interviews in
mainstream publications such as the Diario de Pernambuco, which emphasized the
detest ex-cangaceiros felt for the time of the cangaço.

278
Sêca’s history of the cangaço supposedly supported the oral traditions dominant in the

rural Northeast. As Volta Sêca described:

“Havia respeito, respeito com tudo e por todos, para a gente também
ser respeitado. Esse negócio de dizer que o bando violentava moças
nunca aconteceu. Basta saber o caso do velho Justino, conhecido no
bando como Pai Velho. Este homem entro para o cangaço com seu
filho, de nome Arvoredo, para se vingar da voltante comandada pelo
sargento Otaviano, que, a pretexto de dar combate a Lampião, invadiu
a casa do velho, matando e desrespeitando sua mulher e filhas, depois
de obrigarem as pobres moças a se despirem e marchar com canga no
curral. Esse velho bondoso morreu na cadeia.”
Hoje, a vingança do camponês, quando vê sua filha deflorada pelo
latifundiário ou o filho marcado com o ferro em brasa pelo capanga do
coronel, é entrar na Liga. E se ontem o cangaço aumentava com a
violencia da volante, hoje, as arbitrariedades cometidas pela polícia e
pelo exército aumentam os quadros revolucionários das Ligas.
According to the article, the official history described Lampião as a bandit and

mercenary, but this official history was simply the case of the real criminal tranferring

the blame for the crime to the accused. “Today the usineiros 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.” Those with power—the large landowners, the

United States—use their power to blame the less powerful—the peasant, Cuba—for

the crimes commited by the powerful.

This power also had a static quality. According to the article, the methods of

repression by the dominant classes remained the same. “O exercito invade a sede das

Ligas, toma a espingarda pica-pau do camponês e faz vista grossa para os verdadeiros

arsenais de armas de guerra conservados pelos latifundiários.” Furthermore, the

official history, or history told by the dominant classes, has always excluded the

subaltern version of history. The official history and the tactics for repressing the

279
peasants maintained the legitimacy and the power of dominant classes. But, the

article claims that the “consciousness” of the peasant had “developed” since the time

of the cangaço. Since the peasants had learned new forms of resistance and better

tactics for confronting the police and military, they were now a threat to the dominant

classes, the official history and the tactics for repressing struggles for change.

The “new” consciousness and tactics of the peasants fell somewhere between

the struggle of the cangaceiros and the struggle of Cuban and Chinese revolutionaries.

The article describes how the cangaceiros had used nom-de-guerre to protect their

families from persecution, as in Cuba. This article also detailed similarities between

guerrilha tactics since Lampião was a strategic genius who had used guerrilha tactics

in battles, tactics frequently used in China and Cuba, that Mao Tse-Tung and Che

Guevara called “cerco e aniqüila mento” and “minueto.” And the consciousness

described by Volta Sêca in his recollections of the famous encounter between

Lampião’s band and the Prestes Column, was interpreted as having much in common

with the idealized revolutionary consciousness of the peasant. Volta-Sêca claimed

that the cangaceiros never fought the Prestes Column because they had the same

enemy. From this statement, the reader was instructed: “Observa-se o sentido de

classe de estratégia (unidade contra o inimigo comum), e a compreensão natural e

singelamente dialética da tática de luta (a frente única como resultado prático do

processo revolucionário, brotando das próprias circunstancias materias.)” Volta Sêca

was held up as an ex-cangaceiro who was not only a part of history but a part of the

present. As the author concluded, as is the case of Euclides da Cunha’s “bronzed

Titans,” the warriors of the Nordeste did not disappear. The peace that supposedly

280
existed after the “disappearance” of the cangaceiros was the “filha de guerra, guerra

dos humildes contra os opressores e tiranos.”

Even though the elite classes, the U.S., and some Communist Party members

labeled the Ligas Camponesas as “communist,” Francisco Julião’s use of the

cangaceiro conflicted with the views of the Communist Party. The Brazilian

Communist Party saw the cangaceiro as a hindrance to the social revolution and

progress that necessary for Northeastern Brazil. In the PCB’s linear and progressive

history, the cangaceiro was a rebellious figure that was a reaction to unjust

landholdings. The cangaceiro no longer existed because history had progressed and

the nature of rural conflicts had changed. For instance, in one article in the PCB

newspaper Novos Rumos, the author refers to the time of the cangaceiros to describe

how certain types of violence no longer exist (the cangaceiro) but others remain (the

latifundia). Commenting on the violent shootout at the Engenho Estreliana, the

author claims:

Já se foram os tempos em que as injustices, praticadas contra os

camponeses, os arrastavam ao crime e à formação de bandos de
salteadores como o de Lampeão. Hoje, a miséria que asola a nossa
população rurícula, as injustiças praticadas pelos donos da terra
conduzem os camponeses, inevitvelmente, para as Ligas, para os
Sindicatos Rurais e outras formas de organização. Os trabalhadores
rurais estão aprendendo com os trabalhadores da indústria de que,
somente a organização pode libertá-los do jugo do latifundio, da
exploração desumana dos senhores feudais das usinas e dos engenhos
de Pernambuco.546
At the same time, the actual historical conflict between Lampião’s band and

the Prestes Column must be taken into consideration since the PCB had strong ties

546
“Latifundiarios e governo contra os camponeses,” A Hora 19 – 26 January 1963,
1.

281
 547
with Luis Carlos Prestes. Rui Facó, a central figure and reporter for the Communist

Party newspaper Novos Rumos, published a series of articles on Northeastern Brazil

as well as an influential book, Cangaceiros e Fanaticos before his tragic death in

Bolivia in 1963. These publications illustrate general Communist Party views on the

cangaceiro in relation to the rural activism of the 1960s.

Rui Facó traveled throughout Northeastern Brazil starting in late 1960,

producing a few different series of reports on the culture of o Nordeste and on the

Ligas Camponesas. As a whole, the articles described the cangaceiro as a type

primitive rebellion in the past. For example, in a book review of the Russian preface

to “Cangaceiros” (a Russian translation of José Lins do Rego’s “Cangaceiros”), Facó

criticizes the Russian scholar’s interpretation of the cangaceiro:

...o cangaceirismo, embora tendo em sua origem a revolta espontânea

contra uma ordem de coisas terrivelmente injusta, a nada conduziu as
massas camponesas exploradas e oprimidas. Ao contrário, os bandos
de Lampião, Antônio Silvino, Luis Padre, Corsico e tantos e tantos
outros degeneraram em simples salteadores e assassinos. Colocaram-
se invariávelmente a serviço de latifundiários, na luta renhidas entre
estes. (...)
O que condenamos no cangaceirismo não é apenas a violência pela
violência, mas também não ter em conta o verdadeiro estado de
espírito das massas camponesas; estar desligado de todo movimento
popular e da luta pela terra ou simplesmente contra a exploração
feudal: é a sua ausência de ideologia e, portanto, de conseqüênica, de
objetivos claros e definidos, de classe; é a degenerescência do
cangaceiro em lumpen. O cangaço tem apenas um elemento positivo:

547
One of the main reasons for the split in the Partidão (PCB) and the emergence of
the PC do B (Partido Comunista do Brasil) was related to the PCB’s close ties to
Prestes. The PCB was labeled the “Partido de Prestes.” Jean Rodrigues Sales, “O
Partido Comunista do Brasil nos anos sessenta: estructuração orgânica e atuação
política,” in Cadernos AEL: Tempo de ditadura do golpe de 1964 aos anos 1970 v.8,
n. 14/15 (2001): 32.

282
 o sentimento de revolta que o gerá. Traduz de inicio esse sentimento.
548
Mas logo a seguir o trai, pois sua ação é cega.
Facó explained that while the cangaceiro was a “stage” of guerrilha, it lacked a

“centro director” or a “núcleo-matriz” to orientate the actions of rebellion. The

cangaceiro was only interested in attacking other bands, or assaulting certain fazendas

and thus lacked a “revolutionary spirit.”

Emphasizing the canagceiro’s place in history, Facó reported that literatura de

cordel was supposedly losing popularity because younger generations were no longer

interested in stories about cangaceiros. The younger generation wanted to know

about the Soviet Union and educational programs and scholarships for students from

Brazil. According to Facó, this proved that Nordestinos were “firmamente decidida”
549
to take control of their own future. The Ligas Camponesas were headed in the

right direction since leader Francisco Julião’s revolutionary consciousness had

550
“evolved” through the struggle, from a sentimental spirit to a revolutionary one.

Facó’s articles on the Ligas, focus on the “evolutionary” nature of the social

movement, also exemplified through the case of one rural worker who “progressed”

from being Protestant, to Catholic, to Ligas member:

548
Rui Facó, “Reparos a um prefácio de livro brasileiro na URSS” Novos Rumos no.
85. 14 a 20 October 1960, p.5 2nd caderno.
549
Rui Facó, “Os velhos cantam nas feiras os jovens querem Moscou,” Novos Rumos,
7 a 13 October 1960, 1, 2nd caderno.
550
Rui Facó, “Julião: Eu não inventei as Ligas. Elas são a flor que se abre no lôdo.”
Novos Rumos, 27 janeiro a 2 fevereiro 1961, 1, 2nd. caderno. Note that the article was
written in 1961. A decided rupture occurred in 1962 in the PCB, creating the PC do
B and conflicts between the PCB and the Ligas. Also, upon his death, Facó was
described by “Julião” as a “friend” of the Ligas.

283
 -- Eu era até Protestante. Desde esse dia deixei...
-- E agora tu es católico—perguntei-lhe outro com ironia. --- O senhor
de engenho é católico...
-- Eu agora sou das Ligas! -- responde, com firmeza, segura de haver
551
encontrado um novo caminho.
In Cangaceiros e Fanáticos, Facó argues that the cangaceiro arose as a

reaction to the unequal and unjust the socioeconomic system in the nineteenth and
552
early twentieth centuries. Although the problems that existed earlier such as

drought, hunger, and semi-slave labor relations had not changed, the cangaceiro had

disappeared because of emigration, which served as an escape valve for Nordestinos

who continued to suffer from such problems. The “rural exodus” provided the

mechanism by which the rural elite maintained their dominance and the status quo.

Facó argued against the biological claims of nordestinos being predisposed to

criminality made by Nina Rodrigues and Euclides da Cunha. Even though the rural

poor did not know what they were rebelling for, they knew that what they were

rebelling against which was the power of the latifundia. The repression by the police

against the rural population was supposedly much worse than the violence by the

cangaceiros. In the 1920s, thousands of cangaceiros and rural poor were killed by the

police in the “civil war” that was a class struggle even though those fighting were
553
unconscious of the fact. Facó concludes the study with a brief analysis of the Ligas

Camponesas, rural associations expanding throughout Brasil, “dando sinal de uma

551
Rui Facó, “Julião: Eu não inventei as Ligas. Elas são a flor que se abre no lôdo.”
Novos Rumos, 27 janeiro a 2 fevereiro 1961, 1 2nd. caderno. This example also
illustrates the position of the PCB on religion, a topic to be further addressed in a
separate chapter.
552
Rui Facó, Cangaceiros e Fanáticos: gênese e lutas (Rio: Civilização Brasileiro,
1976 [1963]).
553
Ibid., 186-187.

284
efervescência inédita entre as massas rurais pobres” and causing concern to the

latifundiários. Why? “Porque os pobres do campo dispõem hoje da mais poderosa das

armas, uma que não possuíam antes: vão ganhando consciência de sua situação de

míseros explorados e oprimidos e organizam-se como jamais se organizaram os

trabalhadores do campo no Brasil. Esta consciência e organização lhes valem como

554
um penhor de vitória.”

Conclusion: A Return to the Heads

In 1965, Estácio de Lima published a book entitled O mundo estranho dos

cangaceiros (ensaio bio-sociologico), dedicated to all those who wrote about the

“cruel drama of the Northeast.”555 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,

because sertanejos do not know the beauty of green vistas or the productivity of land.

As a comparison, Lima raised the Sicilian and Chicago mafia, and cowboys of the

“wild west,” although Lima believed the cangaceiro was most like a caveman because

of the cangaceiro’s violent nature and his failure to be disciplined or to respond to

repression.

554
Ibid., 216.
555
Estácio de Lima, O mundo estranho dos cangaceiros (ensaio bio-socioglogico)
(Salvador: Editora Itapoã Ltda, 1965).

285
 Also in 1965, a social movement arose to mobilize family members of the

cangaceiros whose heads remained on display to acquire the right to bury the heads.

A law was proposed in 1965, connected to the University of Brasília (the conferences
556
of poet Euclides Formiga), and the Catholic Church. On 24 May 1965, the

National Congress passed a decree stating that the heads on display at the Instituto

Nina Rodrigues should be buried 15 days after the publication of the law. The

University of Bahia and Director of the Instituto were responsible for ensuring a

burial in a Christian cemetery. The decree prohibited the “exibição de orgãos do

corpo humano de pessoas mortas, com objectivo lucrativo, ou mesmo cientifico,

cabendo punição de 5 a 10 anos de reclusão ao responsável ou aos responsaveis pela

transgressão desta lei.”557 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 shows of punishment, Brazil

had arrived at an “advanced stage of social evolution.”558 And with the military’s

strategy of 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, simply different means and methods.

But, the saga continued: the heads were not buried 15 days later. In 1967, the

Diario de Pernambuco returned to publish reports on the heads. Corisco’s son, dr.

Silvino Hermano Bulhões, made a statement at the III Convenção da Camaras Junior
556
Semira Adler Vainsencher, “Lampião (Virgulino Ferreira da Silva),
http://www.fundaj.gov.br:8080/notitia/servlet/newstorm.ns.presentation.NavigationSe
rvlet?publicationCode=16&pageCode=308&textCode=976&date=currentDate.
Accessed: 7 September 2005.
557
Grunspan-Jasmin, Lampião, 347.
558
Ibid., 348.

286
in São Paulo in which he attacked Dr. Estácio de Lima’s right to continue to hold the
559
heads as “macabre trophies” in the name of science. Not until 1969, shortly after

the instatement of Ato Institucional número 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. Interestingly enough, the heads were released

around the time of carnaval (February) and, at least in the Diario de Pernambuco, the
560
burials received almost no press coverage. Neither incident can be considered

strange in light of the context since military officials understood the power of the

cangaceiro as a symbol of rebellion and resistance as well as injustice for much of the

rural population. At the same time, keeping the heads on display illustrated the

“backwardness” that the military’s promises of progress and modernization were

supposed to have eliminated.

The burial of the heads did not end the debate about the circumstances of

Lampião’s death. In 1970, the Pernambuco state tourism organization, EMPETUR,

conducted a study interviewing ex-cangaceiros to discover the “true” history of the

cangaço. In one interview, ex-cangaceiro João Circinato stated that Lampião just

died recently (in 1970), and that he was not assassinated in 1938. According to

Circinato, Lampião’s head was not one of the heads that had been cut off. Lampião

had escaped to Goias. One of the members of Lampião’s band, Luiz de Triangulo,

had told Circinato Lampião was still alive. As Circinato described,

559
“Tempo destrói cabeças dos cangaceiros expostas na Bahia,” Diario de
Pernambuco 5 November 1967, p. 3.
560
For a newspaper that had been involved in the campaign to return the heads and
bury them for at least ten years, it appears odd that the victory was not covered in the
paper. Only a few short blurbs were published on the burials.

287
 “Oxem, quem mata Lampião nunca. Ele brigava quando queria. Ele
tinha coiteiros, tinha onde se esconder. Aí ele conversou com o
tenente quem queria deixar aquela vida, tinha pra onde ir e quera
abandonar o cangaço. Aí o tenente disse, ‘Tem geito.’ Você manda
comprá carne. Eu mando a carne envenenada. Quando eles tiveram
de comer da carne—e você fora, não coma da carne—quando eles
tiverem distentados, eu aí cerco, mato tudinho e você tá fora pode se
561
aforriar.”
Even a well-known scholar of the cangaço, Algae Lima de Oliveira, claimed in 1974

that Lampião was living in the north of Bahia, “com 79 anos, magro, cabeludo e
562
rigorosamente protegido por cães.” As the cordel explains, Lampião was expelled

from heaven and hell, and so he must be still in the sertão.

The next chapter examines another type of “psychologically demented human

type” associated with the sertão and Northeastern Brazil: the religious fanatic.

Figures such as Antonio Conselheiro have often been associated with Lampião and

the cangaceiros; in fact, if it had not been for a fire in 1905 in the Instituto, Antonio

Conselheiro’s decaying head would have been on display next to the cangaceiros’

heads. The religious fanatic yet another symbol that holds multiple meanings, and

that entered into the discourse of redefining the Northeast in the 1950s and 1960s.

561
Interview with João Circinato about Memórias do Tempo do Cangaço, by Olímpio
Bonald Neto for the Museu da Imagen e do Som, EMPETUR, 12 Janeiro 1970, 8.
(Museu do Cangaço, Truinfo, Pernambuco).
562
“Professora acredita que Lampião esteja vivo e vai procurá-lo na Bahia,” Diario de
Pernambuco 5 September 1974, 10.

288
Chapter 6: From the Memory of Messianic Wars to a Radical
Jesus

Growing up in rural Oregon in the 1980s, I was surrounded by what many would

classify as messianic movements or religious cult settlements, as well as by

communes and a certain degree of religious fanaticism. For years, I associated sushi

with religious cults since the only Japanese restaurant in town was “Roy Masters” and

thus declared “off-limits” by my family.563 A neighboring town, Ruch, was entirely

devoted to a Christian cult with a mega church and community that existed in relative

isolation to the rest of Southern Oregon. The commune of Takilma, an independent

community located deep in the mountains, where poverty and a booming marijuana

industry attracted hippies eager to follow an alternative lifestyle, going as far to create

their own “state” composed of the western regions of Southern Oregon and Northern

California with the intention to secede from the nation. And, the Rajneesh

established a cult ashram in Antelope, Oregon, known as “Rajneesheeville,” with

followers dressed in orange garb who became a major news story, were labeled a “sex

cult,” and later were linked to using salmonella strains to poison neighboring

communities.

So, in some ways, I have a personal familiarity with the type of cult

followings associated with poor rural areas that offer followers promises of a life

different from that which mainstream society can provide. I also heard and believed

563
Roy Masters is a charismatic evangelist whose “Foundation of Human
Understanding” or “Hypnosis” was labeled a “cult,” described in the media and by
scholars as devoted to the denigration and submission of women, exorcisms, and its
attempt to take over my hometown of Grants Pass, Oregon in the 1980s.

289
the mainstream criticisms of these settlements. I associated such communities with

poverty, violence such as sexual molestation, drug use, skepticism of the power of the

charismatic leaders, and in general, a sense that these communities were abnormal.

In this respect, it is easy to understand the fear and skepticism that many Brazilians

felt toward the messianic or religious communities of Canudos, Pedra Bonita, Padre

Cicero’s Juazeiro do Norte, and the other small foci of folk religion in the backlands

of Northeastern Brazil. But, what is drastically different is the resonating power that

messianic movements assert on regional identity. Few people in the United States

would commonly identify Oregon or the Pacific Northwest with religious cults. But,

many Brazilians envision Canudos and Antonio Conselheiro, Padre Cicero, and poor

religious pilgrims roaming the backlands when they think of Northeastern Brazil.

One of the significant reasons for this difference lies in the importance of historical

narratives of messianic movements in Northeastern Brazil, which encouraged a

proliferation of scholarly and cultural productions drawing a connection between

rural Northeastern Brazil and religious fanaticism.

The power of such representations clearly stems from Euclides da Cunha’s

famous Brazilian epic, Os sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands, 1902) and the

representations of this narrative in film and popular culture. Da Cunha’s positivist

account of the destruction of a millenarian community in the interior of Bahia in the

early years of the Brazilian Republic described how topography and miscegenation

had combined to create a “backwards” population. In Os sertões, the “fanatic”

followers fought to the death against state militias and federal troops in defense of

their community and leader. An immediate classic, versions of this story have been

290
repeated in folktales, novels, theatrical productions, carnival performances and even

soap operas, collectively working to construct a mythical identity of the Nordeste and

the Nordestino. A particular strand of da Cunha’s story – the Nordestino as a

barbaric, immiserated pathogen amidst the civilizing nation – was later reinforced by

elite novels and scholarly works in the 1930s and 40s. And yet, certain passages of

da Cunha’s account have been open to multiple interpretations; for instance, the idea

of the sertanejo as a strong and brave fighter able to win numerous battles against the

Brazilian Armed Forces provides a powerful image for Northeastern resistance

broadly speaking. For instance, the tragedy of the community’s annihilation by the

military also fueled resistance against the Brazilian military in the late 1970s and

early 1980s.564

A great deal of the scholarship produced on Northeastern Brazil focuses on

the studies of Canudos and messianic movements, reinforcing the connection between

regional identity and messianism. The extensive historiography falls into a number of

overlapping categories, some of which will be addressed in greater detail throughout

the chapter.565 One theme of this scholarship is the reception and interpretations of

Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões, illustrating how this particular account has formed

564
A number of theater plays, cultural groups and filmmakers as well as scholars used
the theme of Canudos to portray the violence of the Brazilian military during the
abertura (1979-1985).
565
A number of historiographical essays and reviews describe the state of the
scholarship on Canudos including Lori Madden, “The Canudos War in History,”
Luso-Brazilian Review 30, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 5-22; Lori Madden, “Evolution in the
Interpretations of the Canudos Movement: An Evaluation of the Social Sciences,”
Luso-Brazilian Review 28, no. 1 (Summer 1991): 59-75. The Luso-Brazilian Review
has published a number of special issues on this topic as well.

291
changing interpretations of the Northeast and of the Brazilian nation.566 Other

scholars focus on the historical analysis of the figure of Antonio Conselheiro or the

War of Canudos itself, in an attempt to separate the “history” from Euclides da

Cunha’s account.567 Another historiographical debate defines Canudos within the

literature on messianism or millenarianism, debating whether Canudos was a global

phenomenon or a peculiar feature of Northeastern society.568 Within this debate,

some have argued that Canudos resulted from the social and economic inequalities,

while others see Canudos as a response to foreign imperialism or to the newly

instated Republican government that supposedly threatened traditional Northeastern

culture.569 Canudos has also been incorporated into a Marxist or materialist

566
Among others: 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, n. 3 (Oct., 1996): 667-
685; Maria Zilda Ferreira Cury, “Os Sertões, de Euclides da Cunha: Espaços,” Luso-
Brazilian Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 71-79.
567
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 (August 1968): 402-420.
568
On Canudos as a global messianic phenomenon: Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed., Millenial
Dreams in Action (Hague: Mouton and Co., 1962). On Canudos as a reaction to
Northeastern culture and inequalities: Sue Anderson Gross, “Religious Sectarianism
in the ‘Sertão’ of Northeastern Brazil,” Journal of Interamerican Studies 10, no. 3
(July 1968): 11-27. Hermann argues that Canudos must be interpreted as part of both
local and national changes, 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. Eds., Jorge Ferreira and Lucilia de Almeida Neves Delgado. vol.
1 of 4 (Rio: Civilização Brasileira, 2003):121-160.
569
Patricia Pessar argued that Canudos arose as a rejection of the new Republic.
Patrica Pessar, “Revolution, Salvation, Extermination: The Future of Millenarianism
in Brazil,” in Predicting Social Change, Susan Abbott and John van Willigen, eds.,

292
interpretation as a “primitive” or nascent form of social rebellion based on class

struggle and some scholars have suggested that Canudos was part of the long history

in the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil.570 More recent scholarship has shown

how notions of popular millenarianism have changed over time in the Northeast, as a

part of the narrative of modernity.571 A number of scholars have examined the

cultural productions on Canudos in film, literature, song, and popular poetry.572

Similar to the case of the cangaceiro, I argue that it is impossible to separate the

historical reality from the representations that constitute the meaning of Canudos.

With few exceptions, most Brazilian films on Northeastern Brazil incorporate

the image of folk religions, messianic movements, and romeiros traversing the dry

backlands. Versions of Euclides da Cunha’s narrative have been retold in film 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,

(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980): 95-114. Maria Isaura Pereira de

Queiroz looks at the connection between Canudos and coronelismo, O messianismo
no Brasil e no mundo (São Paulo: Dominus, 1965) as does Shepard Forman, The
Brazilian Peasantry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975).
570
Rui Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1963);
Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1959);
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).
571
Patricia Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk: Brazilian Millenarianism and Popular
Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); José Maria de Oliveira Silva,
“Rever Canudos: Historiocidade e Religiosidade Popular (1940-1995),” (PhD diss.,
Universidade de São Paulo,1996).
572
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 (Summer 1991): 117-127.

293
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 (1962); Paulo Gil

Soares’s Frei Damião (1969); Geraldo Sarno’s Viva Cariri (1969), and there are

scenes of pilgrims (romeiros) in most of the Nordestern productions. The presence

and repetition of messianic images and themes in films about Northeastern Brazil

have bolstered certain ideas about the type of religious activity associated with the

region.573 Part of the challenge is to understand the meanings of such representations

in the Cold War historical context.

In a study on US media representations of “fringe” religious groups, Sean

McCloud argues that media representations of non-mainstream religious groups

573
Out of sheer curiosity, I traveled to Juazeiro do Norte filled with preconceived
notions of what I was going to find: the weathered beatas circling the feet of the
enormous statue of Padre Cicero, romeiros dressed in rags wandering the streets
carrying crosses and filling the churches, paying their respect to “meu padinho,” set
to the constant ongoing background music of romeiros chanting. While I did notice
what seemed to be extreme poverty and a disproportionate number of maimed
beggars in comparison with other towns in the sertão, I did not find the beatas cloaked
in black mumbling their prayers to their declared saint, (although this is not to say
that at other times of the year, this scene does not unfold). What surprised me was
the large number of “modern” homes with swimming pools and the air-conditioned
modern mall, guarded by the typical men-with-machine-guns. When I climbed past
the stations of the cross in the sun of the sertão to reach the top of the “holy” hill and
the feet of the Padre Cicero statue, I read the pamphlets explaining the prayers and
traditions, but the only other people at the illustrustious Padre’s feet that day were a
young man and young woman in a mini-skirt passionately making out. I realized that
I too had been caught in the trap of reading the representations as reality. This was a
place, like any other, where believers came to worship and kids came to make-out.
People were poor, but they were not the images the mass media and films depicted of
the “fanatic” place of Juazeiro do Norte in Northeastern Brazil.

294
changed during the Cold War. Comparable to imagery of Northeastern Brazil’s

“fanatics,” McCloud argues that during the 1950s and early 1960s, “members of

fringe religions were seldom portrayed individually, but instead namelessly grouped

as indistinguishable, often fanatical ‘true believers’ in mass movements. Promoting a

broad American cultural consensus that stood apart from ‘godless’ communism, news

and general-interest magazines occasionally portrayed marginalized religious groups

as having those characteristics least suitable for sustaining representative democratic

capitalism.”574 McCloud claims that a “common Cold War trope” was to locate the

religious fringe as identified with a certain region of the United States.575 McCloud

also claims that the concept of “brainwashing” and the idea that opposition groups

labeled “enemies” of the U.S. nation – such as the Nation of Islam – was a Cold War

tactic in distinguishing the national “we” from the subversive “them.”576 Similar to

Northeastern Brazil’s fanatics, the idea of the religious Other in the U.S. was broad

enough to encompass white, middle-class Californians (regional) and black, urban

militants (racial). The media depicted these groups as non-mainstream, subversive,

and as a threat to an imagined homogenous nation. As McCloud argues, such

representations fit into the broader Cold War containment discourse in the U.S.,

which drew connections between communism, (political/social/cultural) difference,

and the metaphor of germs and disease.577

574
Sean McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives and
Journalists, 1955-1993 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 3.
575
McCloud argues that in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Northeast media in the U.S.
identified the religious fringe with California, and the “exotic cults.” Ibid., 33.
576
Ibid., 52-68.
577
McCloud draws from Elaine Tyler May’s study on the Cold War’s influence on
gender relations and the idea of the “home.” Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound:

295
 The images of messianic movements and Canudos are not stable, or do not

consistently signify only backwardness, social illness, and a threat to the Brazilian

nation.578 As this chapter explains, numerous meanings surrounded Canudos in the

1950s and 1960s, with the interpretation of Canudos as the predecessor to the struggle

for agrarian reform introduced during these years. But, this chapter is not solely about

representations of messianic movements such as Canudos or Padre Cícero. It is also

about how religion entered into the social and cultural struggles during the Cold War

in Northeastern Brazil. To understand how such ideas of religion shaped

Northeastern identity, it is necessary to examine the struggles that took place over the

meanings of the representations579 as well as to recognize the political role that

religious leaders – such as Catholic priests – played in these struggles. The grouping

together of messianic movements with the Catholic and Protestant Churches is a

superficial catagorization; in fact, many institutional religious leaders strongly

opposed any type of “folk” religion.580 But, the point of this chapter is to understand

how religion and religious identities influenced the struggle for land and regional

American Families in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989). McCloud, Making the American Religious Fringe, 37-45.
578
Patricia Pessar’s work on Pedra Bonita shows how the idea of messianism has
changed over time. Pessar, From Fanatics to Folk.
579
Bourdieu, “Identity and Representation.”
580
While the categorization of “religion” is superficial, this also has to do with the
perspective of the people involved. For instance, whereas the official Catholic
Church would see any type of connection between the Church and messianic
movements as completely at odds, this would not necessarily be the case for rural
people who would see the two as similar or even as the same. Francisco Julião’s
appropriation of Biblical passages, in some cases, would be understood as competing
with the official Church doctrine as would some of the more radical priests’ teachings
and political activism. For this reason, I decided to integrate “religion” broadly
defined in this chapter, since it is a key component of Northeastern regional identity
but is not necessarily attached to one religious belief or institution.

296
identity formation.

This chapter looks at how a number of different groups and individuals used

religion – broadly defined – as a way to legitimize their political projects. Religion

has always shaped Northeastern identity, but the point of this chapter is to understand

the contestations over religious symbols and narratives in the context of the Cold War

in Brazil. The Ligas Camponesas used biblical passages and messages, and also

incorporated radical Catholic priests and Protestants as spokesmen. During the 1950s

and 1960s, the Catholic Church created a new discourse of the “Salvation of the

Northeast.” In the early 1960s, the Catholic Church’s Federations of Rural Workers

and SORPE challenged the dominance of the Ligas and the PCB in the rural syndicate

movement. At the same time, Catholic “Anti-Communists” used the Church to

oppose agrarian reform. The focus on the Church in this chapter also allows for a

deeper investigation into the military period (1964-1985) since the Church unions

were the only rural social movement that survived into the dictatorship (after a three

month suspension). But, at the same time, the association with the Northeast as a

place of “devious” or “radical” religious beliefs and practices helped justify the

repression of priests and Catholic activists who denounced military rule. The chapter

looks at regional identity formation in the Northeast starting with representations in

popular culture of religion and messianism, followed by a description of how the

Ligas used religious figures and history in their struggle, and it ends with a discussion

of how the Catholic Church entered into this process of regional identity formation

during the Cold War.

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Fanatics in Popular Culture

The religious fanatic is a definitive figure of Northeastern film. The place of the

messianic movement is central in Brazilian national cinema, and as a trope is

unrivaled in other national film industries. Unlike the slave or the cangaceiro, which

are more universal symbols that have equivalents in other national film industries, the

messianic movement and romeiros traversing the backlands are particular to Brazilian

film.581 Many scholars and cultural critics tie the figures or symbols of the fanatic

and the cangaceiro together, because they often are depicted together to make up the

imagined place of the Northeast and the sertão. As Jean-Claude Bernardet claimed

writing about Brazilian cinema of 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 the suffering on earth. It is also about

disorganized rebellion: they do not have a consciousness about why they are

rebelling against the state of their situation nor do they propose to change anything.

The solution for this unconscious revolt is in alienation of the violence or hysteric

mysticism, that always represents an alternative for the life of the semi-enslaved

581
Luis Buñuel’s Simon del desierto (Simon of the Desert, 1965) depicts a similar
type of rural religious figure and movement in Mexico, but supposedly Buñuel was
influenced by Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White
Devil, 1964), and Glauber Rocha even appeared in Simon del desierto. Werner
Herzog’s Cobra Verde (1987) has a scene of mysticism in the Brazilian sertão that
depicts an (out of place) orixá dancing through the backlands, but this seems to be
more of a reference to Glauber Rocha’s O dragão da maldade contra o santo
guerreiro (Antônio das Mortes, 1969).

298
peasant.”582

While Bernardet’s arguments describe the political ideology behind the

representations in Brazilian cinema of both the cangaceiro and the fanatic, I argue that

these symbols actually held different meanings, making it necessary to analyze the

fanatic separately from the cangaceiro. One difference is that the cangaceiro can

either be represented as “good” or “bad,” but in feature films, the representations of

the messianic movements are remarkably invarying, crossing from the political films

of the Cinema Novo to more commercial productions without much alteration. In

most films about the Northeast, even if a messianic movement is not the major theme,

it is common to have the cangaceiros or others come across a group of romeiros,

holding a cross, dressed in rags, traversing the heat of the backlands without carrying

even a jug of water, chanting or singing as they cross the screen. These films all

show the movements as violent and the followers as being duped by the charismatic

leader, and the directors cast a certain imagined memory of Canudos that supports the

dominant narrative of Northeastern religion. With few exceptions, those who choose

to follow folk cults in film are doomed to a precarious existence or death by

annihilation. In this section, I discuss the representations of the fanatics of the sertão

in cinema novo and commercial productions, and then I discuss the representations of

Northeastern religion in a broader perspective with some of the portrayals of Afro-

Brazilian and other folk religions depicted on screen.

In the opening scene of Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo, the vaqueiro

(cowhand) Manuel comes across Sebastião, played by an actor of African descent

582
Bernardet, Brasil em tempo, 40.

299
(Lídio Silva) who is dressed in long dark robes and carries a large wooden cross.583

Figure 4

Glauber Rocha, Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, 1964

He leads a group of romeiros (pilgrims) who are chanting and singing, dropping to

pray periodically as they cross the screen without interacting with Manuel who circles

around them on horseback. The scene takes place in a dry place of the sertão, coded

by the presence of a bleached cow’s skull that precedes the scene with the romeiros.

After Manuel and his wife, Rosa, flee from their home, they find refuge in the cult on

Monte Santo, the place associated with Canudos. Rocha films the actors amongst

local people, repeatedly shown screaming and praying, with weathered faces, and

women dressed in black. While Rosa never accepts the cult, Manuel seeks to be one

of the main followers of Sebastião, convinced by the famous millenarian statement

583
The character of Sebastião was supposedly based on a fusion of two beatos,
Lourenço do Calderão, Ceará and Sebastião of Pedra Bonita, Pernambuco. 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.

300
attributed to Antônio Conselheiro, “o sertão vai virar mar e o mar vai virar sertão”

(one day the sertão will turn into the sea and the sea will turn into the sertão).

Sebastião talks of the valley flowing with rivers of milk when this day comes. His

followers attack the local town, shooting those who resist, and sacking the stores.

In a separate scene, a Catholic priest contracts Antônio das Mortes, the

famous “killer of cangaceiros” to kill Sebastião and the followers who the priest sees

as a threat to the Church and to society. The final scene before the entire community

is annihilated depicts the messianic movement as extremely violent and Sebastião as a

“baby killer,” referring to alleged accounts of this type of violence in the community

of Pedra Bonita. To become inducted into the movement, Manuel must carry a large

rock up the mountain to the Church. He slaps Rosa in the face when she resists his

interest in the movement, and struggles, falling numerous times under the weight of

the rock and difficultly of the climb, all to the approval and encouragement of

Sebastião who walks by his side. At the altar in the Church, Sebastião sacrifices a

baby and paints a cross in blood on Manuel’s forehead, motioning to Manuel that he

must kill his wife. But, in the end, Rosa kills Sebastião, to the sounds of gunfire and

screams of the community being annihilated. Manuel, like the rest of the followers, is

portrayed as having no agency and blindly following a violent leader who will lead

everyone to their death.

The film has been interpreted as the two stages of violent and alienated

Nordestino rebellion that the peasant has experienced.584 Once Antonio das Mortes

584
As Rocha claimed, “Manuel and Rosa are the prototype of a normal family who
enter into the disgraceful movements because of their alienation.” “Glauber Rocha,
Walter Lima Jr., David Neves, Leon Hirszman: Deus e o diabo na terra do sol,

301
has eliminated the fanatic and the cangaceiro, the peasant is finally free to act

“rationally,” depicted as Manuel and Rosa run away toward the sea in the final

scene.585 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

Rêgo’s Pedra Bonita (1938). In a 1964 debate on Deus e o diabo sponsored by the

Federação dos Clubes de Cinema do Brasil, a number of directors and film critics

discussed how the film provided a “popular” account of messianic movements based

on these literary works, being both “real” and “realistic.”586 Supposedly, Rocha

created a realistic portrayal based on the popular poetry, songs and legends of the

Northeast.587 But, this statement must be mediated by the fact that the directors and

film critics shared a certain version of what was understood as popular interpretations

of religious cults in Northeastern Brazil, from their standpoint as intellectuals and

artists who never lived in or experienced that world. In other words, the idea that the

film portrayed a realistic and popular version of the messianic movements of the

Northeast illustrates the point that the film touched upon long standing stereotypes

and preconceptions of religious fanaticism in the Northeast.588

The scenes of religious fanaticism in Ruy Guerra’s Os fuzís (The Guns, 1964)

1964,” in Alex Viany, O processo de Cinema Novo (Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano,

1999), 83.
585
Bernardet, Brasil em tempo, 72-73.
586
“Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima Jr.,” O processo de Cinema Novo, 51-84.
587
Rocha stated, “No Nordeste os cego, nos teatros populares, nos circus, nas feiras,
dizem: vou contar uma história que é de verdade e de imaginação, ou então, que é de
imaginação verdadeira.” Quoted in Avellar, Deus e o diabo, 88.
588
Rocha claimed that the two films that influenced him the most in directing Deus e
o diabo were the Italian neorealist films, Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1962) and
Rosi’s Salvatore Guiliano (1962). It is not surprising that both of these films depict
certain versions and stereotypes of Southern Italians. “Glauber Rocha, Walter Lima
Jr.,” O processo de Cinema Novo, 69-71.

302
depict a beato who appears similar to images of Antonio Conselheiro of Canudos.

The longhaired, gaunt figure leads a group of Nordestinos through the sertão, praying

and worshipping a steer (boi). When the romeiros reach the town, they gather on the

rocks. What is most impressive in this depiction is their lack of agency. The

romeiros are motionless and do not interact with each other or anyone else. Guerra

either cast small people or the camera angle made them appear dwarfed in

comparison to the main actors who talk and interact and move around the romeiros as

if they are not human, emphasizing their animal-ness and lack of agency. Toward the

end of the film, the holy steer dies, and at this point the beato instructs his followers,

“What are you waiting for? Eat!” The masses dive in, noisily carving up sections of

the holy steer. Although this is a very “human” response to a dead steer for hungry

people, the scene again dehumanizes the romeiros, portraying them as more similar to

vultures than human beings.

Similarly, commercial films also contain images of Antonio Conselheiro, and

relate him to sexual deviancy, violence, and a lack of agency of the followers.

Fernando de Barros’s Riacho de sangue (Creek of Blood, 1967) cast Alberto Ruschel

– the blonde gaucho hero of O cangaceiro (1953) – as a Nordestino cowboy who

faces the violence of coronelismo, cangaceiros, and religious fanaticism. Riacho de

sangue is a commercial Nordestern with scenes of Ruschel riding on horseback

through a sertão peppered with love scenes and extreme violence, all accompanied by

triumphant music. The second half of the film is about a religious community that

works with Ruschel and the cangaceiros to protect the beato (holy man) and the

community against a military attack. Newspaper reviews of the film emphasized how

303
the film focused on fanaticism, seen as a common problem in the Northeast. As

Barros claimed, “A luta do nordestino pela sobrevivência, agarrando-se, inclusive, ao

fanatismo será o pano de fundo do filme.”589 Lenildo Martins interpreted the role of

Beato Primo, a long-haired, tall, gaunt man dressed in black robes, similar to the

illustrations of Antônio Conselheiro.

Figure 5

Fernando de Barros, Riacho de Sangue, 1967

In one scene, Beato Primo is shown inducting a young woman into his church, asking

her to strip, tying her to a wall, and whipping her while his face and body posture

indicate this is a sexualized encounter, once again linking sexual perversity to the

religious movement of the Northeast. Beato Primo also keeps many birds in cages,

which could easily be interpreted symbolically as the followers he traps in his

religious cult. The final scene is a bloody battle between the military (interpreted by

the Esquadrão de Cavalaria da Polícia Militar de Pernambuco) and the townspeople,

ending in the complete annihilation of the town with the exception of Ruschel and

589
“Fernando de Barros filma em Pernambuco.” Folder “Fernando de Barros.”
FUNARTE archive. Rio de Janeiro.

304
one baby. The prophecy of Beato Primo, stated throughout in the film, has come to

pass: “O Senhor disse que a terra tem que ser lavado com a sangue dos inocentes.”

One of perhaps the strangest films on religious fanaticism was Sérgio

Ricardo’s A noite de espantalho (1974). The film showed at film festivals in Cannes

and in New York, and was described as a Bossa Novo Jesus Christ Superstar.

Figure 6

Sérgio Ricardo, A noite de espantalho, 1974

Ricardo had worked with Glauber Rocha on Deus e o diabo where he supposedly

came up with the idea for A noite, based on literatura de cordel and the “fantastic” in

the Northeast. The film was shot in Fazenda Nova, Pernambuco in 1965, a town

under construction with the purpose of making a version of Jerusalem in the

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Northeast (with the spectacle of the passion plays still performed to sold-out crowds

every year). As Ricardo claimed in an interview, “O ciclo da seca, o misticismo e o

coronelismo estão presentes no filme, causas principais da miséria do nordeste. (…)

O Nordeste continua o mesmo, desde Euclides da Cunha. A tecnologia se aproxima

do homem do campo, modifica alguns dos seus hábitos, mas sua cultura está

inalterada. Ele tem a mesma mentalidade e sofre os mesmos problemas.”590 Ricardo

commented that the townspeople understood the story better than the actors, which he

claimed supported the idea that the film was “popular” and would be received better

in the rural areas than in the cities. As exemplified by the posters, the beato in the

film is similar to other representations, although a bit “funkier” or circus-like.

But, the symbol of Canudos or Pedra Bonita is not the only way in which

films about the Northeast have focused on religious practices. Afro-Brazilian or

“folk” religions also have composed a major theme in film on the Northeast, often

coded as “black” or “African.” While such portrayals do not rely on the same type of

representations of violence or annihilation as the messianic cults, these

representations associate this type of religious belief and practice with Northeastern

Brazil, constructing yet another version of the Other. Many scholars and filmmakers

in the 1960s claimed that Afro-Brazilian religions were the “opiate of the people,”

and did not have the power to provoke the same type of “pre-revolutionary”

movement as the messianic movements.591 And while that perspective is manifested

590
“Sergio Ricardo de volta com ‘A Noite do Espantalho.’” Folder 12745, “A Noite
do Espantalho” FUNARTE Archive. Rio de Janeiro.
591
For instance, Maria Pereira de Queiroz, “Messiahs in Brazil,” Past and Present 31
(July 1965): 62-86; David E. Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” Studies in
Comparative International Development 1, no. 8 (August 1965): 117.

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in the “revolutionary” films of the early 1960s, the commercial productions portrayed

a more active role for Afro-Brazilian religions. As mentioned earlier, o Nordeste is

broad enough to encompass multiple versions of Otherness, so long as all of them

portray the region as backwards, non-modern, non-white, in sum: the Other in Brazil.

In a number of films on the sertão, both commercial and Cinema Novo, scenes

of folk religious practices and ceremonies are depicted as “black” or “African.” For

instance, in Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s Vidas Secas (Barren Lives, 1963), after the

cowhand Fabiano returns from the local town, injured by the beating he received from

the police, the family finds a healer. The scene portrays an older woman of African

descendent using branches and other “folk” cures, repeating rituals and prayers that

are not a part of the Catholic religion. In Carlos Coimbra’s A morte comanda o

cangaço, the “bad” cangaceiro is first shown on screen in the middle of an “African”

or “Afro-Brazilian” ceremony with an older woman of African descent perform

rituals with blood to protect the cangaceiro. The ceremonies are coded as “black” and

symbolize an Otherness, linked to the poverty and non-modern sertão as well as, in

the case of A morte, to the film’s villains.

Two films portray the type of Afro-Brazilian religious practices associated

with the coastal areas of Northeastern Brazil: Glauber Rocha’s Barravento (The

Turning Wind, 1962) and João Ramiro Mello and Vladimir Carvalho’s Romeiros da

guia (1962).592 These films provide a “realistic” depiction of the role of Afro-

592
Barravento is a part of what has become known as the “Bahian Renaissance” as
Robert Stam defines, “the cinematic rediscovery of the cultural riches of Salvador,
Bahia in the early 1960s” that focused on Afro-Brazilian religious themes. The films
associated with this movement include Trigueirinho Neto’s Bahia de Todos os Santos
(Bahia of All the Saints, 1960), Anselmo Duarte’s O pagador de promessas (The

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Brazilian religion in present-day rural coastal communities. Rocha’s Barravento

starts with an explanation of Afro-Brazilian religion in the Northeast, describing

religion from a historical materialist perspective as something that allows people to

suffer in misery and illiteracy, or the opiate of the masses.593 But the film provides a

slightly more complicated version of religion, with scenes that depict spirituality as a

powerful force, not necessarily condemning it.594 Rocha draws a strong connection to

Africa and slavery in the film, noting that the culture and religion are historical

legacies that still function to oppress poor, rural people.

In comparison, João Ramiro Mello and Vladimir Carvalho’s documentary

tells of the members of fishing community who embark upon a spiritual pilgrimage to

the seventeenth century ruins of the fort of Cabedelo to perform an Afro-Brazilian

religious ceremony at the Church of Nossa Senhora da Guia. As with Barravento, the

film emphasizes the present-day community’s connections to the past: colonialism

and slavery. The film itself opens with phrases from Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões,

Given Word, 1962), Glauber Rocha’s Barravento (The Turning Wind, 1962), and
Roberto Pires’s A grande feira (The Big Market, 1962). Robert Stam, Tropical
Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 205.
593
The opening scene scrolls the following: “The seacoast of Bahia is the home of
black fishermen whose ancestors came from Africa as slaves. There they still
worship the African gods and are dominated by a tragic and fatalistic mysticism.
They accept misery, illiteracy, and exploitation with the passivity typical of those
who await the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Iemanjá is the queen of the waters, the lady of the sea who loves, protects and
punishes the fishermen. The barravento is the moment of violence, the moment when
land and sea are transformed; when love, life, and the social world undergo sudden
exchanges.
None of the characters presented in this film have any relationship to people
living or dead, and any resemblance is pure coincidence. The facts portrayed,
however, do exist.” Quoted in Stam, Tropical Multiculturalism, 221.
594
Thank you to Paula Halperín for a discussion of this perception of Barravento.

308
emphasizing the fanaticism that defines Northeastern religions: “E as crenças

singulars traduzem essa approximação violenta de tendencies distintas…saem das

missas consagradas para os agapes selvagens.” The community is described as being

completely isolated from modern urban life, and the film shows the “primitive”

fishermen using jangadas, although they clearly were not “isolated” since the town is

located just outside of João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. For the representation of

the Northeast to function, however, it is imperative that the people and communities

shown on film appear to be isolated and disconnected from the rest of Brazil. In the

religious ceremony, the camera focuses on an older woman of African descent

crawling on her knees to worship while the voice-over describes the religious

syncretism of the ceremony. The community dances and sings a “coco,” a type of

song and dance with a strong drumbeat that is particular to each community and is

associated with slavery.

One of the most nationally and internationally renown films of this era,

Anselmo Duarte’s Pagador de promessas (The Given Word, 1962) which won the

Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1962 and was the first Brazilian film nominated for an Oscar

(1963), focuses on a type of folk, rural religion that conflicts directly with the

Catholic Church. The story tells of Zé-do-burro (Zé-of-the-donkey) who has carried

a large wooden cross across the sertão to complete a promise that he made to Saint

Barbara or Iansã to ensure the health of his donkey.

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Figure 7

Anselmo Duarte, O Pagador de Promessas, 1962

Upon his arrival, the Catholic priest refuses to allow Zé to enter the Church because

he made his promise to Iansã at a candomblé ceremony (terreiro) instead of to Saint

Barbara in the official Church. While waiting outside the Church, the story unfolds,

turning Zé into a Christ-like figure, supported by the Afro-Brazilian population,

symbolized by the presence of candomblé practitioners and capoeiristas. The media

turns the story of Zé into a story of agrarian reform, and local businessmen, the

priests, and politicians organize against Zé. In the end, Zé is shot in a skirmish with

the police and then the population carries him on his cross into the Church.

In October of 1962, the Diario de Pernambuco republished a story from São

Paulo about a “moço baixo” who was carrying a three-meter, 50-kilogram, wooden

cross through the streets of São Paulo to complete his promise. The story, entitled

“Pernambucano, o novo Pagador de Promessas,” compared the event directly to the

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movie: “Antonio José dos Santos, natural de Altinho no Estado de Pernambuco, 30

anos de idade, muito saúde e fé, foi o autor de façanha, revivendo, nas mais

movimentadas ruas de São Paulo, o episódio do ‘Pagador de Promessas.’”595 Except

that the story of Antonio José dos Santos’s promise is slightly different: Instead of

making a promise for the health of his burro, Santos carries the cross so that Ademar

de Barros will win the elections. As he is quoted,

“Caminhei hora e meia; as forças ameaçavam faltar-me, porém,

a ajuda da Padroeira e a lembrança de Ademar eleito mantiveram-me
de pé, e cumpri minha promessa,” – disse Antônio José à saída da
Catedral, pálido de dor, suando de cansaço. Veio de sua terra natal
para fazer a promessa. Nunca desejou tanto cumprí-la. A admiração,
o respeito, o amor quase paternal que o governador eleito lhe inspira,
fizeram com que abandonasse temporariamente seu lar e peregrinasse
pela Capital paulista.
Antônio José dos Santos é um pernambucano simples, de fala
arrastada. A emoção pertuba-lhe a voz quando diz, “Não quero
propaganda, cumpro apenass o meu dever de gratidão para com o
homem que me deu de comer quando pequeno.”
Santos explained that when he was starving as a child, Barros sent planes from

São Paulo to the Northeast with food and water, which the article claimed was the

reason why he was now carrying a cross for Ademar de Barros. The Paulista mayor

and presidential candidate of the right (PSP, Partido Social Progressista) lost the

election to Jânio Quadros, but the article is interesting in that it describes this man’s

political beliefs with direct reference to the Nordestino in the well-known film. It

would seem that it was newsworthy because it was seen as a way to appeal to the

Northeastern population to obtain political support for Barros. But it is remarkable in

its use of blatant stereotypes of the Nordestino to describe Antonio José dos Santos,

and how such descriptions confirmed the veracity of stereotypes in the film, a film

595
“Pernabucano, o novo Pagador de Promessas,” Diario de Pernambuco 18 October
1962, 1.

311
that was widely criticized by the Cinemanovistas for being “commercial” and an

exotic version of the Northeast because of a cast of well-known actors and the

relatively high production costs. As film critics Wills Leal and Paulo Emilio Salles

Gomes observed, the film is a perfect example of the Sulista version of the Northeast

created by the media. But, the newspaper story also shows the power that cinematic

representations possessed in the South in defining the Northeast.

A good example to summarize the argument of this section – representations

of Northeastern religion create a certain version of the region and its people as the

Other through the historical symbols of messianism and Afro-Brazilian culture – is

found in Geraldo Sarno’s documentary Viramundo (1965). Sarno creates a division

between the modern, industrial São Paulo and Paulistas and the backwards, rural

Nordestino emigrants who arrive in São Paulo searching for a way to survive. The

interview style and editing cuts create an extremely uncomfortable documentary, in

which Sarno appears to be forcing his argument: Nordestinos cannot fit into the

modern city and the modern city no longer has room for the Nordestino emigrant.

The documentary focuses on labor relations and cultural differences in which

religion plays a major role. After a scene with an industrialist who makes a bigoted

remark about Nordestinos and then declares that Nordestinos are the first to be laid-

off in a period of recession, Sarno films the misery of the Nordestino in the city.

Sarno shows masses of unemployed workers and leads the audience to believe that

only the solution to their misery of these workers is found religion. The film has a

scene with an evangelical preacher discussing the need for “caridade,” with shots of

soup kitchens and food provided from the United States. Sarno portrays the poor

312
masses partaking in Umbanda and Evangelical ceremonies with the idea that religion

is the only way to heal the “sick” masses through “miracles.” These scenes are

dizzying, and give the impression of fanaticism, highlighted by shots of religious

leaders illustrating the miracles cures that have healed the sick. The next scene shows

Nordestinos returning to the Northeast on the train. The documentary’s depiction of

alternative religious practices as a part of Nordestino culture that stand in conflict

with the modernity of São Paulo restate a familiar narrative of the non-modern,

Nordestino fanatic who has no place in modern Brazil.

Intellectual Perceptions of Fanaticism in the 1950s and 1960s

Interestingly enough, many of the intellectuals who wrote about Northeastern Brazil

and its culture repeated many of the same ideas as those found in Brazilian cinema.

One understanding of the phenomenon of fanaticism in Northeastern Brazil was

biological or psychological. Waldemar Valente wrote an essay on Sebastianism in

1963 for the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais that was then commented

on in an editorial in the Diario de Pernambuco. Valente argued that mystical-

religious movements come from ecological factors (drought and floods, as described

in Exodus), cultural factors, and the dominant presence of “bio-psychological” factors

that create a type of human who is psychologically more inclined toward

mysticism.596 This “leptossômico” or “psicológia esquisotímica” provided the

conditions for “psicose, esquisofrenia, paranoia,” and when cultivated as a mass

596
“Misticismo popular,” Diario de Pernambuco 3 July 1963, 4.

313
movement, to the violence of messianic movements or banditry.597 Valente claimed

that Sebastianism came from the Portuguese and the religious practices and beliefs of

the colonial experience. According to Valente, racial mixing and the type of non-

sedentary and underdeveloped lifestyle of the sertão exacerbated such tendencies.

Another type of study on “fanatics” of the Northeast examined the military

actions. Dante de Mello’s A verdade sobre ‘Os sertões’ (Análise reivindicatória da

campanha de Canudos) (1958) provoked a debate with historian Luís Viana Filho,

resulting in yet another publication Recolocando a verdade in 1961.598 Mello’s

objective was to reject the tragic tale of Canudos, challenging da Cunha’s idea that

the “rebels” of Canudos were famished and under prepared for the “cruel” attack by

the “well-fed and robust” Brazilian military.599 Mello claimed that da Cunha’s

chronicle presented a dramatic account that was not based on facts and meant to cause

a feeling of sympathy for the oppressed. But, by looking at other sources, Mello

argued that the jagunços of Canudos were much more dangerous and well-prepared

and should not be seen as “oppressed people.” He claimed it was evident that the

597
Waldemar Valente, Misticismo e região (Aspectos do Sebastianismo Nordestino)
(Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, 1963), 15-19.
598
Gilberto Freyre reviewed Dante de Mello’s A verdade sobre ‘Os sertões’ in the
Diario de Pernambuco in 1959, a writer for the Biblioteca do Exército who focused
on the military action of the campaign. Gilberto Freyre, “Canudos e o estadualismo
republicano” Diario de Pernambuco 29 March 1959, 4.
599
The passage from Os sertões he cites and argues against: “Porque havia, de feito,
algo de dolorosamente insolente no afôgo, na ânsia despoderada com que aqueles
bravos militares – robustos, bem fardados, bem nutridos, bem armadas, bem dispostos
– procuravam morcegar a organização desfilbrada de adversaries que desviviam há
três meses, famintos, baleados, queimados, dessangrados gota a gota, e as forces
perdidas…sucumbindo dia a dia num esgotamento absolutas. Dariam a última
punctura de baioneta no peito do agonizante…” Dante de Mello, A verdade sobre ‘Os
sertões’ (Análise reivindicatória da campanha de Canudos) (Rio de Janeiro:
Biblioteca do Exército – Editora, 1958), 11.

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Canudos forces numbered over 5,000 men who were well armed and robust. The

conditions of warfare supposedly always favored the jagunços of Canudos with a

style of guerrilla warfare and their innovative weapons that were better for the sertão

than the military’s weapons.600 He claimed that the local people served as spies for

the Canudos forces, operating under the “camouflage” of Brazilian nationality.601

Throughout the book, he insisted that the “racial type” of the Canudos “fanatics”

came from their violent history of the quilombo of Palmares, the Sebastianists of

Pedra Bonita and the indigenous tribes. Mello refered to the followers of Canudos as

“voracious and savage animals” whose physical features show their hereditary

“format of the most nonconformist blacks and the most ferocious Indians.”602 His

point was to validate the military actions and to reconstruct their historic role as

heroes who fought against the most violent savages who threatened the Brazil nation.

It is important to note that his books were published by the Biblioteca do Exército,

precisely at the time when rural social activism was increasing throughout the

Northeast.

However, the most common argument expressed in the 1950s and 1960s

looked at a combination of historical and cultural influences that led people to

participate in messianic movements in times of social or political crisis.603 For

600
Ibid., 53-54.
601
Ibid., 79-90.
602
Ibid., 140-142. He describes the women as having “narizes atorados, curtos, de
buracos à mostra como bocas de forno. Olhos inexpressivos, enfumaçados e
congestos; ali, olhos vermelhos ou selvagens, bocas glotonas, dentes pavorosos.
Outras vezes, queixos imensos ou desmarcado espaço naso-labial. E a expressão
fisionomico…coroando o desastre!”
603
José Maria de Oliveira Silva describes this period in the historiography of
messianism as a “transformation of the social reality.” José Maria de Oliveira Silva,

315
instance, Roger Bastide’s Brasil – Terra dos contrastes (1957), was reviewed and

praised in the Diário de Pernambuco in 1959 for the “connection he drew between

drought/hunger and religious fanaticism.”604 Bastide emphasized the historical

legacies of African slavery and Portuguese colonialism as reasons for the types of

religious practices that exist in Northeastern Brazil. In the chapter on “African

Presence,” Bastide discussed the syncretism of the “cane civilization,” arguing that it

is impossible to separate the mysticism of Catholicism from the mysticism of the

orixás in the coastal region of the Northeast. In his detailed descriptions of

candomblé ceremonies, Bastide emphasized what he calls their “African-ness,” and

describes animal sacrifices, drums pounding, and the “ecstasy” of the rituals.605

In the chapter entitled “The Other Northeast,” Bastide examined the

“civilização de couro” or the sertanejo culture, that was supposedly more Indian than

African with a religion that is “tão trágica, tão machucada de espinho, tão torturada de

sol quanto a paisagem; religião da cólera divina, num solo em que a sêca ecena

imagens do Juízo Final, e em que os rubicundos anjos barrocos, negros ou brancos,

cedem lugar aos anjos do extermínio. O penitente vergastado pelas disciplinas, lava

com sangue os pecados do mundoe o profeta substitui aqui o padre.”606 Bastide

argued that fanaticism appears in times of drought, which allows him to compare

“Rever Canudos: Historiocidade e Religiosidade Popular (1940-1995),” (PhD diss.,

Universidade de São Paulo, 1996), 122-123.
604
Octávio Domingues, “Brasil, terra dos contrastes,” Diario de Pernambuco 23
January 1959, 4. In the review, Domingues praises a foreigner for understanding “our
country” so well, emphasizing the idea that religious fanaticism (and cangaceirismo)
comes from drought and hunger.
605
Roger Bastide, Brasil, Terra dos contrastes. 5th Edition. (São Paulo: Difusão
Européia do Livro, 1973), 75-85.
606
Ibid., 87-88.

316
Northeastern Brazil to Europe in the Middle Ages or India. He described fanaticism

as evolving in acts: The first act was syncretism of Portuguese and Indian religions in

the sertão, smoking “erva santa.” The second was Pedra Bonita (1836-38) in which

“erva santa” allows for ecstatic rituals and sexual deviation, including mestiço/índio

João Antonio dos Santos’s requirement that all new brides have sexual relations with

him before their husbands.607 The third act was Canudos, described as a millianarian

movement that predicted the end of the world. The Fourth Act was Juazeiro and

Padre Ciçero, described as “mais sentimental e menos trágico: enquadra-o em normas

mais brasileiras e menos locais, a paróquia católica e o clã politico.”608 The final act

is entitled “A terra da promissão.” Bastide argued that Juazeiro shows the first

“suavização da selvageria primitiva.”609 The messianic dream had turned into

“dreams of a region where rain falls, where there is work for all, where there is radio

and cinema, and wages are raised.”610 Using statistics on emigration to the cities and

to the south, Bastide argued that while the dislocation is “dangerous,” it also gave

hope of smoothing out the contrasts, “giving Brazilians the consciousness of the

harmonious unity of their country.”611

Rui Facó argued in Cangaceiros e fanáticos that messianic movements

emerged in the Northeast as a way for the poor to fight against their misery and

exploitation. He claimed that the participants were not criminals or backwards, as

described by the dominant narratives, but were products of national

607
Ibid., 98-99.
608
Ibid., 103.
609
Ibid., 105.
610
Ibid.
611
Ibid.,106.

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underdevelopment. As he wrote, “Em todos os casos aqui focalizados – Canudos,

Contestado, Caldeirão – parece ser uma tendência natural das massas rurais

espoliadas, em determinadas condições, criar uma religião própria, que lhes sirva de

instrumento em sua luta pela libertação social, como o cristianismo foi, em seus

primórdios, religião de escravos e proletários da época.”612 Facó interviewed ex-

participants in Canudos and Juazeiro, and examined how the media of the era

depicted the movements. In his description of Canudos, Facó tied Canudos to the

rural social movements of the 1950s and 1960s: “Canudos foi assim um dos

momentos culminantes da luta de libertação dos pobres do campo. Sua resistência

indomável mostra o formidável potencial revolucionário existente no âmago das

populaces sertanejas e a enorme importância do movimento camponês no Brasil, cuja

população rural constitui, ainda hoje, a principal parcela das massas laboriosas do

País. A epopéia de Canudos ficará em nossa história como um patrimônio das massas

do campo e uma glória do movimento revolucionário pela sua libertação.”613

Facó’s interpretation of Padre Cicero was that he was no different from any

other latifundiario in the region. Keeping the “fanatics” in Juazeiro through the idea

of miracles was his way of preserving cheap labor in the region. “O Cariri, com os

‘milagres’ do Padre Cícero e a esperteza de Floro Bartolomeu, funcionava como

válvula de contenção da sangria enorme que desfalcava permanentemente as reservas

humanas do Nordeste. O grande perigo estava em perder essas reservas.”614 It was

Padre Cícero’s way to maintain the “velha ordem” in the Northeast: the alliance

612
Rui Facó, Cangaceiros e fanáticos; gênese e lutas (Rio de Janeiro: Editora
Civilização Brasileira, 1963), 42.
613
Ibid.,118.
614
Ibid., 163.

318
between the bourgeosie and the latifundio. But, the movement of Caldeirão and the

Beato Lourenço with the Holy Cow (1930s) in the area of Cariri changed the rural

person’s consciousness. Supposedly in Caldeirão, the settlers, “cavarm reservatórios

de àgua, levantaram barragens, canalizaram riachos, irrigaram o solo que parecia

inaproveitável.” Crops grew and they started a factory to produce rapadura, and

through this, “there was justice, and the organization and value of work.”615 In 1938,

the army and Pernambucan police, acting on a federal mandate, moved in and

repressed the “fanatics.”616 But, the experience of Caldeirão led to the “break of the

old ties with semi-feudal dependency,” forcing the labor relations to change in

Cariri.617

In Josué de Castro’s Sete palmos de terra e um caixão: Ensaio sobre o

Nordeste uma area explosiva (1965), he explained that “suffering” was the great

cultural inheritance of the Northeast in a chapter entitled, “Six hundred thousand

square miles of suffering.”618 In some ways, Castro combined Bastide’s “land of

contrasts” with Facó’s socio-economic analysis.619 Castro provided an analysis of the

historic and present agricultural practices and soil conditions in the Northeast as well

as looking at issues of nutrition. He argued that these conditions created the physical

type of the Nordestino. In times of drought, the Nordestino suffered from the lack of

615
Ibid., 199.
616
Ibid., 205.
617
Ibid., 211.
618
Josué de Castro, Sete palmos de terra e um caixão: Ensaio sobre o Nordeste uma
area explosiva (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1965), 39.
619
As he states, “O Nordeste é este contraste vivo estampada nas duas paisagens (…)
Nestes dois quadros naturais tão diferentes se formaram também duas sociedades
como em sua história. E a história economico-social dessas duas comunidades
contíguas representa a patrimonio histórico de toda a região do Nordeste.” Ibid.

319
basic nutrients, eventually turning into a human who is “more dead than alive.”620

The drought crisis, according to Castro, resulted in the emergence of “as psicopatias

graves, verdadeiras psicoses reacionais ou de situação. Assim se geram os bandidos e

os santos – sinners and saints – das eras de calamidade.”621 But, the climate

conditions were what exacerbated the suffering of the Nordestino leading to political

agitation and the explosiveness. As Castro asserted, the underlying historic and

economic structures of the Northeast such as coronelismo and monocultural

agricultural production and regional underdevelopment were the real causes that led

to explosive reactions such as cangaceiros or fanáticos.

In a contribution to an edited volume on comparative studies of millenarian

movements, René Ribeiro wrote a chapter on Brazilian messianic movements in

which he drew attention to a psychological study that had been done on followers of

the Panelas incident.622 According to Ribeiro, the study “demolished” the notion that

the followers were psychotic or had “abnormal personalities.” Instead, the study

found that it was “the naivete of their beliefs and world-views as well as the

importance of the social milieu in conditioning them to accept the message of their

leader.”623 Interestingly enough, Ribeiro used a direct example from the political

situation of Recife in 1960 to punctuate his arguments about the rise in messianic

movements due to participants’ dissatisfaction with the political, social, or economic

system and their social and cultural isolation. Ribeiro had been handed a folheto in

620
Ibid., 85.
621
Ibid., 99.
622
René Ribeiro, “Brazilian Messianic Movements,” in Millenial Dreams in Action:
Essays in Comparative Study, ed. Sylvia L. Thrupp (The Hague: Moulton & Co.,
1962), 55-69.
623
Ibid., 68.

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1960 by a taxi driver entitled, “Operations of the Celestial Government founded in

Brazil on January 1, 1960.” It was a message from someone named Cícero José

Farias, the leader of the “Christian Jesuit Legion,” who had received a message

through telepathy to start the movement in Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará and Arcoverde,

Pernambuco. Ribeiro quoted the following from this pamphlet:

As we move toward the end of the 20th century the sayings of

the Scriptures about the new Earth and the new Heaven and the
coming of the Son of Man in the Majesty of his Celestial Father will
be fulfilled…The year of 1960 will be the milestone marking the
second advent of Jesus…Other civilizations have been born, therefore
how would the civilization of the New Jerusalem, the wife of the
Paschal Lamb, fail to dawn? …the Son of Man shall be hailed as the
King of Brazil and of the government of the World for centuries of
centuries, and the New Earthly Jerusalem shall take its sons to the
Heavenly Jerusalem. Then Heaven shall be joined with Earth under
one government and one Judge, who shall be God among men.
Ribeiro also declared that there were 24 rules of “pure moral conduct” listed

in the folheto for those who wanted to join the movement. Although it is impossible

to understand the details surrounding such a publication since this movement never

took off, what Ribeiro inferred was that the “instability” and dissatisfaction of rural

people in the early 1960s were generating new messianic movements. The

underlying suggestion is that the poor were in a state of susceptibility for messianic

leaders to fill their heads with promises of change. While Ribeiro did not mention the

Ligas Camponesas specifically, the argument acquired a political significance when

taken in context of the criticisms made of Francisco Julião and the Ligas to be

described in the next section.

Religious Fanaticism and Agrarian Reform

One of the most powerful ways used to critique Francisco Julião and the Ligas

321
Camponesas was to compare the leader and and the movement to Antonio

Conselheiro and Canudos or at least to refer to the messianic and fanatic tendencies of

the leaders and the movement. For instance, in a letter providing a requested

description of the Ligas from the Delegado de Polícia of Vitória de Santo Antão

providing a requested description of the Ligas to the Secrétaria da Segurança Pública

in Recife, the local delegado described the Sociedade Agrícola dos Plantadores de

Pernambuco was described as having “300 associados, dos quais pelo menos 50% são

verdadeiros fanáticos.”624 Criticisms of Julião and the Ligas drew on popular

cultural representations of messianic movements in Northeastern Brazil that

accentuated fanaticism and charisma, lack of agency of the participants, violence,

preordained repression, and “foreign agitation.” In this section, I describe how the

mainstream media and large landowners used ideas relating to historic messianic

movements to demonize Julião, the Ligas, and Leftist politicians. Then, I show how

the Ligas and the PCB attempted to dispel this criticism by changing the mainstream

interpretation of Canudos and Padre Cícero.

Commentary in the Diario de Pernambuco in 1959 raised the notion that the

Ligas were implanting a “regime of terror.”625 Newspaper reports emphasized the

idea that the peasants “receive their orders from Julião.” For instance, in a testimonio

by the owner of the Engenho Pindobal in 1961, José Aymar, he claimed that the

problem was that communists and agitators were invading the engenho and causing

624
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionario, s/numero,
no.29.796 (no. 132-134), “Ligas Camponesas,” January 1956. Letter from the
Delegado de Polícia, Vitória de Santo Antão to the Secretária da Segurança Pública.
DOPS-PE. Recife.
625
“Agita-se a ‘Liga Camponesa’ em Vitória de Santo Antão,” Diario de
Pernambuco 13 May 1959, 5.

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unrest, not the peasants themselves.626 According to Aymar, the “ignorance of the

rural man” allowed the communists to manipulate the peasants for their own political

project without concern for the real interests of the peasantry. Aymar described the

peasants as “honest rural men” who were being sacrificed by a “leader who does not

want a solution to the national agrarian problem.”627 Many of the testimonies by

large landowners found in the DOPS-PE files emphasized the issue of foreign

agitators coming to their properties to stir up trouble with the “ignorant” rural

workers, putting the blame for protest and land invasions almost entirely on the

leaders.628 For instance, in a Relatório for the Secretária de Segurança Pública from

the Delgado da Polícia in Agua Preta and Palmares, Pernambuco, in June of 1961, the

Ligas were described as having around 150 members in the area, who “devido à falta

de instrução e à desassistência social em que vivem, são facilmente atraídos pelo

626
“Senhor de Engenho defende-se e acusa ‘Ligas Camponesas,’ Diario de
Pernambuco 26 January 1961.
627
Ibid.
628
For instance, in handwritten notes in the Paudalho file at DOPS-PE, someone
associated with the Secretária da Segurança Pública explained: “O camponês é
ignorante, é miserável, mas é bom.” The notes repeatedly refer to how Julião and
other leaders are taking advantage of the camponês to cause agitation and unrest in
the countryside. Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário
Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959-1960, no. 29343
(Paudaulho, no. 28), Notes on stationary of the Secretária da Segurança Pública, no.
6, p.5. DOPS-PE. Recife.
Another letter from the owner of the Engenho Cananduba in Jaboatão claimed
that Julião was using these “seres analfabetos, e ignorantes, ludibriando-os, na sua
bôa fê e ignorancia, afim de fomentar desordens, anarquias e subverter o nosso
regime.” Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário:
Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959-1960 no. 29343 (Paudaulho, no. 28,
1959-1960), Letter from Odette Periera Carneiro, “Residencia efectiva “Grania
Pedacinho de Céu, Sucupira” to the Secretária de Segurança Publica do Estado de
Pernambuco, 2 June 1960, no. 38. DOPS-PE. Recife.

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comunismo, fanatizando-se de tal modo que atemorizam os proprietários.”629 Another

relatório on the Ligas Camponesas from the Delegacia Auxiliar described the need to

support the Companhia de Revenda e Colonização because

“na maioria de creaturas que não têm nenhuma formação moral ou

religiosa, são na sua totalidade homens completamente analfabetos. É
um elemento à mão do explorador dessa situação, como Francisco
Julião, e outros que aproveitam a ignorancia e inexperiencia do infeliz
camponês, pregando falsas promessas e doutrinando muitas vezes o
espírito de revolta contra esse estado de desespero.”630
This narrative repeats the common assumption of the political incapacity attributed to

the rural population while dismissing the reasons why rural men and women were

organizing.

Similar descriptions of Julião’s alleged mysticism often formed part of the

criticisms of the Ligas. The Secretário Geral of the Ação Socialista, Rodrigo Duque

Estrada, claimed on a 1960 broadcast of the TV program “Face a Face” with

journalist Fernando Luiz Cascudo that Julião was a “communist” who was training

the peasants to be extremists. Duque Estrada was quoted in the Diário de

Pernambuco as saying that Julião was “charismatic” portraying himself as a sufferer,

both physically and morally, and warned that “com seu misticismo, está com muito

entreguismo para o lado dos comunistas.”631 Numerous political opponents on both

ends of the political spectrum commented on Julião’s “exceptional” ability to

629
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas
Camponesas s/numero, January 1956, (no. 29.796). Relatorio by 2nd Tenente
Severinio Raimondo Oliveira to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, Recife, 15 June
1961, no. 118-119. DOPS-PE. Recife.
630
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas
Camponesas s/numero, January 1956, (no. 29.796). “Relátorio das Ligas
Camponesas” Delegacia Auxiliar, No. 179-180. DOPS-PE. Recife.
631
“Duque Estrada acusou Julião de iludir os camponeses e trair o socialismo,”
Diario de Pernambuco 24 September 1960, 5.

324
communicate with the rural population, often portraying it as mystical. The U.S.

media also portrayed Julião as a type of “fanatic.” He was described as having “an

unruly mass of hair and an intense, rather wistful air that evidently appeals to

crowds”632 and as being a “self-styled Marxist messiah.”633

In a consular report produced on the Ligas Camponesas in September 1960,

Vice Consul Edward Walters visited the Engenho Galiléia with a group of United

Nations FAO technicians to gather information about the Ligas for the U.S. State

Department. Walters described Julião as a Communist, a Fidelista and a Maoist, and

reported: “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. Many of these same people

consider him to be unusually honest for a Brazilian radical leader. They respect his

ability as an inspiring leader of the illiterate and underprivileged rural masses”634

Julião was supposedly “spreading the gospel of agrarian reform” throughout the

Northeast.635 Walters described the peasants as following Julião because of their

ignorance and lack of agency. The Ligas were “taking advantage of the ignorance

632
“Leftist in Brazil Warns of Revolt: Peasants’ Chief Says Land Redistribution is
Vital,” New York Times 18 November 1961, 9.
633
“Brazil: The Hungry Land,” Newsweek 79 (18 May 1962): 31-32.
634
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service Dispatch From
AmConsul Recife to Dept of State Confidential: Subject: The Ligas Camponesas of
Pernambuco, 7 Sept 1960. RG 84, Box 128, Folder 500 Northeast 1961. National
Archives.
635
Ibid.

325
and misery of the rural worker to foment rebellious movements.”636 In meeting with

the Galileus, Walters stated: “when allowed to speak, they [Galileus] responded in

tones that did not reflect great enthusiasm for their present or future situation. They

responded, this vanguard of the rural revolution, 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 the man and

his schemes, Julião is still a demigod.”637

Julião claimed that he used the Bible as one of the three main tools for

organizing the rural population in the Northeast. In speeches and in the Ligas

Camponeses newspaper, the Biblical passages were quoted to support arguments in

favor of agrarian reform. In addition to this, one of the Ligas Camponesas leaders

was a Catholic priest, Father Alípio de Freitas. But, the Ligas Camponesas were not a

“Catholic” movement. Many important leaders also were Protestant, such as the

assassinated leader of the Sapé Ligas in Paraíba, João Pedro Teixeira. Furthermore,

Julião also tried to appropriate messianic movements such as Canudos and Padre

Cícero’s Juazeiro as precursors to the Ligas Camponesas and the fight for agrarian

reform in the Northeast. As Regina Reyes Novaes argued in her study on the

construction of a religious identity in the struggle for land, Julião did not “dispose” of

the old religious symbols but imbued them with new meanings.638

In addition to the Bible, the Ligas and the PCB also saw the messianic

636
Ibid.
637
Ibid.
638
Regina Reyes Novaes, De Corpo e Alma: Catolicismo, classes sociais e conflitos
no campo (Rio de Janeiro: Graphia, 1997), 169. But, it is also relevant to note that at
least in the sources that survived from the era, the Ligas engaged only with Catholic
and Protestant religion.

326
movement of Canudos as a precursor to the rural struggles in the 1960s because

Canudos and Euclides da Cunha turned regional problems into national issues. The

newspapers LIGA and Novos Rumos published a few articles on Canudos and

Euclides da Cunha. In one article, Rui Facó explained how Euclides da Cunha’s Os

sertões told a story of nationalism. Facó used certain quotes to argue that Euclides da

Cunha saw the heart of the nation as coming from the interior: “o homem que ele

considerava ‘o cerne vigoroso da nossa nacionalidade’ possuía todos os atributos

capazes de arrancar o País do ‘presente abominável em que vivemos’ e projetá-lo

entre as grandes nações do futuro.”639 Os sertões was described as being the first

attempt to describe the differences between the urban south and the rural Northeast,

turning the bloody war into a “national problem” instead of a regional problem, that

“could not be resolved by bullets or dynamite: it was rural Brazil that had awakened

and would no longer allow the continuance of being indefinitely ignored.” Reports in

1959 also announced that Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões had been translated and

celebrated in the Soviet Union and in China.640 The Brazilian Communist Party

referred to Euclides da Cunha as a “heroic” writer. In another article in Novos

Rumos, Romeiro Pinheiro argued that the important aspect of Os sertões was that it

showed the solidarity of the poor, nomadic people of the Northeast and the power that

they had when they formed a community of resistance. Euclides da Cunha’s account

was considered of great national importance because da Cunha portrayed the brutality

of the Brazilian Armed Forces in graphic detail. Da Cunha’s portrayal of the violence

639
Rui Facó, “A permanência de Euclides da Cunha,” Novos Rumos 1959.
640
“O jubileu de Euclides da Cunha em Moscou,” Novos Rumos 1959; “Euclides em
Pequim,” Novos Rumos 1959.

327
used against sertanejos and the prisoners of Canudos created a story of a crime so

horrific that it would supposedly never be repeated because it had entered the national

consciousness.641

Another article in LIGA described how the War of Canudos was actually a

guerrilla war. The article interpreted the story of Canudos as Antonio Conselheiro

and his followers being expelled from all the lands because they had a different way

of thinking than the government and the priests, so the government and the priests

labeled O Conselheiro an “anti-Christ.”642 Although the Brazilian military had better

technology and weapons, the camponeses were able to win battles because of the

landscape, and Antonio Conselheiro’s use of “Guerrilla Warfare.” The use of the

term “guerrilla warfare” in the context of the 1960s clearly referred to Che Guevara’s

manual, but the Ligas reframed the concept, identifying it with historic peasant

struggles in Northeastern Brazil. The PCB claimed that Antonio Conselheiro had

motivated the rural masses with promises of a better life, which struck the

latifundiarios with fear. The present-day struggle for agrarian reform, “a repetition of

the heroism of Canudos” supposedly was not motivated by religious fanaticism but

rather by the desire for freedom. “Under the flag of agrarian reform and new

conditions, the peasants will end the exploitation of man by man.”643

Besides the narrative of Canudos, Julião also appropriated Biblical passages to

argue that the struggle of Jesus Christ was the struggle of class warfare, and also

641
Romero Pinheiro, “Euclides da Cunha Escritor Revolucionário,” Novos Rumos 5-
11 August 1960, 5.
642
“Guerra de guerrilhas no Nordeste uma opinião de Euclides da Cunha,” LIGA 1
May 1963, 4.
643
Annibal Bonavides, “Canudos e Contestado,” Novos Rumos 16-22 February 1962,
3.

328
referred to recent papal encyclicals to justify the struggle for land in Northeastern

Brazil. In many speeches, Julião supposedly declared, “The Church preaches

resignation. But Christ was a rebel.”644 An example of how Julião and the Ligas

appropriated the Bible is found in an article, “Cristo lutou pelos humildes e foi

crucificado pelos rico,” in LIGA. The article explains that Christ came to Earth to

fight for the humble against the oppression by the rich. Jesus knew that the laws of

the land were the laws of the rich. The article supports this argument by quoting from

the Gospel of Matthew. As it concludes:

“Jesus foi cruicificado pelo imperialismo romano, acusado de

subverter a ordem e de blasfemar. (…) Mas seu sangue semeou novos
frutos e hoje, grande parte da humanidade é cristã. Pena que os
imperialistas de ontem, os ianques romanos de hoje, os fariseus,
vendilhões do templo, os latifundiarios que crucificaram Jesus e os
cardeais de luxo se arvorem de proprietários da palavra de Cristo,
muitos igual ao mencebo de que falamos no início deste texto.”645
When Pope John XXIII died, the Ligas newspaper declared him the Pope of Peace,

noting the Pope’s stance in favor of agrarian reform and against colonialism and

imperialism.646

One of the most radical and prominent leaders of the Ligas Camponesas was a

Catholic priest, Father Alípio de Freitas, who was born in Portugual and moved to

Brazil because of the Salazar dictatorship, serving as a priest and professor at the

University of Maranhão in 1958.647 Father Alípio supposedly attended the World

644
David E. Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” Studies in Comparative
International Development 1, no. 8 (August 1965): 116.
645
“Cristo lutou pelos humildes e foi crucificado pelos ricos,” LIGA 10 April 1963, 5.
646
“Morreu João XXIII, o Papa-camponês,” LIGA 5 June 1963, 1.
647
He taught Philosophy and Ancient and Medieval History and contributed to local
newspapers in Maranhão. “Padre Alípio à imprensa: ‘Estou com os pobres hoje é
sempre,’” LIGA 12 June 1963, 1. Alípio de Freitas went into exile in Mexico in 1964
after the coup and returned to Brazil in 1966 to join the revolutionary guerrilla

329
Conference for Disarmament and Peace in Moscow, and as a result of his

“revolutionary” activities, he received punishment in the form of a suspension from

the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro.648 Alípio contributed on a regular basis to the

Ligas newspaper, and the saga of his arrests and imprisonments were frequently

major headlines in the newspaper. But, apart from his political activity – unlike

Archbishop Dom Helder Camara – Alípio published little independently, which

makes it impossible to separate his story from the story of the Ligas, at least in the

early 1960s.649

Padre Alípio de Freitas claimed to have always been on the side of the humble

and the oppressed, declaring that his role as a priest was to struggle for their freedom

and rights. The Ligas newspaper claimed that Padre Alípio knew, felt, and shared the

“Nordestino Soul” defined as “indomita e libertária” because of his ability to share

the pain and suffering of his “irmãos camponeses.”650 In speeches, Alípio spoke in

favor of agrarian reform, revolution and against the latifundia. For instance, in a

speech at the Dock Workers Union, Alípio claimed

“Cristo não morreu para que existisse tanta miséria pois seu sacrifício

movement. He was arrested in 1970, tortured, and held in prison until 1979, then
returning to Portugal. This part of the story will be addressed later in the dissertation.
648
Manoel Cardozo, “The Brazilian Church and the New Left,” Journal of Inter-
American Studies 6, no. 3 (July 1964): 318. In a letter to the Archbishop of Rio de
Janeiro, 16 June 1962, Alípio stated, “I am deprived of the use of holy orders and
forbidden any future exercise of the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro.”
Cited in. Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” 112.
649
One of the main publications was printed in the Ligas newspaper, Resistir é
preciso, later published as Resistir é preciso: memória do tempo da morte civil do
Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1981). According to Regina Reyes Novais,
Resistir é preciso “created a collective identity constituted by continuities and
modifications in the political universe and religious universe,” Novaes, De Corpo e
Alma, 84.
650
“Mensagem dos maçons ao Padre Alípio,” LIGA 19 June 1963, 2.

330
 não teria passado de tapeação. Se Deus desejasse essa miséria, seria
pior do que qualquer latifundiário e cumplice pelo genocidio que aqui
se pratica, quando um e meio milhão de brasileiros morrem de fome
anualmente.”651
He criticized the use of religion by the large landowners, claiming that “os

latifundiários valem-se, entretanto, do Evangelho para justificar seus privilégios

odiosos. Mas o único título legítimo para a posse de terra ser o calo na mão.” He

continued to state that the main issue in Brazil was agrarian reform because “hunger

was no longer just felt in the stomach but also in the head,” and that the peasant today

“sabe que seus filhos não morre de fome porque Deus queira anjinhos no céu. Isso é

do Evangelho dos escravos. E o céu é para homens livres e não para escravos.”

In a protest movement in Rio de Janeiro against the Law of National Security

in September 1963, Alípio spoke about the “sub-vida” led by peasants and workers in

Brazil. He attacked “imperialism” and “corrupt” organizations and projects such as

IBAD, the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps which he claimed were false

“assistance” programs that only wanted to “dominate the Brazilian people.”652 He

ended his speech with the hymn: “Ou ficar a Pátria livre, ou morrer pelo Brasil.”

Alípio made such declarations - in support of the “revolution” that would come from

the empty pans of the peasants to create a new Brazilian nation free of inequalities –

frequently throughout the early 1960s. Alípio regularly spoke in support of Cuba and

Socialist countries in Europe; for instance, he said that “the path of Cuba is the path

of all the Latin American countries” in April 1963.653 “Devemos lembrar aqueles que

parecem não acreditar que nossas montanhas pode transformar-se em outra Sierra

651
“Deus não deseja essa miséria,” LIGA 7 August 1963, 2.
652
“Só a revolução vo Brasileiro,” LIGA 29 September 1963, 1.
653
Quoting Pablo Neruda, Alípio claimed that Latin America is the Continent of
Hope. “Pe. Alípio: Não seremos mais escravos de ninguém,” LIGA 3 April 1963, 4.

331
Maestra que a bandeira de Cuba é a unica bandeira que representará verdadeira

liberdade.”

While Francisco Julião and other Ligas leaders faced arrests and

imprisonments, Padre Alípio’s multiple arrests and lengthy imprisonments received

even greater attention than other arrests in the Ligas newspaper. In response to an

arrest in late 1962, Alípio claimed that he had been arrested and confined to the Forte

de Cinco Pontes in Recife for writing an “Evangelho do Camponês.”654 The Brazilian

Armed Forces claimed he was writing a new “evangelical” but Alípio responded

saying that it 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 of Galiléia.” He claimed that if Christ had been on the side of the rich,

then He would have chosen the wealthy and educated as His Apostoles and Disciples,

and this was not the case: Christ was born with the poor. Alípio claimed that his

purpose, as a Priest of Christ, was to help the poor peasants in their struggle for

freedom. And he claimed that Christ was present now in Brazil for another time of

Galiléia. The reference clearly connected the first expropriated engenho in the

Northeast (Engenho Galiléia) with the Biblical Galilee region.

Alípio was arrested and imprisoned again – held incommunicado – in April

1963, by the IV Exército following orders from the Minister of Defense, General

Amaury Kruel, after the priest led a protest marking the one year anniversary of the

assassination of João Pedro Teixeira, Ligas leader of Sapé.655 Reports in LIGA

claimed that he had been kidnapped and held because of claims by the military that he

654
Padre Alípio de Freitas, “O evangelho do camponês,” LIGA 20 November 1962, 4.
655
“Padre Alípio seqüestrado por ordens de Kruel,” LIGA 10 April 1963, 2

332
was a “false priest, a communist, and Portuguese.”656 The statement alludes to his role

as a “foreign agitator” in the attempt to delegitimize the priest as non-Brazilian.

Reportedly, during Padre Alípio’s imprisonment, he was beaten and tortured.657

Francisco Julião wrote in a letter to the Minister of Justice, João Mangabeira, that

Padre Alípio “permanence na mais absoluta incommunicabilidade, rompida com

suplícios tântalos, denunciadas pelas famílias de sargentos e soldados, servindo no

quartel do 15 RI em João Pessoa.”658 The Ligas declared that he was held

incommunicado because of the state elections and his support for Miguel Arraes.659

According to the Ligas newspaper, protesters throughout the country demanded the

release of Padre Alípio. A number of the placards from the protests were reprinted in

LIGA, effectively expressing the irony of the Minister of Defense’s name, such as

“OS FUNCIONÁRIOS PÚBLICOS EXIGEM A LIBERTAÇÃO DO PADRE

ALÍPIO, KRUELMENTE PRESO.”660

According to the arrest report filed on 2 May 1963, Padre Alípio was held in

prison as a preventative measure because he was a “nomad” without a fixed address,

and sentenced to expulsion from Brazil for his subversive political activities and

656
“Padre Alípio prêso pelo IV Exército por Ordem de Kruel,” LIGA 10 April 1963,
1.
657
“Padre Alípio espancado na prisão pelo cunhado de Veloso Borges,” LIGA 1 May
1963, 3.
658
“Julião ao Ministro da Justiça: padre Alípio foi torturado pelos ‘gorilas,’” LIGA 8
May 1963, 4.
659
“Organizar ligas camponesas, sindicatos rurais, denuncia a aspoliação de nossa
patria pelos groupos estrangeiros, traxer para os amplos massas populares o
verdadeiro sentido da religião do Cristo não consituem ameaça à Constituição
Brasileira.” “Padre Alípio seqüestrado por ordens de Kruel,” LIGA 10 April 1963, 2
660
“Operário de GB exigiram nas ruas libertação do padre Alípio,” LIGA 29 May
1963, 2.

333
connections to the Communist Party.661 The police report found that he violated

Article 141 of the Federal Constitution because of his activities with the Ligas in

which he “pregar abertamente nos comícios, reuniões e conferencias os metados de

propaganda de processos violentos para subverter a ordem política e social.” The

accusations against Alípio were in the form of statements that the priest had made at

political rallies and gatherings; for instance, “quem não estiver comigo está contra

mim e será fusilado,” “As Forças Armadas são antro de traídores,” and “o glorioso

Exercito Nacional é nada mias nada menos que capitães de mato modernos e, quando

começar a revolução, ai de quem usar as fardas traidores. Nem por brincadeira essa

farda deverá ser colocada.”662 Besides the statements against the Armed Forces,

Padre Alípio also supposedly “used Communist techniques” to criticize the justice

and legislative systems, stating: “O Poder Judiciário mantem justiça corrupta e

venal,” and “O poder legislative não fará nenhuma reforma de base, uma vez que está

mancomunado com grupos economicos e, portanto, só legisla contra os interesses do

661
He violated Art. 11 (Fazer publicamente propaganda: a. de processos violentos
para a subversão da ordem política ou social), Art. 12 (Incitar diretamente e de animo
deliberado as classes sociais à luta pela violência), and Art. 17 (Instigar publicamente
desobediência coletiva ao cumprimento da lei de ordem pública) of the Constitution
which meant that he could be expelled according to Art. 33 because he was not born
in Brazil: “o estrangeiro incurso em disposição desta lei será expulso do territorio
nacional, sem prejuizo ds penas o que estiver sujeito, ressalvado, sempre o disposto
no Art. 143 da Constituição Federal.” Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política –
São Paulo. No. 3477, Vol.8, DOPS. “Qualificação do indicado Padre Alípio Cristiano
de Freitas,” 2 May 1963. Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.
662
Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política – São Paulo. No. 3477, Vol.8, DOPS.
“Qualificação do indicado Padre Alípio Cristiano de Freitas,” 2 May 1963. Arquivo
do Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.

334
povo e da nação.”663 The statements were “pre-fabricated” conferences that were

heard throughout Brazil to subvert the Brazilian people (speaking in São Paulo in

November 1962 at the Sindicáto dos Gráficos, the Grémio Estudantil da Faculdade de

Filosofia, and at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo), which

resulted in his arrest by the Polícia do Exército since he had violated the Law of

National Security.

The Ligas insisted that the accusations against Alípio were unfounded and

revealed the repressive plans of sectors of the Brazilian Armed Forces since nothing

Alípio had done was “illegal.” In an appeal for the release of Padre Alípio, his lawyer

referred to the case of Olga Benário, the pregnant partner of Luis Carlos Prestes who

was deported to Nazi Germany to die in a concentration camp to suggest the

“undemocratic” and “inhumane” consequences of the use of the Law of National

Security.664 Julião claimed that it was a dangerous precedent to deport the priest that

could be “adoindo contra outras patriotas, os quais adotaram a cidadania brasileira e

que seria expulsos por motives politicos, igualando-se o Governo Brasileiro a

ditaduras.”665 Julião fought against the Law of National Security, arguing it should be

abolished and condemned by the “national consciousness.”666

663
Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política – São Paulo. No. 3477, Vol.8, DOPS.
“Qualificação do indicado Padre Alípio Cristiano de Freitas,” 2 May 1963. Arquivo
do Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.
664
“Porque mantém o Padre Alípio prêso e incomunicável?” LIGA 5 June 1963, 6.
665
“Kruel quer mesmo expulsar Pe. Alípio: nacionalistas reagem,” LIGA 29 May
1963, 1.
666
“Porque mantém o Padre Alípio prêso e incomunicável?” LIGA 5 June 1963, 6.
Upon his release, Padre Alípio also spoke against the Law of National Security,
arguing that it was absurd and a threat to the Brazilian people who fell subject to
arrest and imprisonment that could change with the political motivation of the day.
“Pe. Alípio em faculdades,” LIGA 28 August 1963, 2.

335
 While in prison, the Padre Alípio published an interesting article about

freedom of speech and peasants. According to the article, Padre Alípio’s

imprisonment was much easier to understand for the worker than the peasant since

the worker was “already accustomed to this type of fascism in which the freedom of

speech is only a myth.”667 The article defined the religious nature of the peasant and

reveals the power attributed to Padre Alípio:

“O camponês é um místico. Crescendo com o temor a Deus enraizado

na sua mente, o homem do campo respeita e admira o sacerdote, nele
vendo um enviado do Senhor, cujos atos e palavras não podem ser
julgados pelos homens da terra. Para o camponês, padre Alípio
representa a bandeira da libertação muitas vezes valorizada por ser seu
portador um homem da batina, igual no aspecto aos muitos que já
conheceu, mas com linguajar completemente diferente. (…) O
sacertote do povo mostrava-lhes o caminho ensinado por Jesus Cristo
que é o de igualdade e justiça, preconizando um mundo sem ricos e
pobres, mas todos iguais, lutando pelos mesmos ideais de paz e
fraternidade.”668
According to the article, peasants could not believe that a priest would talk like Alípio

who worried about their life on Earth, their suffering and their struggles. His

imprisonment supposedly only proved the extent to which the leaders of the Ligas

were willing to go to support the peasant masses.669

While in prison, Padre Alípio gained notoriety and bolstered his own image,

allying himself directly with Pope John XXIII. He claimed to be held in prison

because he was the first religious figure, a “pioneer,” to side with the poor in the

struggle for their freedom.670 He also sought to identify himself with historic priests

who had been imprisoned in the Northeast such as Padre José Inâcio Ribeiro de

667
“Do ponto de vista camponês: A bandeira do padre Alípio,” LIGA 5 June 1963, 3.
668
Ibid.
669
Ibid.
670
“Padre Alípio à imprensa: ‘Estou com os pobres hoje e sempre,’” LIGA 12 June
1963, 1.

336
Abreu Lima – Padre Roma – who was shot by a firing squad in Bahia in 1817; Padre

Tenório Pedro de Souza, hanged in Recife in 1917; and Frei Caneca, executed in

1825.671 Padre Alípio also claimed that the Jesus Christ had been subjected to the

same type of imprisonment and death sentence. Padre Alípio was released and

continued to be a leader in the Ligas, also editing the Ligas newspaper, until he went

into exile in Mexico following the 1964 coup. If he had not escaped to Mexico, he

would have faced a prison sentence of 39 years.672

Anti-Communist Catholicism and the Northeastern Church

In addition to portraying Julião as a fanatic, those who raised a critical voice against

the Ligas and Leftist politicians also used the Bible or religious ideology to attack

“communism.” That is to say, that the dominant Catholic narrative also continued to

circulate throughout this period, and was used to uphold the status quo. For instance,

in a cordel published in the Diario de Pernambuco around the time of the 1962

elections, João José da Silva labeled Miguel Arraes an “Anti-Christ.” “O candidato

vermelho/ Protegido pelos seus/ Companheiros de jornada/ E todos eles ateus. O

nome do candidato/ Todos sabem – é Arraes./ O Anti-Cristo em pessoa/ É o próprio

671
“Mensagem dos maçons ao Padre Alípio,” LIGA 19 June 1963, 2.
672
Secretária da Segurança Publica – São Paulo. No. 146.971 Alípio Cristiano de
Freitas, Fichado. “Auto de Qualificações de Interrogatório.” 30 November 1970, Rio
de Janeiro. Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.

337
Satanás/ Que em figura de gente/ Do nosso voto anda atrás.”673 Other poems also

expressed similar claims about Communism and its threat to Northeastern society.

One folheto written in strong opposition to the Ligas was “História da

Reforma Agrária e o Comunismo no Brasil” by Joaquim Batista de Sena, sometimes

known as Poeta Seny.674 The poem starts by setting up a Manichaean conflict

between Catholicism and Communism, stating that the world is in danger because of

communism, “Satan’s jewel,” while instructing that “O Crente da lei de Deus/ não

adota o comunismo” [The Believer of the law of God/ doesn’t accept communism].

Sena provides a history of Jesus Christ’s struggles on earth, including the “saints and

martyrs” who died in the Roman Coliseum, and the guidance that Christ provided for

Pedro Alvarez Cabral in 1500 that allowed him to arrive in Brazil. According to

Poeta Seny, this divine history is why Brazil owes its patriotism to Christianity and

not to Communism. He encourages the audience to “fight for the law of the true God

to liberate Brazil from the foreign communism that is attacking the Brazilian nation.”

673
João José da Silva, “História do Anti-Cristo que anda solto no mundo ou A queda
do Coração de Jesus,” Diario de Pernambuco 2 September 1962, 7. The cordel was
about a meeting between Arraes and the prefeito Genaro Carazzoni in També,
Pernambuco, “o cais do porto ao sertão.”
The Recife PCB newspaper, A Hora published an article responding to those
who claimed Arraes was a Communist by the counter claim that Arraes was
following the path of Jesus, not of the Communists. “Lembro aos que lhe acusam de
comnista que a frase que abaixo cito não é nem de Arraes, nem de Prestes, nem do
faleicido Stalin. É de Jesus: ‘É mais fácil um camelo passar pelo fundo de uma
agulha, do que um rico entrar no reino do céu.” Rico ruim, é claro. Rico egoista,
usurpador, indigno de pertencer à espécie humana. Rico como aqueles vendilhões
que Jesus expulsou do Templo.” Nelson Firmo, “Arraes e uma frasé de Jesús,” A
Hora, 26 May – 2 June 1962, 3.
674 Joaquim Batista de Sena/Poeta Seny, História da Reforma Agrária e o
Comunismo no Brasil. Fortaleza, Ceará. n.p., n.d. (From the topics discussed, the
folheto probably was published in the 1960s.)

338
 According to poem, it is a “lie” that the poor “bread baker” in Russia makes

the same salary as an “engineer,” and it is a “lie” that the poor baker eats at the same

table next to the obstetrician. It is not true that the son of the poorest worker studies

at the same school as the son of Russian nobles. While more people may be literate

in Russia, 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 their heads cut off. Through a reading of this folheto, it is possible

to make a reasonable assumption about the rhetoric used by the “left” as well as the

“right.” Poeta Seny apparently wanted to challenge ideas circulating about promises

for equality and social justice by mobilizing a different debate that involved religion.

Inequality, he writes, is a “Divine Phenomenon” since God made some people

completely healthy and others blind and crippled; some people millionaires and

others poor homeless men. To challenge these natural divisions is against the law of

God, and thus Communism – which Poeta Seny depicts as promoting social equality

– should be rejected to save one’s soul.

An editorial in August of 1963 referred to the words of the prophet Ezequiel

as a warning and guide for the “agony of our present.”675 The passage was

interpreted to mean that “those who threaten the order, the peace, the tranquility of

675
“A lição do Profeta Ezequiel,” Diario de Pernambuco 22 August 1963, 4. The
passage used, from Chapter 33, “a message from Aquilão, na grande ‘nuvem de
fogo,’ e na moldura dos quarto animais com aspecto de homem: ‘quando eu levar à
terra a minha espada, se a sentinela, escolhida pelo povo, vendo a espada que vem
contra a terra tocar sua buzina, advertindo a comunidade e esta não se acautelar, virá
a espada, e lhe tirará a vida, e o seu sangue cairá sobre sua cabeça; mas se a sentinela
vir que vem a espada e não tocar a buzina, de forma que o povo seja avisado, se vier a
espada e tirar a vida a um deles, este tal perecerá devido à sua iniquidade, mas eu
perdirei contas de seu sangeu à sentinela.’”

339
the Pernambucan family, above all in the rural areas, as if they were a new sword of

God, shot against the earth and against the community, will have erred too much,

sinned too much, to not pay for the bad fortune they have brought. (…) Those chosen

by God need to remember this. (…) What is inadmissible is this situation of hate, of

misunderstanding, of exaggerated passion, whose fatal undoing will be the subversion

of all, destruction, chaos.” The author warns that the landowners are cutting back on

their agricultural production because of the social unrest, and this will have the

greatest consequences for the rural workers who will be the principal victims. The

editorial ends with a warning to the elected state officials:

“E o poder público, a sentinela escolhida pelo povo para o orientar e

dirigir, se falhar na sua missão, de tocar a buzinha da advertência
oportuna, acabará o maior responsável por este estendal de infortunios:
no julgamento de Deus e dos homens, será servera a prestação de
contas, - do sangue que se derramar, das vidas que se perderem, da
desolação que desabar sobre a comunidade.”676

It is well known that the military leaders and their supporters made strong use

of Biblical ideas of protecting the Brazilian family from Communists – especially

with the right-wing women’s movement that led “rosary marches” to support the

military such as the March 19, 1964 demonstration in São Paulo, “March of the

Family with God for Liberty,” and the Pernambucan Movimento Feminino pela

Liberdade march on 7 March 1964. Judging from a number of classified documents

in the U.S. National Archives, it is clear that military efforts to support a Catholic

anti-Communist movement existed well before the coup. For example, the U.S.

Consul General in Recife reported a conversation with “special agents” of the

Brazilian IV Army Unit, Armando Braga and Malebrance Bernardo, who “requested

676
“A lição do Profeta Ezequiel,” Diario de Pernambuco 22 August 1963, 4.

340
background information on communism, Cuba and anti-communist tactics.”677

The men told the consulate officials that they were involved in organizing

“anti-communist movements and organizations” in the Northeast such as the

Movimento Estudantil Democrático and the Sociedade de Estudos do Nordeste, as

well as other Catholic anti-communist groups. The men worked at “printing leaflets

and distributing same in Recife and interior. They claim to have been involved in the

squelching of the Communists in Caruaru, Pernambuco.” When offered the USIS

anti-Communist material, the men said it was unacceptable because “it was printed on

good paper, used good grammar, there were no misspellings and all accent marks

were correctly placed. Bernardo said they would probably never be able to use the

USIS material as long as it was of such top quality printing and paper.” This

statement shows the perceived need to provide an “authentic” opposition to the Ligas

Camponesas from Nordestino people themselves, and shows how the opposition

manifested itself in Catholic movements with support from the U.S. government.

But the use of religion to attack “communism” also emerged at a time when

Biblical interpretations were changing; for instance with the interpretations of

Francisco Julião and the Ligas Camponesas and with certain divisions within the

Northeastern Catholic Church. The difficulty in discussing the Church in Brazil and

in the Northeast is that it was divided; it did not operate with one voice.678 Some of

677
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Operations Memorandum To USIS
Rio from USIS Recife, Subject: Distribution of Unattributed Material Folder.
Confidential. 15 June 1961. RG 84, Box 350.21, Communism.
678
As David Mutchler claimed, “A study of the provincial declarations (…) reveals a
basic split between the bishops of the Northeast and most of those in the middle

341
the Northeastern priests were radical leaders portrayed as a threat in the U.S. media

and in government documents because of their views on agrarian reform and

“revolution.” Many of these priests faced the same type of repression (arrest,

imprisonment, torture and death) during the military regime as other “leftist”

leaders.679 Other priests took a more conservative view with attacks on the threat of

communism more important than initiating social reforms.

The radicalization of the Catholic Church was not limited to Brazil, but also

came from “above” with Pope John XXIII (1958-1963), known as the “People’s

Pope,” the “Papa-camponês,” and the “Good Pope (il papa buono).” Pope John

XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which gave rise to ideas

associated with liberation theology. He published the encyclicals Mater et Magistra

(Mother and Teacher, 1961) and Pacem in terris (Peace on Earth, 1963). These

documents emphasized the obligation for developed countries to help underdeveloped

countries and people, through education and development of agricultural techniques,

and created an idea of “citizenship” and human rights. He condemned colonialism

and imperialism as well as the use of nuclear weapons and war.680

In a 1965 article on the Catholic Church in Brazil, David Mutchler divided

Brazilian Bishops into four categories: Extremists, conservatives, moderates and

revolutionary or progressive bishops. In the book, Reforma Agrária: questão de

(Minas Gerais) and near South (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo).” Mutchler, “Roman
Catholicism in Brazil,” 104.
679
After the coup on 1 May 1964, Informationes Catholiques Internationales
published a report that “Catholic leaders have been tortured, priests imprisoned and
bishops threatened…” The Army questioned most of the Northeastern Bishops and
searched their residences, and the bishop of Natal, Dom Eugenio de Araujo Sales was
denounced as a communist. Ibid., 103-117.
680
“Papa João XXIII condena o colonialismo e a guerra,” LIGA 24 April 1963, 6.

342
consciencia (1960), the “extremist” bishops and laymen of São Paulo claimed that

private property was a “moral absolute.”681 The political situation in Brazil was

allegedly threatening to undermine the “Christian patrimony of the Brazilian people”

and Brazilian society’s “basic values: tradition, family and property.”682 The

“conservative” bishops, such as Dom Jaime Barros Camara, Archbishop of Rio de

Janeiro, took the stance that social reforms were needed, advocating “spiritual means”

for the solution to social problems, but remaining staunchly anti-communist.683 The

“moderate” bishops, headed by Cardinal Vasconcellos Motta, took the view that the

Church must stay aloof from politics. They were concerned about the threat of

communism but advocated social reforms, claiming the “Church is the Church of the

Poor.”684 And, the “radical” wing - associated in 1964 with Dom Helder Camara and

prior to this with Dom Eugênio Salles in Natal - thought that the Church needed to

ally itself with the working class, the peasants and the urban poor. This group

supposedly did not take a strong anti-communist stance, blaming the Brazilian elite

and foreign imperialists for the problems in Brazil.685

The Encontros dos Bispos do Nordeste in 1959 and 1960 trace the changing

political position of the Church in the Northeast.686 The meetings were established to

discuss the problems of the Northeast such as rural poverty and emigration, and to

681
Mutchler, “Roman Catholicism in Brazil,” 104. Mutchler labels the bishops as
“extremist” versus “conservative.”
682
Ibid.
683
Ibid.
684
Ibid.,105.
685
Ibid., 105-106.
686
Robin Nagle argues that the liberal Church in Pernambuco actually began in the
1930s with Dom Sebastião Leme. Robin Nagle, Claiming the Virgin: The Broken
Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil (New York: Routledge, 1997), 41.

343
talk about the role the Church could play in working for solutions. These meetings

linked the Catholic Church to developmental programs for the Northeast, namely

OPENO (Operação Nordeste) and SUDENE. The meeting notes show how

intricately involved the Church was in developmental projects throughout the

Northeast, promoting the development of agriculture and agricultural mechanization,

colonization programs, drought-related projects, radio education programs for rural

areas, and rural labor leader training programs.687 The Church supported State-led

development projects because the Church believed that long-term transformations in

the structure of the Northeast were needed to solve the problems of hunger and

misery.688 In May of 1963, the Comissão Central da Conferência Nacional dos Bispos

do Brasil made a statement in support of agrarian reform and “reformas de base,”

citing Mater et Magistra as their motivation.689

Although the publications suggest a unified voice coming from the Northeast,

it is clear that multiple voices sought different plans for change in the Northeast. And,

while a number of influential Church leaders opposed the tactics of the Ligas, and the

Ligas, in turn, opposed many of the Church supported development projects – such as

the increase of the wage for cane workers, the colonization projects, and SUDENE690

687
II Encontro dos Bispos do Nordeste: Convênios (Natal; Rio: Serviço de
Informação Agrícola, Ministério da Agricultura, 1960).
688 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.
689
“A Igreja e as reformas,” Diario de Pernambuco 19 May 1963, 8.
690
The Ligas believed that the only way to have long-standing change in the
Northeast was through radical agrarian reform, or the reappropriation of land for the
people who had been working and living on large estates. While many claimed that
Julião opposed SUDENE and Colonization projects because such projects would
lessen his leadership role and power, Julião claimed that his opposition was rooted in

344
– it is difficult to speak of the Church or the Ligas as unified voices in opposition to

one another. Much of the historiography has divided the movements along these

lines, but the overlaps between all of the movements (PCB, Ligas and Church) make

these distinctions superficial at best. For this reason, I prefer to examine the political

statements and actions of specific priests in the Northeast.

A few key figures involved in the rural workers movements exemplify the

differences in the Catholic Church of the Northeast. Padre Alípio de Freitas was

clearly one of the most radical priests, but other also priests voiced radical views

about power relations in the rural Northeast.691 One example of certain radical views

appeared in a 1962 article in Time Magazine: “in a recent fiery sermon by Padre

Emerson Negreiros, a rotund padre who runs the busiest rural syndicate in the cotton

town of Santa Cruz [Rio Grande do Norte] and preaches 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!”692 Some 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

the fact that such programs did not significantly change the land tenure structure of
the Northeast, and thus, did not best serve the interests of the peasants who were
involved in the Ligas.
691
In a 1964 article on the Brazilian Church in The Journal of Inter-American
Studies, Manoel Cardozo explains that the French-schooled Dominicans in Brazil
were the most radicalized wing. The Catholic newspaper, Brasil Urgente!, was
depicted as the “most controversial newspaper in Brazil,” that “preached agrarian
reform,” saw Fidel Castro as a “teacher,” and claimed that “Communist” countries
were “Socialist.” Cardozo, “The Brazilian Church and the New Left,” 313-321.
692 “Brazil: The Hungry Land,”Time 18 May 1962, 31-32.

345
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. A US Consular report providing lists of

potential political threats listed the following priests as being supporters of “socialism

and agrarian reform,” highlighting the Church’s radicalism in the states of Ceará,

Paraíba and Pernambuco: Padre Bruno Archimedes (Ceará); Padre Helio (Ceará);

and, Bishop Eugenio Salles (Rio Grande do Norte).693

While the number of Catholic priests involved in the struggle for agrarian

reform clearly deserves more detailed attention, I focus on Padres Melo and Crespo,

who were two of the most outspoken and controversial figures in the Catholic Church

and received a great deal of publicity, facilitating access to their political views and

projects. Both these priests led rural worker movements in municipalities with strong

Ligas and PCB movements, providing a direct challenge, and both priests were

involved in violent confrontations in their respective municipalities in 1963.694

Questions were raised about Padre Crespo’s alleged association with the CIA and

about Padre Melo’s financing from IBAD, turning both of them into controversial

693
Brazil. U.S. Embassy. Classified General Records, 1941-1963. Records of the
Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State. Foreign Service Dispatch From
Amembassy Rio to Dept of State. Confidential. “The Brazilian Northeast: A status
report on Politico-Economic Conditions.” Special report on Northeast prepared for
Amb. Merwin L. Bohan, head of the Special NE Study Team by Consul Edward T
Walters of the Am Consulate General, Recife, For the Ambassador Philip Raine,
Counselor of Embassy for Political Affairs. 19 December 1961. RG 84, Box 128,
Folder 500 Northeast 1961. National Archives.
694
As Eul-Soo Pang argues, both priests were “enormously successful in combating
the leftist unions.” Supposedly, Padre Melo’s leagues numbered 60,000. This
challenge led to the “loose labeling of such priests as Catholic rightists or radicals.”
Eul-Soo Pang, “The Changing Roles of Priests in the Politics of Northeast Brazil,
1889-1964,” The Americas 30, no. 3 (January 1974): 341-372, 368.

346
figures in the Northeast. But, in later interviews with Ligas leaders, many claimed

that Padre Crespo was more aligned with the problems of the rural workers whereas

Padre Melo was seen as “less trustworthy” and as a “demogogue.”695

Padre Paulo Crespo led the Church Federation of Rural Workers (sometimes

referred to as the Legiões Agrárias de Pernambuco) and SORPE (Serviço de

Orientação Rural de Pernambuco) in Jaboatão, Pernambuco, and became a leading

spokesman for the movement. As he stated in 1962: “O Nordeste é a area problema

de hemisfério. Isto não porque seja a única onde há miséria ou de todas as areas

subdesenvolvidas a mais miserável, mas porque seu povo hoje, não está mais

disperso, amorfo, mas, tomou consciência de sua miséria, não quer mais permanecer

na miséria. No entanto não sabe ainda o caminho para conseguir sua própria

libertação.”696 Crespo’s declarations suggest a play for power in the rural

movements, expressing the idea that agrarian reform and unionization were necessary

because of the situation of unrest and the Church was the safest authority to lead such

unions and projects.697 Crespo also quoted Pope John XXIII and the encyclical Mater

et Magistra to legitimize his position about the need for agrarian reform and rural

unions.698

695
Clóvis Ribeiro de Rego Melo, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Jorge
Zaverucha, 16 November 1984, CEHIBRA da Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de
Pesquisas Sociais, Recife: 20.
696
“Padre Crespo vê na sindicalização rural a última esperança do trabalhador do
campo,” Diario de Pernambuco 17 August 1962, 11.
697
Padre Crespo claimed that the Church was needed because “o movimento sindical
rural poderá cair nas mãos dos comunistas e consequentemente, será a derrocada da
democrácia.” Ibid.
698
Quoting from Mater et Magistra, Crespo declared, “O Nosso pensamento afetuoso
e o Nosso Paternal estimulo dirigem-se para as associações profissionais e dos

347
 On a number of occasions, Padre Crespo went to the police to support

peasants who were involved in the movement to form rural unions associated with the

Church. He took a strong stance against “unjust” large landowners, labeling them as

“slave masters” who used their money to put politicians in power who supported their

dominance.699 The violence and injustice that many of these priests observed in the

countryside led them to support the rural workers and peasants. For instance, Padre

Crespo supported Adelino Vicente, a member of the Sindicato Rural de Vitória, when

landowner Miguel Paisinho tried to throw him off the fazenda. Crespo described a

situation when he was meeting with Vicente at his house and the landowner and six

capangas (hired thugs) armed with revolvers, and threatened Vicente’s wife and

children, throwing all the furniture out of the house and threatening to burn

everything.700

At a time of heightened tensions in Jaboatão in late August of 1963, the

Diario de Pernambuco reported that storeowners were closing their businesses in fear

of attacks by rural workers. The Minister of Labor had legalized one rural union of

Jaboatão (led by the Church) and the workers had been electing the first leaders a few

days prior to the unrest. The workers entered into a conflict because the “communist”

workers supposedly tried to influence the elections, which led to mass protest.

Communist-influenced rural workers reportedly threatened to attack the Igreja Matriz

movements sindicais de inspiração cristã, presentes e ativos em varios Continentes.”

Ibid.
699
Ibid.
700
“Padre denuncia fazendeiro que destruiu a casa de um camponês,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 May 1962, 5.

348
in Jaboatão in an act of revenge against Padre Crespo.701 After receiving death

threats, Padre Crespo supposedly took refuge in a convent in Recife, leaving Padre

Celestino Capra in control.702 Such violent incidents raised questions about the

effectiveness of the Church to lead rural movements, since it seemed as though the

opposition to the Church led rural workers to leave the Church and join PCB rural

unions.703

Padre Antônio Melo led the Catholic rural union movement in Cabo,

Pernambuco as well as the colonization and cooperative land projects in the area.704

Padre Melo appeared more frequently in the mainstream newspapers, which quoted

and reported on his activities and political statements more often than Padre Crespo.

In a 1963 USIA study on the rural Northeast which entailed conducting interviews

with about 1000 rural Nordestinos, Padre Melo was the only Catholic priest who

surveyors included in their questions, asking about rural people’s knowledge of and

opinion of Melo.705 As Antonio Campeiro de Aragão of Petrolina said of Melo, “um

homem que vive a vida dos camponeses, lutando por eles sem quaisquer intereses

701
“Comércio de Jaboatão cerra portas temendo camponeses,” Diario de Pernambuco
29 August 1963, 1.
702
“Fúria vermelha em Jaboatão: Juiz é insultado e Padre Crespo refugia-se no
Recife,” Diario de Pernambuco 29 August 1963, 3.
703
“Padre Melo adverte Governador: Resistirá a novas violencias,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 September 1963, 3.
704
“Padre Melo prega a reforma agrária: É anti-Marxista,” Diario de Pernambuco 15
May 1963, 3.
705
The other figures who received similar attention included Francisco Julião, Jango
Goulart, Miguel Arraes and Fidel Castro. Brazil. Country Project Files, 1951 – 1960.
Records of the US information agency (USIA). “Rural NE Study: Tabulations of
Close-End Questions, São Paulo, May, 1963. RG 306, Box 14, Folder BR 6302.
National Archives.

349
politicos.”706 This statement about Melo exemplifies the tactic of the Church to seek

legitimacy in portraying the Church as a “non-political” actor in the Northeast.

Padre Melo frequently made declarations downplaying the threat of

communism in the countryside in Northeastern Brazil. For instance, commenting on

the march initiated by Julião in Brasília in early 1962, Melo claimed that such

marches gave an erroneous view of the peasants as communists, when in fact, their

protests were only motivated by hunger.707 Testifying for the CPI (Comissão

Parlementar de Inquérito sobre as Ligas Camponesas), Melo explained that

communism was not a threat because the Northeastern Communists were bourgeois

politicians, incapable of “leaving their armchairs” to start a revolution.708 He

emphasized the need for agrarian reform in the Northeast since the camponês suffers

from “fome física, fome de cultura, de civilização e de justiça.”709 Melo also did not

turn the large landowners into the enemy, claiming that many landowners were also

concerned about the misery in the countryside.710 Instead, what was needed was “to

stimulate agricultural production, modernize it, and demand just legislation.”711

But in mid-1963, around the same time of the protests involving Padre Crespo

in Jaboatão, Padre Melo also became the focus of a controversy and violence.

706
“Bispo inicia movimento de defesa do Nordestino,” Diario de Pernambuco 21
January 1962, 3.
707
“O Nordestino não é comunista; apenas luta contra a miséria – declara o padre
Melo,” Diario de Pernambuco 27 January 1962, 5.
708
“Padre Melo Depôs: Reforma agrária ou então convulsão social,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 May 1962, 1.
709
“Padre Melo Depôs: Reforma agrária ou então convulsão social,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 May 1962, 1.
710
“Padre Melo: não há comunismo no NE, mas insatisfação,” O Estado de São
Paulo 5 May 1962.
711
Ibid.

350
According to the 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.712 The police, now under orders from

Miguel Arraes and João Goulart, demanded that the IBAD office close its office since

it was supposedly a “foreign” institution with the sole purpose of causing unrest.713

An editorial in the Diario de Pernambuco denounced the governor’s actions as being

comparable to the “savagery of the Wild West,” writing in support of the “anti-

communist” techniques of IBAD and in support of Padre Melo’s efforts to organize

rural workers.714 To oppose the “unrest” allegedly instigated by Arraes who wanted

“to turn Pernambuco into a barrel of gunpowder and civil war,” the editorial quoted

Dantas Barreto (1911) who argued that the government’s principal responsibility was

to maintain order.715

After the Military Coup of 1964

La falta de libertad, la violencia de la represión, las injusticias, el

empobreciemiento del pueblo y la enajenación de los intereses
nacionales al capital extranjero no pueden constituir una señal de que
el Brasil haya encontrado el camino de su afirmación histórica.716
- Dom Helder Câmara, 1974

712
“Padre Melo adverte Governador: Resistirá a novas violencias,” Diario de
Pernambuco 6 September 1963, 3.
713
Ibid.
714
“Os episodios do Cabo,” Diario de Pernambuco 6 September 1963, 4.
715
Ibid.
716
Helder Camara y obispos de Brasil, El Grito del tercer mundo: en um pueblo
marginado. Mílagro brasileño? Testimonios (Buenos Aires: Merayo Editor, 1974),
39.

351
In an editorial in the Diario de Pernambuco in May 1964 on rural unionization, Costo

Porto stated that the “flag of rural unionization until recently had been in the wrong

hands, of those subversives of humanity,” but now, the flag has returned to the “right

hands, those of the Church, as clearly stated in Mater et Magistra.”717 Porto quoted

the Pope as recognizing the need for rural cooperatives and professional associations.

He argued that the large landowners should support rural unionization because the

opposite would mean “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.”718 He concluded the

editorial: “Se cometemos o grande e imperdoavel crime de deixar que a bandeira da

sindicalização fosse ter a outras mãos, chegou a hora de acertar o caminho,

reivindicando-a para a democracia e transformando-a uma das tonicas de nossa

batalha de consolidação do movimento de 31 de março.”719

Besides the fact that many of the leaders of the Ligas and the PCB were

arrested after the military coup, a number of new leaders in the Church fostered a

shift in the rural movement. Dom Helder Câmara was instated as the Archbishop of

the Diocese of Olinda two weeks prior to the coup, and Dom José Maria Pires (Dom

Pelé) became the Archbishop of Paraíba in 1966. While Padres Melo and Crespo

remained involved in rural unionization and cooperatives, they also faced challenges

to their right to lead these movements, and were interrogated and arrested after the

coup. Such challenges faced by these priests is evidenced by a declaration in the

717
Costa Porto, “Sindicalização rural,” Diario de Pernambuco 15 May 1964, 4.
718
Ibid.
719
Ibid.

352
Diario de Pernambuco by Padre Crespo in June 1964:

“É conhecida de todos a oposição sistematica que me fizeram

os comunistas no governo passado, negando pão e aguaao movimento
camponês que orientava: intervindo nos sindicatos democratas,
invadindo suas sedes, empiquetando Estrada (…) para que os
camponeses democratas não fizessem passeata de protesto contra a
invasão do sindicato de minha cidade de Jaboatão; enfim, chegando ao
ponto de me ameaçaran de morte, nnao podendo permanecer em
minha casa, sem grave risco de vida, fato este amplamente divulgado
pela imprensa, naqueles dias.
Tendo, no entanto, a responsibilidade do movimento
camponês, precisava de continuar a manter contactos nas areas
governamentais, para sobreviver com o movimento. Não negligenciei,
porém, de informar o progresso da subversão em marcha ao
commando do IV Exercito, na pessoa do então general Humberto de
Alencar Castelo Branco…minha posição foi manifestada em relatorios
escritos, em telegramas e em programas de televisão, quando
denunciamos elementos agitadores que intraquilizavam os campos.
Diante de muitos se calavam, quando deviam advertir, nós falamos e
denunciamos de publico o que foi objeto de amplos comentarios da
imprensa local.
Minha posição é bem conhecida. Sou contra o comunismo.
Sempre combati. (…) Sempre defendi o trabalhador, o camponês
anonimo, construtor da nossa patria contra as injustiça de poderosas
sem coração sem fé e sem amore a Deus. Sempre dialoguei com
todos, ricos e pobres, patrões e operários, amigos e contraditores.
Posso alguma vez ter errado. Quem não errou? Quantos se
omitiram criminosamente? Pelo menos eu não me omiti. Tentei uma
luta de Davi contra Golias (SUPRA, CGT, CONSINTRA e
extremismo de direita e de esquerda). Quem não errou, jogue a
primeira pedra.
Tenho a consciencia nítida de que estou dando meu contribuito
à minha patria e à minha Igreja, ajudando outros a construir um Brasil
melhor, sem privilegios acintosos à miseria revoltante, dentro de um
clima de justiça, unico fundamento do progresso, da ordem e da
paz.”720
The statement by Padre Crespo suggests that he was feeling threatened during the

first months of the military regime and felt insecure about his position as a leader in

the rural unionization project. His declaration indicates the possibility of

720
“Esclarecimentos do Padre Crespo,” Diario de Pernambuco 21 June 1964, 9.

353
denunciations that he supported communists and created rural unrest. In response, he

tried to align himself with the Church and the military regime, and emphasized the

idea that he wanted to work with a multiclass alliance to alleviate the “misery” of the

countryside. But, Padre Crespo never mentioned the process of conscientização, or

of empowering the rural workers and peasants in the Northeast.

Almost immediately after his reassignment to Pernambuco (two weeks before

the military coup), Dom Helder Camara had to directly confront the military regime

about the arrests and torture that occurred in the early days of the dictatorship. While

his position radicalized over time, even in the early days of the coup he spoke against

the mistreatment of political prisoners, even those associated with the Communist

Party. One of the most visible cases of torture and human rights abuse was that of

Gregório Bezerra, PCB leader of the rural unions. Bezerra had been beaten in public,

tied to a horse, and dragged through the streets. In a later interview, Bezerra

described Dom Helder Câmara:

“Eu sempre tive uma enorme admiração por Dom Helder Câmera. Sei
que ele e sistematicamente anticomunista, antisoviético, mas julgo que
ele teve um papel fundamental aqui na história do Partido. Ele
denunciou os crimes, as torturas, os sequestro e a sua voz contribuiu
muito parece…Eu acho que a posição de D. Helder foi muito positivo.
Ele é um homem culto, inteligente, e muito hábil.”721
As Dom Helder Camara’s position solidified against the military regime,

stories about him being a “red” or “communist” Bishop also increased. By December

1964, Dom Helder had started to make international declarations about the situation

in the Northeast, presenting the argument that Communism was not a threat in the

region since the “impoverished masses cannot understand” the meaning of

721
Gregório Bezerra, interview by Eliane Moury Fernandes, 28 May 1982. (Recife:
CEHIBRA da Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais), 169.

354
Communism. Dom Helder stated that charity was always well-received in the

Northeast but “consciousness-raising” of the impoverished masses, was seen as a

threat and caused the large landowners to declare such projects “communist.”722

Dom Helder continued to press for development projects in the Northeast and the

need to change the structures that perpetuated the misery of the Nordestinos.

As the dictatorship continued and grew increasingly repressive after AI-5 in

1968, the Northeastern Church was a target of repressive measures such as arrests,

threats, and occasional spraying of bullets on the Archdiocesan buildings.723 One of

Dom Helder’s assistants, Antonio Henrique da Silva Neto, was found dead on a

Recife street in May 1969 with signs of physical torture.724 Two American priests

were arrested in Recife in December of 1968 on the charges of being “serious

subversives.”725 Dom Helder Câmara also intensified his statements against the

regime locally, nationally and internationally. For example, in a 1972 letter he wrote

that the authorities seem to be convinced that the subversion had moved from the

722
Helder Camara, “Conscious and Anti-Communism,” The Commonweal 18
December 1964, 407-408.
723
Joseph Page, “The Little Priest Who Stands Up To Brazil’s Generals,” New York
Times 23 May 1971, SM26.
724
The priest was one of the key assistants of Dom Helder, active in social-aid
programs in Recife, and had studied sociology in the United States. His body showed
that he had been tied with ropes and stabbed to death. The accused murderers were
allegedly associated with the Communist Hunters Command, a right-wing militia
group. Bruce Handler, “Brazil Probing 1969 Slaying of Liberal Priest,” Washington
Post 6 July 1974, A10.
725
The priests were Darrell Rupiper and Peter Grams, both members of the Oblates of
Mary Immaculate Order in St. Paul, Minnesota and they worked with Dom Helder.
“2 American Priests Arrested in Brazil,” Washington Post 19 December 1968, A23.

355
South to the Northeast, especially to Fortaleza and Recife.726 He said that the

disappearances, kidnappings and imprisonments – especially amongst urban workers

and students – were multiplying, and that even the laws of AI-5 were not being

followed. Families of the disappeared went on pilgrimages to the various police and

military locations, often not locating their arrested sons, daughters, husbands or

wives. “O pressuposto é de que se trata de terroristas e de que estes não merecem a

mais leve consideração.” In a 1970 speech in Paris at the Palais des Sports, Dom

Helder described the torture of priests in Brazil, including graphic descriptions of

electric shock and other abuses.727

As Dom Helder’s protests grew stronger, the military leaders also attempted to

censor his voice, allegedly forbidding him access to the media and labeling him a

subversive.728 The military raided his living quarters and offices on a regular basis,

searching for communist materials, and also censored his sermons.729 While on the

one hand, Dom Helder was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, on the other

hand, articles that claimed he was a “red” bishop appeared in U.S. media, depicting

Dom Helder as more of a “fanatic” and a threat to democracy than as a legitimate

voice denouncing the human rights abuses. For instance, the governor of São Paulo

called him a “Fidel Castro in a cassock” and accused Dom Helder of accepting money

726
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.
727
Joseph Page, “The Little Priest Who Stands Up To Brazil’s Generals,” New York
Times 23 May 1971, SM26.
728
Walter Arnold, “Revolution Through Peace,” New York Times 22 August 971,
BR6.
729
Bruce Handler, “Brazil Probing 1969 Slaying of Liberal Priest,” Washington Post
6 July 1974, A10.

356
from Communist sources.730 This campaign of defamation appears to have been quite

systematic: testifying before the US Congress in 1974, American Methodist minister

Fred Morris graphically described being tortured by the military in Recife, and

claimed that his captors wanted him to denounce Dom Helder as having ties with the

Brazilian Communist Party.731 The case of Dom Helder illustrates the degree of

repression present in Northeastern Brazil during the dictatorship. Yet, his position as

the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, with a strong international voice, possibly gave

him small measure of impunity; the military may have felt certain limits to the

degree of repression they could exert on him personally.

Milagres of the Dictorship

In 1967, Severino Barbosa published reports on Northeastern Brazil, emphasizing the

new modernity and progress of the region while connecting this “miracle” to

historical messianic figures such as Padre Cícero and Euclides da Cunha. Images

depicted sertanejos on horseback, suggesting that the military government allows

them to peacefully maintain their traditions (of being poor and riding on horseback)

within the modern nation, with the caption: “o que impressiona são os contrastes, o

choque entre os velhos costumes e o modernismo de hoje. Montada a cavalo, a

730
Joseph Page, “The Little Priest Who Stands Up To Brazil’s Generals,” New York
Times 23 May 1971, SM26.
731
“Tortured in Brazil, U.S. Missionary Says,” Washington Post 12 December 1974,
A31.

357
sertaneja revive a tradição nordestina.”732 The story opened with the claim that “for

the first time in 400 years, the caatingas nordestinas appear painted in green and in

the faces of the cowhands, of peasants and women of the povo that walk in the street,

a sign of tranquility and happiness.”733 Barbosa stated that the tragedy of drought will

never again be a part of life in the Northeast: The new modern irrigation, dams, and

water systems have brought progress to the “underdeveloped area.” The past of

violence, death and the cangaço will never repeat itself. The article suggests that

even with the progress and modernity, the traditional culture will persist in the

Northeast, unchanged from centuries past.

Barbosa praised Padre Cícero in these reports. He claimed that “while the

Devil used to roam the caatingas of the sertão, the progress initiated by Padre Cícero

has changed the path of the Northeast.734 A separate article emphasized certain

aspects of the prophecies of the “Messiah of the Northeast” (Padre Cicero), quoting

Cícero as having declared that only those who respect, love and obey the government

will see the benefits of progress.735 The article emphasized Padre Cícero’s views

about family, repeating throughout the ideas of “family decency, conjugal unions, and

children respecting their parents.” The path to salvation, according to the article’s

interpretation of Padre Cícero’s sermons, was through honor and obedience: being a

732
Severino Barbosa, “Não é mais de secas e nem tragédias o sertão de agora,”
Diario de Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.
733
Ibid.
734
Severino Barbosa, “Como fez o milagre da àgua germinar na caatinga vazia a
semente boa do progresso,” Diario de Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.
735
Severino Barbosa, “Profecias mudaram Padre Cícero no Nostradamus do Sertão,”
Diario de Pernambuco 24 December 1967, 9.

358
good son, a good father, a good daughter, a good wife and a good mother.736

Barbosa also spoke in a language of “miracles,” which he attributed to

Euclides da Cunha, not Antonio Conselheiro. According to Barbosa, the “miracle

dreamed up by Euclides da Cunha” had turned into a reality: “Sobre o solo que as

amarilis atapetam, resurge truinfalmente a flora tropical.”737 The new projects had

led to a higher rate of agricultural production, “germinating the good seed of

progress.” The miracle of water supposedly proved that “Deus também é

Nordestino.”738 Barbosa described what this progress has meant for the Nordestino,

who “no longer needs to fear the past:”739

Nas estradas, quando passa um vaqueiro tocando o seu gado, nota-se

nele, de ar desempenado e gibão desafiador, um sintoma de confiança
no futuro, e há no seu rostro um sorriso de despreocupação. Mulheres
idosas, ou ainda jovens, como nas cidades de ontem, seguem a cavalo
para sitios e fazendas. Meninos, de livros na mão, seguem para as
escolas. Sertão de hoje não tem mais secas e nem tragédias. Deus
ouviu a prece dos sertanejos e mandou São Pedro jogar àgua no sertão.
The development narrative was a part of the reason why the Brazilian military regime

was able to maintain its legitimacy to rule, so it is not surprising to see the “selling”

of this idea regarding the promises to modernize the Northeast. What is remarkable is

the language of “milagres” and how such ideas were translated to the Northeastern

context. The subtext of the story suggests that God is on the side of the dictatorship,

since He has finally become Nordestino and blessed the cursed land with water and

agricultural production. The references to Euclides da Cunha – notably not Antonio

736
Severino Barbosa, “Profecias mudaram Padre Cícero no Nostradamus do Sertão,”
Diario de Pernambuco 24 December 1967, 9.
737
Severino Barbosa, “Não é mais de secas e nem tragédias o sertão de agora,”
Diario de Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.
738
Severino Barbosa, “Como fez o milagre da àgua germinar na caatinga vazia a
semente boa do progresso,” Diario de Pernambuco 10 December 1967, 10.
739
Ibid.

359
Conselheiro – and Padre Cicero also illustrate how certain historical narratives were

appropriated by the dictatorship or at least were a part of the popular discourse

touched upon by journalists. The use of such figures and their prophecies promoted

the military government’s ability to fulfill such prophecies, spreading happiness and

“progress” to even the most underdeveloped and forsaken places in Brazil. At the

same time, as the quoted prophecy suggests, those who refuse to obey and respect the

patriarchal system will not see progress.740

O sertão vai virar mar e o mar virar sertão

In April 1968, a newly constructed dam on the Vaza-Barris River flooded the area of

Cocorobó. The dam, a DNOCs project originally conceived by Getúlio Vargas in the

1950s finally came to fruition, covering the ruins of the Canudos church, two

cemeteries, and remnants of the battlefield with water in less than three days. The

project sought to provide irrigation for the area, and facilitate new agricultural

production. Thus, the miracle of the dictatorship fulfilled the well-known prophecy

by bringing water and agricultural production to the sertão.

The ruins of the Canudos church surfaces periodically when the water level

drops. The entire situation is almost too poetic; in fact, scholars, artists,

photographers and filmmakers have painted numerous versions of the story and

740
This idea correlates to Regina Reyes Novaes’s conclusion in which she claims that
the Ligas had “demonified” the latifundio in the early 1960s, referring to it as the
“besta fera.” After the coup, the displaced rural workers became known as the “Rabo
da Besta” (Tail of the Beast), illustrating the change in power relations and in the
popular use of certain terms. Novaes, De Corpo e Alma, 209-212.

360
discussed its significance in terms of everything from the “death” of the Left to the

dispute between memory and history.741 The “hard-liners” of the military

dictatorship, in line with their promise to bring modernity and progress to the

Northeast, constructed an irrigation project in the Bahian sertão. And, in doing so,

they erased a history of backwardness, fanaticism, and rebellion as well as the

military’s own questionable role in what is commonly understood as a massacre of

the oppressed by the Brazilian Armed Forces. But if the military government’s plan

had been to “disappear” the memory of regional resistance with this show of progress

and modernity, it failed. In what seems to be an almost too perfect example of

Michel Foucault’s interpretation of power and resistance – “Where there is power,

there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a

position of exteriority in relation to power”742 – the dam perpetuated the memory of

Canudos and provided a powerful metaphor of resistance against the dictatorship.

In a letter from Francisco Julião published in a Montevideo magazine in 1970,

he called for a broad front against the military dictatorship, referencing Canudos. He

described the military dictatorship as a “paso ‘atrás’ al estilo de los yagunzos de que

habla Euclides da Cunha.”743 In the early 1970s, Julião continued to talk about the

need for enfranchisement, agrarian reform and resistance against the dictatorship, but

was criticized by another author writing in MARCHA for not having a realistic vision

of the political situation in the Northeast. And, in the criticism, the author likened

741
For instance, Flâvio Candido, A terceira morte de Joaquim Bolívar (2000); Eliane
Caffé, Narradores de Javé (2003); Ipojuca Pontes, Canudos (1978).
742
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95.
743
Francisco Julião, “Brasil, amplia alianza o callejón sem salida,” MARCHA
(Montevideo, Uruguay) 11 November 1970. A1, 4 (3) -38). CEDEM - Centro de
documentação e memória da UNESP Archive. São Paulo.

361
Julião to Antonio Conselheiro: “Desde su tipo física, perfectamente identificado com

las figures subdesarrollados de los nordestinos, pasando por su apariencia de místico

que recuerda a la población del nordeste rural los beatos e fanáticos legendários

caraterísticos de la región.”744 Power and resistance form the discourse of

Northeastern Brazil to the point where this struggle has become a defining and

perhaps dominant narrative of the region, as I discuss in the next chapter on memories

and histories of the Ligas Camponesas from 1978-1985.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

Lírio Ferreira’s Árido Movie (2004) is best understood within recent scholarship on

Northeastern Brazil such as Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior’s A invenção do

Nordeste.745 It is a film – that like the scholarship – that seeks to challenge the very

744
Paulo Shilling, “El Suicidio politico de Julião,” MARCHA (Montevideo, Uruguay)
24 July 1970. A1, 4 (3) – 41. CEDEM - Centro de documentação e memória da
UNESP Archive. São Paulo.
745
See also, Frederico de Castro Neves, Imagens do nordeste: A construção da memória regional
(Forteleza:Artes Gráficas, 1994); Laércio Souto Maior, São os nordestinos uma minoria racial?
(Londrina: -----1985); Maura Penna, O que faz ser nordestino: Identidades sociais, interesses e o
“escândolo” Erundina (São Paulo: Cortez, 1992)

362
notion of o Nordeste. Árido Movie tells the story of a TV reporter returning to

Pernambuco from São Paulo to attend his father’s funeral in the sertão, with vignettes

about the people he encounters while in Pernambuco. What is brilliant about the film

is precisely what many reviews of the film failed to grasp – the metanarrative.

Throughout Árido Movie, Ferreira presents the audience with a “typical” Nordestino

scene, and develops the scene, imbuing the image with a meaning that contradicts the

traditional representation. For instance, the traditionally costumed matriarch of the

sertão holds a wake for her murdered son in a town of the sertão that immediately

identifies the scene as being the traditional Northeast. But, she – not her sons – is in

control of the finances and the family business, and the family is not growing cotton

or raising cattle – she is dealing marijuana. The bearded mystic performs rituals with

holy water, but Ferreira reveals his incantations to hold power only because of the

interest in this mysticism among urban Paulista artists and intellectuals. The

southerners need the existence of a mystic, impoverished Northeast as a counterpoint

for their own success in terms of cultural production and material wealth.

To understand Ferreira’s point in Árido Movie, it helps to consider how his

first film, Baile Perfumado, also addressed the issue of representations of the

Northeast. Through the story of Lampião, Maria Bonita and the filmmaker Benjamin

Abraão who shot footage of Lampião in the 1930s, Ferreira uses metanarrative to

demonstrate how cultural production created the “reality” of Lampião, an essential

figure of Nordestino identity. Both of Ferreira’s films suggest that rural Nordestinos,

mystics, and cangaceiros play an active role not only in creating their image, but also

in manipulating the image to suit their own purpose. Although unequal power

363
relations exist between the rural Northeast and the urban South, in Ferreira’s films,

none of the Nordestinos are depicted as the static figures seen in the Cinema Novo

films. And, to a certain extent, the Nordestinos in Ferreira’s films seem to know

exactly what they are doing and how they are manipulating the rest of Brazil to

believe certain myths about the Northeast. Yet, none of the film reviews have

touched upon this theme. This absence in the reviews exemplifies the difficulty in

appropriating and challenging traditional representations of the Northeast, and in

questioning the naturalized assumptions about the region and its people. The public

still wants the violent and lawless Northeast, where cangaceiros and religious fanatics

roam the dry sertão, where weathered faces of rural workers speak in a “quaint” rural

dialect, reciting literatura de cordel and trekking with a burro to the weekly market to

barter farinha, beans and charque. While many “good” or even “great” films about

the Northeast have been released in the past few years, Lírio Ferreira’s films are

masterful because they attack o Nordeste by unpacking it as a representation in

Brazilian popular culture.

My dissertation took on a similar project as Ferreira’s films or Albuquerque’s

cultural history in questioning the naturalized identity attached to the Northeast and

its people, albeit with a different strategy. Instead of engaging only in the cultural

realm, I chose to focus on a period in which diverse political, social, and cultural

actors tried to challenge the Northeast’s traditional power structures and cultural

representations. Recent studies on rural social movements and peasant rebellions have

attempted to show how elite and popular discourses about peasant and agrarian

movements are mutually constitutive and constantly reshaping one another. While

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these studies often focus on the State and subaltern groups, in the case of

Northeastern Brazil during the Cold War, the State is but one social actor involved in

greater struggles for power. My dissertation contributes to the “new” political and

cultural history, by showing how the Ligas, the PCB, the Church, journalists and

intellectuals, documentary and revolutionary filmmakers, popular poets, and

politicians all used the historical symbols of the Northeast to gain support for their

political projects. The meanings these groups attached to the symbols varied widely.

But, the question remains as to whether is possible to do away with these symbols.

Could a rural social movement introduce “new” symbols and narratives that had no

previous association with the Northeast? Could the Northeast be the Northeast

without cangaceiros and fanatics, poverty and backwardness, legacies of slavery and

exploitation?

While I do not believe that it is possible for the Northeast to be the Northeast

without such symbols, the meanings of the symbols can change and can be used to

denounce regional inequalities and injustices. In other words, unlike Albuquerque

whose premise is “not to defend the Nordeste, but to attack it” since the very idea of

Northeastern Brazil only reproduces inequalities, I believe that by expanding an

examination of the construction of o Nordeste beyond elite sources, we see how the

idea of o Nordeste was not necessarily elitist nor disempowering for rural people. In

the context of the 1950s and 1960s in Northeastern Brazil, social movement leaders

realized that their most powerful strategy was to infuse the legends and historical

symbols of the Northeast with new, revolutionary meanings. By appropriating these

symbols, the movements could generate popular support for the struggle for land, or

365
metaphorically, the struggle for power in the region and nation. Yet at the same time,

the borrowed language of the past had its limitations, since it could be easily

converted and translated into the dominant meanings that designated rural

Nordestinos as violent, backwards, barbaric and even less than human.

My dissertation also is also based on the premise that identity is something

that is constantly changing and never fixed, even in a place like Northeastern Brazil

in which history and memory seem to have frozen the region in time. The

impossibility of escaping its history is the thread that holds the Northeast together as a

region, and is still commonly used to describe o Nordeste and distinguish it from

other regions in Brazil and in the “modern” world.746 Yet, if we accept the idea that

identity is never fixed, is not something “essential” or natural, then it is possible to

understand that the claim to a “never-changing” identity is in fact a construction, a

powerful assumption about the region. My work shows how and why such

assumptions enjoy legitimacy in Brazil. By examining the attempts to appropriate the

meanings of the regional historical symbols, and thus attempting to change the

foundations of Northeastern identity, I also “attack” the idea of o Nordeste. But,

unlike Albuquerque, I see its persistence as the result of a much more diversified

negotiation and struggle instead of top-down manipulation. This difference also

746
A poignant and odd example from a recent article in the BBC described the
Brennands’ recent construction of a European castle in Recife. According to the
article, the bizarre construction – complete with a moat and filled with medieval
European weapons, paintings, and armor – is a reflection of the Northeastern “way”
of holding on to the past. As the article observed, “Memories still die hard in north-
eastern Brazil and some of them - despite the splendid efforts of the Brennand family
- are tinged with a touch of unhappiness.” What past, you might ask? The article is
referring to the historical legacy of the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco for 25 years
in the seventeenth century. Hugh O'Shaughnessy, “Dutch courage in Brazil,” BBC
News, Brazil, 2 June 2007.

366
stems from examining this process of identity negotiation during a specific period in

which the battles were particularly intense.

By the early 1960s, Northeastern Brazil had acquired a national and

international position as a battleground for Cold War politics. From 1959 to 1964,

the expansion of rural social activism in the Northeast was frequently compared to the

Cuban Revolution. Revolutionary filmmakers selected the region as their focus for

films exploring the non-exotic misery of the Third World, and U.S. government

officials started policies and aid projects based on the assumption that

“underdeveloped” regions were the most likely place to face the Communist threat.

This situation not only heightened debates over regional identity, but it also produced

a dirth of sources to examine the question of regional identity.

My dissertation contributes to Cold War historiography by privileging the

Third World as the center of the story and the U.S. and Soviet Union as the periphery

to show how and why impoverished regions such as Northeastern Brazil explain a

less-examined story about struggles for power.747 The international presence in

Northeastern Brazil and Northeastern social and cultural movements engagement

with “Third World” struggles exemplifies the transnational component to any Cold

War study. While rural social movements appropriated symbols traditionally

associated with Northeastern identity, the meanings attached to these symbols often

reflect broader political and cultural struggles of the Cold War. For instance, the

747
Recent historiographical contributions include Greg Grandin’s The Last Colonial
Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2004) and Gilbert Joseph and Daneila Spenser, eds, In From the Cold: Latin
America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham: Duke University Press,
2008).

367
backlands bandit was designated the “father” of Brazilian agrarian reform while at the

same time being compared to a Cuban guerrilla. Delmiro Gouveia turned into a

Northeastern and Brazilian hero of modernity, but narratives of Gouveia describe how

easily notions of scientific racism, modernization theory and dependency theory

could be conflated during the Cold War. The possibility that “modernity” could

emanate from the “backwards” and “traditional” sertão shows how Third World

liberation discourse accepted modernization as a solution, but rejected modernity as

being something associated with the US or Europe.

The methodological contributions of my dissertation include the sources I

have used to tell this story about the political and cultural struggles to “fix” identity.

As a Cold War history, the story would not be complete without U.S. archival

research because the story of Northeastern Brazil was not isolated but a part of

broader Cold War battles. Popular culture – and specifically film – also must enter

into a story about representational struggles because Third World filmmakers turned

the Northeast into a key site of Third World poverty and revolutionary potential in the

late 1950s and 1960s. According to Cinema Novo filmmakers, film – as an elite and

foreign-dominated medium – had to be appropriated by Third World filmmakers, who

would discover a new aesthetic and language to narrate the story of the Third World.

Film was seen as a medium not of mass culture but of popular culture: a way to

engage with the “authentic” culture of the people and instigate revolutionary action

and critical thought, instead of Hollywood’s mass culture that manipulated Third

World audiences into believing their position of inferiority in the world. But, these

“authentic” and “revolutionary” depictions of the Third World also relied on

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traditional stereotypes and representations of the Northeast, legitimizing the key

historical symbols through the cinematographic reality effect.

I chose to use an intertextual methodology to contextualize the meanings of

the representations in popular culture. To consider how these cinematic narratives

shaped Northeastern identity, I explored how social movements, politicians,

intellectuals and journalists used the key symbols of regional identity – cangaceiros,

religious fanaticism, slavery and abolition, and poverty and modernization – to speak

about political projects such as agrarian reform and developmentalism. In the same

vein as Gayatri Spivak’s seminal work on subaltern studies, I have assumed it is

impossible to locate an “authentic” subaltern voice.748 Even by reading elite sources

“against the grain,” analyzing popular culture productions, and conducting oral

history interviews with participants, it is still impossible to tell the story of the rural

social movements exclusively from the perspective of the participants. The history of

rural struggles in Northeastern Brazil must be understood as a process, as a struggle

over power amongst a number of social actors, and as influenced by the diversity of

experiences of Nordestinos. My contribution to this topic was to frame these

struggles in terms of how a variety of social actors used narratives, histories, and

memories to gain popular support among the Northeastern population.

748
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak’s point is not that
oppressed groups cannot speak, but she questions if the subaltern can ever be
represented and understood. For instance, she argues that it is “impossible for
contemporary French intellectuals to imagine the kind of Power and Desire that
would inhabit the unnamed subject of the Other of Europe.” As intellectuals, they are
caught, perhaps trapped, in debates that involve the production of the Other making it
impossible to locate an “authentic” subaltern identity. Furthermore, Spivak
challenges the very notion of a singular “Subaltern” voice, pointing to the diversity of
voices within the so-called subaltern class.

369
 As will be seen in the epilogue, I use oral history as a source reflective of the

time period in which it was produced. I believe that the politics of the Cold War, and

the experience of the dictatorship, make it impossible to treat oral histories recorded

in the late 1970s and early 1980s to be read as accurate accounts of the 1950s and

1960s. While the oral histories provide at times a more in-depth and personal

reflection on certain instances of activism in the 1950s and 1960s, they must be

analyzed through the prism of memory. But, I find that the real treasure within these

sources is that they explain how individuals dealt with and experienced the coup and

dictatorship, and how their memories also reflect the political and cultural struggles

of the abertura. A study of the Northeast during the dictatorship falls outside of the

scope of my dissertation. But, through the personal accounts of the same actors who

return to the Northeast in the early 1980s during the abertura, it is possible to see how

social movement leaders chose to reconcile and engage with Northeastern politics

when they were finally allowed to return to public life. The multiple experiences of

these individuals during the dictatorship informed their re-engagement with politics in

the 1980s. These accounts illustrate from a personal perspective the effects of the

dictatorship, the politics of the abertura, and the ways these leaders’ experiences

influenced their memory of pre-1964 social movements.

The Northeast will continue to be defined by its history and symbols, perhaps

until a time in which material inequalities improve and the Northeast is no longer

equated with the backwards, traditional, non-modern Other in Brazil. Even if such a

drastic change in material and power relations should occur, the symbols could

continue to represent the Northeast, albeit with drastically different meanings

370
attached to them. The reasons for the existence of o Nordeste still remain: the need to

resist and to survive conditions created by material and social inequalities. The tools

available are the symbols of the Northeast, which have not only been turned into sites

of resistance for rural social movements, but also sites of economic gain in terms of

tourism.

The problem with ending the story with the dictatorship is that such an ending

reinforces the dominant narrative of the Northeast: short-lived subaltern struggles

doomed to end in tragic repression by the State, resulting in little or no change for the

Northeast or its people. Jango’s promise of an agrarian reform law on 13 March 1964

(reformas de base) has often been seen as the action that led to the coup two weeks

later. But, far less is known about the reforms and projects instituted throughout the

dictatorship. On 30 November 1964, the first military president, Castello Branco,

passed the Estatuto da Terra, lei 4.504 with the goal to change the agrarian structure

in Brazil. In August 1966, GERAN (Grupo Especial para a Racionalização da Agro-

Indústrica Açucareira no Nordeste) was formed to find a solution to the problem of

monocultural cane production in the Northeast. GERAN was supposed to expropriate

cane lands for the cultivation of foodstuffs and move toward new labor relations in

the countryside in the Northeast. But GERAN ceased to exist in 1971, in part

because of landowners’ vehement objection to any type of agrarian reform. Another

state-sponsored project was PROALCOOL (Programa Nacional do Álcool), decreed

in 1975 to fund cane production and industrialization for ethanol. And, with the

return to democracy in 1985, the PNRA (Plano Nacional de Reforma Agraria) was

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established along with constitutional reforms in 1988 focused on prioritizing agrarian

reform.

Likewise, even though the Ligas and the PCB rural unions ceased to exist, the

Church continued to organize rural workers and programs for extending rights to rural

workers; for instance, with the establishment of the ACR (Associação de Cristãos no

Meio Rural) in 1965, and the CPT (Commissão Pastoral da Terra) in 1976. FETAPE

(Federação dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Pernambuco) affiliated with CONTAG, also

organized agrarian workers, with the largest rural strike during the dictatorship

occurring at the end of 1970. By the end of the dictatorship and into the 1990s, a

number of rural social movements emerged to occupy land and continue direct action

for the redistribution of land. In Pernambuco, in addition to the regional branch of

the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), this includes the MT

(Movimento dos Trabalhadores) which formed the MST-PE in 1994 (not related to

the national MST movment) and in 1996, this movement transformed into the MLST

(Movimento de Liberação dos Sem Terra). The MCL (Movimento de Commissões e

Lutas) which is also known as “Tiradentes” emerged from the MER (Movimento de

Evangelização Rural da Igreja Católica). Even though many of these rural social

movements never received the amount of national and even less international

attention that the Ligas generated in the 1960s, their existence counters the tragic

narrative.

To further examine the ways in which the Ligas and the rural social

movements of the 1950s and 1960s have been remembered or turned into a chapter of

regional history, I examine a number of oral histories recorded in the late 1970s and

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early 1980s in the Epilogue. While many of the actors were exiled, imprisoned or

silenced during the dictatorship, they returned to public life during the abertura. By

ending the story with a story of how the history of the Ligas was narrated and

mobilized as a social, political and cultural site of resistance in the late 1970s and

early 80s, it is possible to see how the politics of the abertura entered into the memory

of rural social activism.

Chapter 8: Epilogue: Re-membering the Ligas Camponesas in

the Transition to Democracy, 1978-1985

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the

way it really was” (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it
flashes up at a moment of danger.
Walter Benjamin
“Theses on the Philosophy of History”749

749
Walter Benjamin, Iluminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken
Books, 1969), 255.

373
 Para concluir (…), posso repetir a frase de Francisco Oliveira,
economista, que foi um dos braços direitos de Celso Furtado, aqui na
Sudene: ‘O Brasil hoje está nordestinizado.” Isso já diz tudo.
Francisco Julião, in an interview in
1983, conducted by Eliane Moury
Fernandes, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco750

The struggle for agrarian reform, rural citizens’ rights, and regional/national identity

went through a drastic transformation during the dictatorship. While appropriating

regional symbols had once seemed revolutionary, the experience of repression, exile,

armed struggle and intensified programs for agricultural industrialization transformed

the political reality. The global context had also shifted tremendously: By the late

1970s, Cuba, Che Guevara and the hope of an “independent” Latin America or Third

World no longer held a prominent position in global politics. The Northeast could

not be seen as the place for the revolutionary Brazilian nation to emerge. But, the

Northeast remained a place of resistance in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of

the political and cultural activism of the 1950s and 1960s.

The Brazilian military dictatorship entered the phase known as the abertura in

1979, inaugurating a political “opening” that would mean an easing of repressive

policies, increased civil rights and a return from exile for many political refugees.

While studies have analyzed the political significance of the abertura in relation to

labor and social movements that emerged in the late 1970s, the abertura was also a

time in which the memory of the Ligas Camponesas and the other rural social

750
“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), 112.

374
movements of the 1950s and 1960s suddenly resurfaced on the national political

agenda. During this time, researchers associated with the Fundação Getúlio Vargas

(Rio) and the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais (Recife) initiated

major research projects that involved collecting the oral histories of political actors

from the 1960s. Many of the major figures – Francisco Julião, Gregório Bezerra, and

Miguel Arraes – returned to Brazil from exile and began new political careers.

Filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho returned to the Engenho Galiléia with some of the

original footage of a documentary about the Ligas Camponesas that had been abruptly

halted in 1964, to produce a now famous documentary, Cabra marcado para morrer

(Twenty Years Later, 1983). A number of the social movement leaders – Padre

Alípio de Freitas, Paulo Cavalcanti, Gregório Bezerra – published memoirs of their

personal and political histories. And, scholars also started researching and publishing

books on the history of the Ligas Camponesas and the struggle for land in the 1960s.

This chapter examines the process of how the history of the Ligas and the

struggle for agrarian reform was re-membered and incorporated into the narrative of

Northeastern Brazil. The point of this chapter is to show how certain elements of

regional identity remained and others emerged, demonstrating the fluidity of regional

identity in a region that has been depicted as remaining static and tied to its past. For

instance, the metaphor of the family emerged during the abertura as a symbol of

Nordestino identity, a symbol that had not been prominent in the 1960s. The family

had been one of the main discourses of the military regime, and many Leftist

politicians and ex-social movement leaders appropriated the symbol of the family to

challenge the legitimacy of the dictatorship, depicting the family as “broken” or

375
dismembered. This “new” symbol of Nordestino identity turned into a political

demand for a return to democracy that critiqued the legitimacy of the military

dictatorship.

At the same time, the era also solidified – or, following Pierre Nora’s

argument, turned into “history” – certain ideas about the Ligas and the rural social

movements. Similar to the previous chapters, this chapter takes a multilayered

approach to the dialectic of history, analyzing how debates over the past shaped

present politics and identities, but it should be stressed that the abertura was a

drastically different era than the 1950s and 1960s, and the sources for this chapter are

different than the sources used in the preceding chapters. I chose to interpret these

sources in the conclusion – instead of analyzing them in the previous chapters

alongside the sources produced in the 1950s and 1960s – since the late 1970s and

early 1980s was the tragic starting point for many of the studies that wrote the Ligas

into history.

To understand why the Ligas have been so commonly referred to as a failure

and a tragedy, it is necessary to describe the reasons and motives for this perception.

To create a strong narrative of opposition against the dictatorship, political leaders

and filmmakers created tragic yet heroic narratives. To be clear, I am not doubting

that exile, torture, imprisonment and death constitute a tragic ending. What I am

saying is that the story of the Ligas re-emerged as the main evidence that the

dictatorship had failed on multiple levels, suddenly being transformed into a prevalent

if not dominant narrative in the early 1980s. And this interpretation both conformed

in many ways to a more traditional narrative of Northeastern Brazil (a region in which

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short-lived subaltern struggles are violently oppressed by the state resulting in little

material change for the majority of people), and impeded a historical interpretation

that showed the real gains made by the Ligas and the social movements of the 1950s

and 1960s; namely, placing agrarian reform and the social welfare of Nordestinos on

the national political agenda.

The tragic narrative also reinforced certain entrenched stereotypes of rural

Nordestinos. Similar to Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões, the narrative of the Ligas in

the 1980s depicted Nordestinos as brave creatures who persevered through hardship,

but who persisted to lack political consciousness and an ability to fight against state

oppression, condemned to a short, miserable existence as perpetual victims of a state

who refused to incorporate them as equal national citizens. Even the alleged

“Nordestino experience” of torture and imprisonment depicted Nordestinos as

“different” than Brazilians; for instance, in one interview with Julião, the Pasquim

reporter characterized Nordestinos as silent sufferers. The reporter claimed, “What is

interesting is the marked difference of the narratives of imprisonment and torture

between the people from the Northeast and the people from the South. Those from

the South tell their stories with a richness of detail, almost enduring, while the

Nordestinos have difficulty telling their stories, they are ashamed of being imprisoned

or tortured. For the Nordestino to tell that they were caught, it is almost

impossible.”751 This observation exemplifies the ways in which certain conceptions

of Nordestino identity continued to distinguish the “Nordestino” from other

Brazilians, slippng without comment into the media, without needing further

751
The interview in O Pasquim, reprinted in Carlito Lima, Confessões de um capitão:
memórias (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2001), 104-105.

377
explaination. In other words, such an overstated characterization did not provoke

questions because of the well-established idea of Nordestinos as perpetual victims,

whose life and identity is marked by the notion of silent suffering. This brings to

mind the quote by Miguel Arraes, cited in Chapter Two, in which he described

suffering as a central characteristic of Nordestino identity: “Easiness is not of our

world, the world of the Northeast. We are made of suffering and perseverance,

learning from an early age that stubbornness is the condition of our daily life.”

The oral history interviews and life histories from the late 1970s and 1980s on

the struggle for land and the military seizure of power are fascinating because of their

contradictions and their political significance. Many of the subjects had been

silenced until this period, in prison and/or exile – and at times, in disappearance –

until the 1980s. The interviews also took place in the highly politicized environment

of the abertura and the movement for a return to democracy. At the same time, the

subjects actively participated in shaping and using the narrative of regional identity:

suffering, exploitation and poverty, repression and resistance, as well as the

perseverance of historical regional symbols. To illustrate the changes in the

narratives and in the voices who were constructing the narrative, I divide the

concluding chapter into three main sections. First, I analyze the stories of familiar

political leaders, voices that oftentimes captured the spotlight in the 1950s and 1960s,

people who were prominent social actors involved with the Ligas Camponesas, the

Catholic Church, and the Brazilian Communist Party. The second section focuses on

Eduardo Countinho’s documentary Cabra marcado para morrer (Twenty Years

Later, 1983), to show how this film helped to create the tragic narrative of the Ligas

378
and of rural Nordestinos. And, the final section looks at people who were involved in

the social and political struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, but whose stories rose in

political stature because of the historical context of the early 1980s and because of

experiences of the dictatorship.

The problem of how to analyze oral history or oral traditions as “evidence” is

a rich area of theoretical debate because of the nature of the source. Oral history or

oral traditions is most commonly associated with non-literate people, but it has also

been used to narrate histories silenced by forms of state (or other) repression. One of

the central debates involves the idea of whether “truth” or “real history” can be

located in oral history. On this question, I follow the arguments of Luise White and

Toni Morrison. In Speaking With Vampires, Luise White examines the “real”

historical contexts of the emergence of vampire stories in Africa in relation to

colonial encounters and the “universal” understanding of the symbols of these stories;

namely, the exploitation of workers.752 Her point is that discerning the truth is not

really the point-in-question in oral history research. Instead, she attempts to turn

“words and stories into the tools with which a historian reconstructs the past, ...not

(by)...transforming them into something else, but of giving the words and stories the

752
Jennifer Cole describes this difference in her analysis of the ritual of cattle
sacrifice practiced by the Betsimisaraka in Madagascar. “In daily life, memories of
the colonial past become a bit like a subterranean brook that runs its course without
anybody paying much attention, until a person stumbles upon a place where the brook
wells up through the earth. But unlike an underground stream that is the product of
natural forces, colonial memories are entirely a social phenomenon. They are the
residue of historically constructed relationships, with tensions and contradictions that
lie just beneath the more obvious order of things.” Cole’s work interrogates the idea
of lived history and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. Jennifer Cole, Forget
Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2001), 281.

379
play of contradiction, of leading question, of innuendo and hearsay that they have in

practice.”753 She argues that the reason why people tell stories is to get their point

across and tell others what happened, and they repeat stories that reinforce their

points most effectively, regardless of “truth” or “falsity.”

Toni Morrison’s idea of “rememory” in Beloved, which means “showing how

the symbolic re-experiencing of the past reshapes its memory,” illustrates how life

experiences function in relation with a remembered past but also how experience

modifies these memories.754 This is a suitable framework for studying the

intersection between identities and collective memory in Northeastern Brazil because

it allows for more fluid connections between the constructions of identities and

symbolic histories of Nordestinos. It also provides the fluidity to analyze how the

historical context and struggles for power shape people’s memories, histories, and

identities.

The oral histories, films, and memoirs from the late 1970s and early 1980s

also form a broader narrative of Latin American experiences during the Cold War.

The Brazilian military dictatorship – similar to authoritarian regimes throughout Latin

America – created a new Brazilian nation, a nation marked by guilt and anger,

justifications of blatant violations of human rights and experiences of pain,

imprisonments and death. The interviews, oral histories and memoirs that I analyze

in this chapter show these divisions and remark upon the key question about the

753 Luise White, Speaking With Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000): 33.
754
Yael Zerubavel and other scholars have used the idea of “rememory” to illustrate
how certain pasts are invented and validated in the construction of identities.Yael
Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 6.

380
future of the Brazilian nation. Similar to the 1950s and 1960s, it was a period of

change, of uncertainty, of political and cultural activism, and a period in which the

Northeast once again appeared on the national political agenda. It was a time in

which regional identity once again entered into a period of contestation and

reformation, illustrating why this period is relevant to my study.

After locating these testimonios, oral histories and memoirs, I decided not to

use them to discern a “true” history of the struggle for land in the 1960s but to

interpret them as historical narratives that were part of the political process of

regional identity formation in Brazil. In other words, I believe it is impossible to read

the interviews without considering the historical context in which they were

produced, a “hall of mirrors” composed of ten years of radical struggle in the rural

Northeast, fifteen to twenty years of a repressive military dictatorship, and the (then)

current political movement to end military rule and return to a democratic system.

Instead of deciphering their “accuracy,”755 I show how the proverbial “hall of

mirrors” affected the ways in which the subjects relate their memories of this

historical period. I also believe it is important to discuss what happened during the

military regime in Northeastern Brazil, using these sources to map out the

experiences of the dictatorship in a region oftentimes excluded from the

historiography on the dictatorship in Latin America and even specifically in Brazil.

755
Abercrombie argues that the discipline of history remains that of objectivism and
the historian’s work is judged by the adequacy of his or her writing as a
representation of what “actually happened,” or at least “was actually written.”
Instead of engaging with the idea of “accuracy” or “objectivism,” my interpretation of
these oral histories attempts to show the multiple factors that suggest why subjects
chose to tell their stories the way they did. Thomas A. Abercrombie, Pathways of
Memory and Power: Ethnography and History Among an Andean People (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 409.

381
The personal accounts demonstrate the multiple trajectories of how prominent

politicians and social movement leaders experienced the dictatorship, and how their

“rememory” of the pre-1964 and post-1964 periods during the abertura helped to

reshape Northeastern regional identity.

Eduardo Coutinho’s documentary Cabra marcado para morrer adds another

layer to the analysis because it was a popular documentary that helped shape common

perceptions of the history of the Ligas throughout Brazil. Scholars have studied the

power of photography in creating a precise and attainable visual memory not possible

in oral accounts. Cabra marcado combines images from 1964 with images and

interviews in the 1980s, constructing a visual and sonorous narrative of the history

and the memory of the Ligas Camponesas in both historic periods. The story was

narrated as tragedy, providing a strong critique of the military regime and its

detrimental effect on the rural Northeastern population. While based on actual

interviews with Ligas participants and their families, Coutinho cast the story of the

Ligas metaphorically as how the military dictatorship tore apart the traditional

Brazilian family being torn apart, forcing them into hiding or killing them. I analyze

the historical narrative portrayed in the film and its power in shaping memories of the

Ligas as a form of mass culture and as a documentary.

To a certain extent, the oral histories, films and memoirs tell a “universal”

story of how people make sense of a repressive regime predicated on the use of

torture and murder. Many of the stories that people told about Northeastern Brazil

have certain shared themes that link their experience of dictatorship to that of people

in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, etc. But, at the same time, the stories also carry a

382
regional or national narrative, as well as demonstrating how the regional narrative

helped form people’s own recounting of their personal histories and how people’s

memories helped shape the regional narrative. The objective of this chapter is to

analyze how the regional narrative, the experience of dictatorship, the politics of the

abertura, and people’s subjectivities put together or re-membered the Ligas

Camponesas and the struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

A Return to Familiar Figures: the Ligas, the Church and the PCB

The abertura allowed many political exiles to return to Brazil after 15 to 20 years of

living in other countries and becoming involved in other types of political struggles.

Crowds gathered at the airport to welcome back heroes such as Miguel Arraes, and

while such spectacles carried a signs of elatation and hope of a return to democracy,

the defining narrative of this period was uncertainty. The promise of a return to

democracy was still precarious, and beyond this, the political and social landscape of

Northeastern Brazil had changed, exiled leaders had new political platforms, political

prisoners’ experiences of torture, imprisonment and death influenced their views on

the military, and leaders who had remained involved in legal rural social movements,

namely the Catholic Church, had to confront the compromises and resistance they had

experienced in Northeastern Brazil throughout the dictatorship. It is, in fact, hard to

imagine such a reunion. In addition to the changes, the absence also solidified certain

memories of the 1950s and 1960s. People expected the exiled politicians to hold

similar beliefs as before the coup, and leaders also imagined Nordestinos as who they

were before the coup. During this unsettled period of reunion, the main point of

383
agreement among the social movement leaders from the 1950s and 1960s was the

need for a return to democracy. And while this was the overarching goal, the

interviews also reflect how these social movement leaders were actively trying to

carve out a space for themselves and their political projects in the context of the

abertura. Their memories describe their experiences during the dictatorship and

outline their political platform during the abertura. This section starts by discussing

the interviews of three leaders of the Ligas Camponesas with drastically different

experiences of the dictatorship. Then, I describe the stories of two of the Church

leaders who played a prominent role in organizing the Catholic Federations in the

1960s. The final part of this section examines the interviews of two prominent leaders

of the PCB rural syndicates.

Ligas Camponesas

Um oficial notou-me a barba crescida e perguntou:

- Barba à Fidel?
- Falta de gilete, capitão.
- A conversation between a soldier and Francisco Julião
as remembered in Até quarta, Isabela!, a book he wrote
to one of his daughters while in prison756

756
Francisco Julião, Até quarta, Isabela! (Rio: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1966),
66.

384
Francisco Julião had been a radical leader in the 1950s and 1960s in Pernambuco

because of his involvement with the Ligas Camponesas and his unprecedented

initiative in organizing a social movement to fight for rights – the right to vote, the

right to have labor laws extended to the countryside, and the right to own land. But,

the coup of 1964 led to a dramatic recasting of the Ligas, of Francisco Julião, and of

leftist movements in Brazil. As the above quote suggests, a revolutionary discourse

of the barbudos switched to the reality of a repressive regime in 1964. Although

Julião was depicted and associated with the Cuban Revolution, the idea of Julião, the

Ligas, and the Cuban Revolution acquired a new meaning during the dictatorship. As

Julião suggested in his memoir, after the coup, a beard no longer symbolized

revolutionary hope for him; instead, it was a symbol of the military’s power over

Brazilian’s rights and bodies.757 In this section, I analyze two interviews with

Francisco Julião (1977 and 1983), the memoir written by Padre Alípio de Freitas

(1981), and an interview conducted with Assis Lemos, leader of the Ligas in

Paraíba.758 While the format of a publication versus an oral interview must be taken

into consideration as to the difference in the ways these Ligas leaders depicted

757
Julião later described the torture he experienced while in prison in Recife, and the
reason why he wrote the letter to his daughter. “Na II Companhia de Guardas, fui
violentamente espancado por um sargento (…) sofrí ameaças de ser fuzilado, de ser
mandado para o paredão, soldados com metralhadoras na mão e a cela escura,
diminuta, infra-humana.” Julião said he was treated well in Brasília in the Batalhão
da Guarda Presidencial, and in Rio de Janeiro, he was in complete isolation in the
Fortaleza de Santa Cruz, in an infested cell with “memories of the slaves put to death
for having committed crimes.” “Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” 107-108.
758
Clodomir de Santos Morais, also a Ligas leader who published books on the Ligas,
could also be included in this section, although his trajectory is even more
controversial than Francisco Julião’s. When asked about Clodomir, most of the
interviewees refused to comment. José dos Prazeres, another leader, could also be
included in this section but his role is only recalled in the testimonies of the other
interviewees.

385
themselves, perhaps more significant was the fact that Julião spent most of the years

of the dictatorship in exile in Mexico, Freitas spent most of these years in prison in

Brazil, and Assis Lemos remained in Brazil with his political rights banned.

In Julião’s years of exile, the Northeast became a drastically different place

and the controversial depictions of Julião only increased. When Julião returned to

Brazil in the 1980s from exile in Cuernavaca, Mexico to Brazil, he traveled

throughout Brazil to talk to groups about agrarian reform and rural people’s rights.

He ended up supporting a right-wing candidate instead of Miguel Arraes because

Julião claimed that the right-wing candidate had a better vision of how to improve the

living standard in the countryside. Some believed this showed Julião’s “true”

latifundiario and elitist roots. Also, many people felt betrayed or disillusioned by

Julião since he supposedly had gone into exile and did not partake in resistance in

Brazil. Certain perceptions – of Julião as a mystic figure similar to Antonio

Conselheiro – remained in tact from the 1960s to the 1980s. For instance, PCB leader

Paulo Cavalcanti described Julião as being a “Marxist-mystic” who was a mixture of

Antônio Conselheiro with Lenin, and often repeated the phrase: “o sertão vai virar

mar e o mar virar sertão.”759

One of the key themes in interviews conducted with Julião in the late 1970s

and early 1980s was Julião’s insistence to have always fought for rural people’s

rights. He discussed at great length his connection to rural workers and peasants as a

child and his interest in working as a lawyer to defend rural workers as a law student.

759
Paulo de Figueiredo Cavalcanti, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury
Fernandes, Recife, 22 April 1982. (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-CEHIBRA,
1996), 86-87.

386
The emphasis on always having supported rural worker and peasant interests

composed Julião’s political platform in the 1980s. But, the situation in Northeastern

Brazil had changed. Years of a repressive military regime and the policies of

agricultural modernization had shifted labor relations in the countryside.760 Julião’s

claim to being the first politician and lawyer who fought for rural people no longer

held the same power it had in the optimistic era of the 1950s and 1960s.

Julião’s experience as an exile in Mexico influenced the way that he reflected

up on the Ligas Camponesas, and after 14 years in exile, he described himself in the

magazine, Siempre!, as being “half Brazilian, half Mexican.”761 He said that the first

years in Mexico were extremely difficult because he did not speak Spanish and as a

rural lawyer in Brazil, he had a difficulty in figuring out what to do with his life in

Cuernavaca. His second wife and children left him to return to Brazil because of the

hardships they faced in Mexico. Due to political interests and experiences as exiles,

Julião and artist David Alfaro Siqueiros became friends, and Siqueiros hosted Julião

in his house and provided financial support. Julião also developed a friendship with

Iván Illich, who created a course (“Consciencia Social e Ideologia Camponesa”) for

Julião to teach in the Centro de Documentação e Cultura in Cuernavaca. When

Salvador Allende came to Cuernavaca, he met with Julião and gave Julião enough

money that he could afford not to work for three months and write a book, O cambão.

As the years of dictatorships continued to create a more significant community of

760
For detailed analysis of this, see: Anthony Pereira, The End of the Peasantry: The
Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961-1988 (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1997).
761
Cited in Diana G. Hidalgo Castellanos, “Um olhar na vida de exílio de Francisco
Julião,” Master’s thesis, USP. (São Paulo, 2002), 7.

387
exiles in Cuernavaca and abroad, Julião became more involved in the Committee of

Latin American Solidarity to create solidarity and resistance against the military

dictatorships.762 As Diana G. Hidalgo Castellanos argued in her study on Julião’s

experience as an exile, Julião became attached to the idea of portraying himself as a

Latin American (rather than a Brazilian or Nordestino) and worked politically to

create a larger pan-Latin American identity of resistance.763

In the 1977 interview, Julião described a film in detail, which symbolized the

type of identity he was trying to create for himself during the abertura. He claimed

that the political interest in the Ligas was instigated by the popularity of the Marlon

Brando film, Viva Zapata! (1952), in Recife in 1955. Supposedly, Clovis Melo,

leftist journalist and newspaper editor, published a headline in the Diário da Noite

(PE) that directly linked the film to the Ligas Camponesas.764 Because of the

popularity of Viva Zapata!, the article helped the Ligas rise to national and

international interest. Julião claimed that the headline also led to a group of large

landowners, usineiros, and fornecedores to call a meeting and discuss the “problem”

of Francisco Julião in 1955. In this meeting, one of Julião’s ex-classmates

supposedly said that Julião was not corruptible; he would not accept money to leave

the Northeast and abandon the Ligas. So, the group made plans for Julião’s

assassination. Julião learned of these plans through a woman who he was defending

in court, which led him to draw up a will in case it came to fruition, and he decided

simply to wait, in what he described as a fatalistic option. But, his assassin had

762
“Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” Vencedores e vencidos, 110-111.
763
Castellanos, “Um olhar na vida de exílio de Francisco Julião,” 83.
764
Francisco Julião, depoimento. Interviewed by Aspásia Camargo, December 1977.
Yxcatepec, Morelos, Mexico. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC – História Oral, 1982), 62-63.

388
recently converted to Spiritism, and decided that he could not murder Julião.765 Julião

claimed that when journalists and some of Julião’s friends learned of the death threats

and made the connection with the film, this led to a new view of the peasant as an

important actor to be incorporated into the struggle for democracy in Brazil.

The fact that Julião remembered and decided to talk about Viva Zapata! as

being the spark that initiated political interest in the Ligas in an interview in 1977

reflects his experience in exile. The idea that an (imperialist) Hollywood film

instigated interest in the Ligas would have been a shocking statement in the anti-

American milieu of Pernambuco in the 1950s and 1960s. Julião had been living in

Morelos, Mexico for about 12 years at the time of the interview, which altered his

pantheon of the heroes of agrarian reform. The reference also suggests that Julião

may have identified personally with the figure of Zapata in the film. Viva Zapata! is

not a triumphant revolutionary film; it is a story of struggle for land during the

Mexican revolution, of the peasant against the landowners, the traditional elite, and

the corruption of Mexican politics during the revolution. It is a story that ends in

deception and defeat. But, at the same time, Zapata’s death has a glimmer of hope in

that he was seen as turning into a powerful symbol for agrarian reform, continuing to

live in the hearts and minds of the Mexican peasant, continuing to exist “in the

mountains” and ready to return if the peasants ever needed him again. While Julião

tried to construct a similar storyline out of Lampião in the 1950s and 1960s, by the

late 1970s, he chose Zapata as this figure. And while the myth of Zapata in Viva

Zapata! and the myth of Lampião still roaming the sertão is similar, a few key

765
Ibid., 64-66.

389
differences are worthy of note. For one, the obvious difference in the different

contexts. But Zapata and Lampião also are very different figures in popular memory.

Pancho Villa’s more controversial place in Mexican popular memory would probably

be closer to Lampião in Northeastern Brazil.

This is not to say that Julião did not remember the historical roots of the Ligas

and the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil, even though they went through certain

changes from the 1950s to the late 1970s. In the 1977 interview, Julião explained that

José Bonifácio had been the first person to think about agrarian reform in Brazil. He

stated that Bonifácio had been more authentic and more radical than Joaquim

Nabuco, who had started the struggle for the peasant and against the landholding

system that enslaved the peasant.766 Julião also saw the Revolution of 1930 as an

important historical precedent in that Vargas initiated legal reforms for workers,

granting them rights as national citizens. The developmentalist policies of

Kubitschek along with the emergence of the Ligas Camponesas and other peasant

movements and new means of communication also were considered crucial historical

issues that led to agrarian reform becoming a national political issue.767

As for the emergence of the Ligas Camponesas, in 1977 Julião referred to the

Cuban Revolution, to the policies of developmentalism, and to the idea that

Northeastern Brazil became seen at this time as the diseased area that needed to be

healed for national progress. Julião claimed that the influence of the Cuban

766
Julião, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 120-121.
Yet, in a 1983 interview, he used the symbol of Joaquim Nabuco to describe
Josué de Castro, who Julião described as one of the first leaders of agrarian reform.
“Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” Vencedores e vencidos, 69.
767
Julião, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC), 121-122.

390
Revolution propelled the Ligas on to the international stage, but in retrospect, he

believed the connection had not benefited the Ligas. He claimed that the Cuban

Revolution led to a radicalization of the struggle for agrarian reform that was

detrimental to the struggle for land.768 In a 1983 interview with Eliane Moury

Fernandes, Julião became more adamant about the role of the Cuban Revolution,

claiming that it had “absolutely no influence on the expansion of the Ligas

Camponesas.” He said that Juscelino Kubitschek had more influence on the Ligas

than Fidel Castro because of Kubitscheck’s politics of developmentalism.769 This

change in Julião’s perception of the role of Cuba from the 1960s to the late 1970s to

the interview probably conducted in the 1980s illustrates the ways in which politics

shifted Julião’s history of the Ligas. By the time of the 1983 interview, Julião was

supporting developmentalist strategies for agrarian reform and sought a historical

connection with government of Kubitscheck. Likewise, since Julião was

collaborating with large landowners in the 1980s to work for a program of agrarian

reform, he claimed that when the Cuban Revolution became Leninist-Marxist, this led

to a radicalization of the Brazilian Communist Party’s role in rural organizing but it

hindered the Ligas because it turned all the large landowners against the Cuban

Revolution and the Ligas.770

The historical roots of the Ligas themselves remained seen as connected to the

regional symbols: the cangaceiro, the messianic movements, the Cabanada and other

768
Ibid., 122.
769
“Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” Vencedores e vencidos, 78.
770
Ibid., 78-79.

391
Northeastern struggles.771 Julião claimed that it was no coincidence that the Ligas

had emerged in the Northeast and in Pernambuco since the Northeast had a long

tradition of important peasant struggles that preceded and fueled the Ligas. Julião

claimed that the Ligas had been different from these past struggles in terms of their

advanced organizational structure. In an exemplary story of how Northeastern

historical symbols were used to gather support for the Ligas, Julião told of a march to

Juazeiro do Norte on 7 September 1964. Julião believed that by leading a peasant

march to pay homage to Padre Ciçero, it would then be possible to gain support in the

sertão. He contracted Abelardo da Hora to make a life-sized statue of Padre Ciçero,

that the Ligas associates would then carry to Juazeiro do Norte and install on the

highest hill in the valley. Pamphlets were to be distributed that linked the romeiros to

the Ligas Camponesas, which Julião felt was the most effective way of incorporating

the sertanejo into the Ligas.772 While most analyses of the Ligas claim that the

movement lost momentum in the years preceding the coup because of competition

with the Church and the PCB, the story of plans for incorporating the sertão into the

movement demonstrate that Julião had strategies for strengthening and expanding the

base of the Ligas.

Julião claimed to have reflected upon the problems of the Northeast during his

time in exile, reading and studying the problems of the region.773 He recalled being

asked about which political line he was affiliated with and instead of claiming to be

with the Soviet Union, China or Cuba, he affiliated himself with the Liga of Sapé in

771
Julião, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 123.
772
Ibid., 96-98.
773
Ibid.,103.

392
Paraíba, expressing his belief in regionalism and distinguishing the movement in the

Northeast, linking his activism specifically to the problems of the Northeastern

peasant.774 Julião consistently declared the Northeast as the region of Brazil where

revolutionary change started, demonstrating his belief in regionalism.775 As he stated:

“Pernambuco é um Estado de onde sempre têm partido os

movimentos mais sérios em favor da libertação do nosso povo, não
somente no sentido politico, mas também no sentido cultural, social.
Pernambuco tem dado lições de liberdade e esperança. É um Estado
pioneiro nesse campo. Considero que o movimento das Ligas
Camponesas, que extrapolou as fronteiras de Pernambuco e do
Nordeste, influiu para criar uma consciência nacional a favor da
Reforma Agrária.”776
He claimed that João Goulart (or nationalism) had never had a strong political

presence in Northeastern Brazil because of the autonomy of Pernambuco during these

years and because of the fact that Miguel Arraes had been a local leader, rising in

national status, with a stronger connection to Northeastern rural and urban workers

than Goulart.777 Julião saw regionalism as more significant in Rio Grande do Sul and

774
Ibid.,104.
775
Manoel Correia de Oliveira Andrade’s oral history also refers to the historical
roots of Northeastern revolutions. Andrade was a professor at the University of
Paraíba in 1963 and the author of numerous books about the historical and
sociological conditions in Northeastern Brazil. In a 1984 interview, he claimed he
was a man of the democratic left, who defended social reforms that would change the
region. He was arrested on 18 April 1964 and held in prison for a few days, then
placed on house arrest for two months, leaving Pernambuco for France to do a post-
graduate degree. Andrade claimed that the history of Pernambuco was the history of
revolutions and that “no Recife, sempre houve uma massa pronta a receber uma
pregação.” His perspective on the Ligas Camponesas was that they had a “great
historic importance even though they were limited by their very nature of organizing
rural workers.” Manuel Correia de Oliveira Andrade, depoimento. Interviewed by
Eliane Moury Fernandes. 25 June 1984. (Recife: FJNPS-CEHIBRA), p. 23, 26, 35-
36.
776
“Entrevista: Francisco Julião,” Vencedores e vencidos, 93.
777
Julião, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC),143.

393
Pernambuco than nationalism, and he argued that this is why these states had

historically always led revolutionary movements.778

Julião described the Ligas as a loosely organized movement and remembered

himself as a flexible leader who used paternalism as a strategy to organize peasants.

He claimed that this was because of the importance of paternalism in the Northeast.

He said that paternalism was the only way that he could get close to the peasant

because that was the style that they were accustomed to, but his goal was to use

paternalistic techniques to communicate with the rural population.779 Once he had

gained their trust, he started to push them to think for themselves and become

politically conscious.780 Supposedly, peasants always wanted to give him gifts, but

he always refused to accept anything, telling them to keep the food and gifts for

themselves and their families. His insistance on this point probably illustrates the fact

that those who opposed Julião and the Ligas had criticized Julião for “stealing” from

rural Nordestinos and taking their money to strengthen his own political position.

Julião discussed how the culture of mysticism created by the Catholic Church

was a tactic that he used in organizing the Ligas because it was a way to communicate

with the rural population. He said that peasants associated communists with Satan, so

he chose to use popular poetry and the Bible since Northeastern peasants were

778
Julião compared the two states saying that the Pernambucano is a Gaucho on foot;
the Gaucho is a Pernambucano on horseback. Ibid.,144.
779
Another lawyer who worked with the Ligas Camponesas in the zona de mata,
Joaquim Ferreira Filho, claimed that the Ligas were less paternalistic than the rural
unions because they had less of a bureaucratic structure and were more revolutionary.
Ferreira remembered the Ligas as not having the same degree of paternalism that is
associated with unions in Brazil. Joaquim Ferreira Filho, depoimento. Interviewed by
Eduardo Raposo, 21 June 1977 (Rio: FGV/CPDOC-História Oral, 1986.), 12-13.
780
Julião, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC), 91.

394
mystics. Raised Catholic, Julião claimed to have broken with the Church when he

was 18 years old, but he always respected the mysticism of the Church and saw the

message of Jesus Christ as a powerful tool for organizing rural movements.781 In the

1977 interview, Julião also alluded to the importance of Protestant ministers in

leading the Ligas, especially in Sapé. (João Pedro Teixeira was a Protestant

minister.) According to Julião, when a number of Catholic priests started to organize

against the Ligas, the Protestant ministers were vital to maintaining the trust in the

rural population for the Ligas. He claimed that for the peasants, the prophets of

Protestantism were more relevant than Catholic Saints because the prophets had

stronger ties to the struggle for land.782

Julião claimed in 1977 to have always been against the use of violence in the

countryside. He reflected upon certain Ligas leaders who used the discourse of

violence and attempted to organize guerrilla camps, but Julião was supposedly never

involved in these efforts. Julião claimed his goal was to mobilize, organize and raise

the political consciousness of the peasants in Brazil.783 In explaining his reason for

this perspective on violence, he referred to the history of peasant movements in

Europe and throughout Latin America, claiming that peasant rebellions had a

tendency to shift toward mass violence led by mystics and anarchists. Julião claimed

that Padre Alípio de Freitas followed in this tradition of mysticism, violence and

anarchy.784 The next part of this section describes the published memoir of Alípio de

Freitas, a leader who Julião described in 1977 as being too radical, and provoking fear

781
Ibid., 155-158.
782
Ibid., 93-94.
783
Ibid., 113.
784
Ibid., 114.

395
because of Padre Alípio’s sectarianism. He recalled Alípio as making fierce public

declarations about warfare without having the weapons or manpower to actually

support such provocations.785 While both men emphasized their dedication to helping

the rural population in their testimonies, their method of proving or legitimizing this

dedication was completely different. Julião returned from exile describing his

connections to Latin American intellectuals and studies of agrarian reform, while

Alípio de Freitas was released from nine years of prison and described his torture and

isolation as a form of resistance.

Padre Alípio de Freitas, a Catholic priest from Portugal and one of the main

leaders of the Ligas in the 1960s, published his memories of his imprisonment from

1970 to 1979, Resistir é preciso. Freitas had returned to Brazil after a brief period of

exile to partake in the guerrilla resistance movement. He was arrested in May of

1970 in Juscelino Kubitschek, a working class neighborhood (suburbia) of Rio de

Janeiro. Upon his return to Brazil in the mid-1960s, Freitas had left the priesthood,

and become a PCB militant. In the DOPS-São Paulo files on Alípio de Freitas after

1970, his profession is listed as a “university professor until 1964”, with no reference

made to him as a Catholic priest or ex-Catholic priest.786 He had been starting a rural

resistance movement outside of Brasília when he was arrested. He was a leader of the

Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores (PTR), part of the Communist Party and

785
Ibid., 106.
786
Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política – São Paulo. No. 87.691. File: Alberto
Henrique Becker, Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores. “Auto de Qualificação e
de Interrogatório: Alípio Cristiano de Freitas,” 30 November 1970. Arquivo do
Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.

396
the Ação Popular (AP).787 The DOPS report claimed that the PTR was a Marxist-

Leninist movement that used violence, such as armed struggle, to move toward their

goal of taking over the Brazilian government and instating a socialist regime.788 In

his memoir, Alípio de Freitas claimed that his view on political violence remained the

same throughout his revolutionary career in Brazil: “People have the right to fight

reactionary violence with revolutionary violence.”789 He believed in revolutionary

warfare, and even claimed that his torture was justified in that it served as an

inspiration for others to participate in such a war.790 Upon his release, some of his

companheiros read aloud the letter he wrote to the Archbishop in Rio, Dom Jaime de

Barros Câmara in 1962 to show the history of his uncompromising pledge to struggle

on behalf of the Brazilian worker.791

His published memoirs mostly describe the facilities where he was

imprisoned, the military and police he encountered, and the torture and interrogation

he endured. His story differs greatly from that of Francisco Julião, and shows another

path taken by Ligas leaders and participants: clandestine armed struggle, arrest and

imprisonment. His recollections illustrate the similarities in experiences of political

prisoners in Latin America during the dictatorship, stories of torture and

imprisonment that are all too familiar. It is important to briefly explain his

787
Alípio de Freitas, Resistir é preciso: Memória do tempo da morte civil do Brasil
(Rio: Editora Record, 1981), 34-35.
788
Delegacia Especializada de Ordem Política – São Paulo. No. 87.691. File: Alberto
Henrique Becker, Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores. “Auto de Qualificação e
de Interrogatório: Alípio Cristiano de Freitas,” 30 November 1970. Arquivo do
Estado de São Paulo. DOPS-SP.
789
Freitas, Resistir é preciso, 263.
790
Ibid., 263-266.
791
Ibid., 279.

397
experience in this chapter to show the multiple trajectories of Ligas leaders and to

explain the differing views on the dictatorship during the abertura. Upon his arrest,

Alípio de Freitas was taken to DOI-CODI (Department of Operations of Information -

Center for Internal Defense Operations) in Rio de Janeiro, then to DOPS in Rio, then

back to DOI-CODI where he eventually signed a testimony declaring his “illegal”

activities. He was then sentenced to 24 years of prison for his illegal activities before

1964 by the Segundo Auditoria do Exército, and transferred to the PP (Presidio Hélio

Gomes), a major prison in Rio.792 After a few months, Freitas was taken back to

DOPS-Rio, where he met with a number of European priests (Italian and Spanish)

who had been assigned to different parts of Latin America and were arrested for

trying to communicate about the conditions of torture.793 Then he was taken to Ilha

Grande until the end of May 1971, when he was transferred to DOPS in São Paulo.

He described being admitted to the prison by a man he knew from Pernambuco from

his involvement in the Ligas Camponesas. In their long conversation, Alípio

described the man as having “shared the same history although on different sides.”794

His encounter with the Pernambucano officer, seu Eloí, in São Paulo DOPS stands

out as an anecdote that describes his experiences and political beliefs. As Freitas

wrote:

“Era um homem bom e simples, mas apesar de ter vivido e trabalhado

no Nordeste, sobe a mais sórdida exploração, assitido ao nascimento e
crescimento das Ligas Camponesas, jamais compreendeu que sempre
for a uma explorado e, o que é pior ainda, que a sua própria
exploração tinha sido colocada a serviço da exploração dos seus
irmãos. (…) afinal, participamos da mesma história, embora de lados

792
Ibid., 75.
793
Ibid., 93-97.
794
Ibid., 127.

398
 diferentes; ele oprimido, servindo aos opressores, e eu contra os
opressores, servindo aos oprimidos.”795
Even after years of torture and imprisonment, Alípio chose to continue to believe

stringently in the idealist vision of “freeing” the good Brazilian peasants and workers

from the “evil” state, bourgeois, and imperialists.796 He did not blame seu Eloí for

siding with the Brazilian Armed Forces; instead, he portrayed the Pernambucano as a

“victim,” undermining seu Eloí’s agency and decision to be a military official. This

anecdote stands out in the memoir as an example of this revolutionary leader’s

idealistic need to sustain a belief in the Brazilian people, and rural Nordestinos, as

core supporters of the Leftist cause who had simply been manipulated by those in

power. It is a perspective that brings to mind the disillusionment of Che in Bolivia

and consequences of such idealism.

Later, Alípio de Freitas was taken to the Presidio Tiradentes in São Paulo, a

large prison that was for both political prisoners and criminals. During this time, he

also was transferred briefly to DOI-CODI in Brasília, and after this, due to the

construction of the metro, Freitas was transferred with other political prisoners to the

Casa de Detenção do Carandiru in 1972. Freitas described the famous prison as being

much more open with better conditions: food, medical, visitation rights. At some

point, all of the political prisoners were sent back to Ilha Grande and in May of 1974,

795
Ibid., 127.
796
His dedications reiterate this point: He dedicated the book in memory of Augusto
José do Nascimento, “criador e organizador do Movimento Camponês do Maranhão,
que se consumiu na luta pelo seu Povo como uma vela se extingue clareando a
escuridão; de Mariano Joaquim da Silva, miltante operário e camponês, ativista e
dirigente das Ligas Camponesas, assassindado pelos Órgãos de Segurança da
Ditadura Militar em junho de 1971; de João Pedro Teixeira, líder camponês da
Paraíba, fundador da Liga Camponesa de Sapé, assassinado à traição pelo latifúndio
paraibano; de todos aqueles que, desde 31 de março de 1964, imolaram suas vidas na
luta pela liberdade do Povo Brasileiro.”

399
the political prisoners were transferred to the Fortaleza de Santa Cruz, as Freitas

described, “a political prison where all the major revolutionary leaders had been taken

since the colonial times.”797 Nine months later, Freitas was taken back to Ilha

Grande, which he described as a triumphal moment. His final jail was the Presídio

Esmeraldino Bandiera in Bangu where the military instated the Divisão de Segurança

Especial. The conditions improved greatly: the prisoners had good medical care,

food, visitation rights and could even watch movies and get together to talk and

sing.798 As of 1978, Freitas remembered that the Law of National Security began to

be reformed, and the military began speaking of “democracy,” a term that Freitas

questioned due to the continuation of the existence of DOI-CODI and DOPS

institutions.

Upon his release, journalists surrounded him at the prison doors, supposedly

asking Freitas: “What are you going to do now?” His response: “What I have always

done: politics.”799 In analyzing Alípio de Freitas memoir, a few key themes emerge

of what he emphasizes and what he omits. It is a memoir about his personal struggle

to stay alive while in prison, while suffering from torture. He describes the directors

of the prisons and his torturers in detail and, when applicable, tells of their historic

roles in upholding Brazilian “democracy,” as a part of the Brazilian military that

797
As he described, “A própria construção da Fortaleza já obedeceu à finalidade de
ser um cárcere politico, tanto assim que foi aperelhada usando todo o know-how que
a depreavação da mente humana criou para impedir o progresso e a libertação social,
político e cultural dos povos. Assim, esta fortaleza, miltarmente só coberta de
vergonha, tinha câmaras de tortura, equipadas com os requisitos que a época
conhecia, a corredores da morte, celas do passado, vazadouros para o mar, forca, etc.,
tudo implantado meticulosamente.” Ibid., 193.
798
Ibid., 235-237.
799
Ibid., 279.

400
tortured prisoners throughout time. Since Alípio was imprisoned and tortured before

1964, he saw the torture of the dictatorship (1964-1985) as part of a long history of

how the Brazilian state had functioned to uphold the right of imperialist powers and

the elites through the use of force (the Brazilian military). In other words, it is a

political manifesto that is primarily a statement against the military and the Brazilian

government.

What the testimonies and memoirs of Francisco Julião and Alípio de Freitas

suggest in terms of the narrative of regional identity and the ways in which the Ligas

were historicized is that the early 1980s were a highly politicized era in which social

movement leaders returned to having a political voice after being silenced for over

ten years. Whereas Julião’s testimonies could be categorized as an exile experience,

Freitas’s memoir could be classified as a political prisoner’s experience. Both Julião

and Freitas described their suffering – exile or imprisonment – because of the unjust,

military state but they also both repeatedly declared their lifelong dedication to their

political projects. Neither attributed much agency to the Nordestino, portraying the

rural population as victims who lacked a political consciousness and could be easily

manipulated by those in control. Furthermore, both men told individualistic stories.

Unlike their female counterparts, they only briefly alluded to their wives and families.

Another aspect of regional identity that surfaced in the oral histories recorded

in the 1970s and early 1980s was the differences between Pernambuco and Paraíba,

an area so often depicted as being the same. People interviewed from Paraíba argued

that the Ligas were drastically different in Paraíba than in Pernambuco due to the

leadership of Assis Lemos versus Francisco Julião. The testimony of Antônio

401
Augusto Macedo, one of the student leaders from the pre-1964 period in Paraíba who

was involved in the Ligas Camponesas and the JUC (Juventude Universitária

Católica), reflects the difference.800 Even though the reasons he gave for becoming

involved with the Ligas followed the origin story of the Ligas Camponesas of

Galiléia,801 he drew a distinction between the Ligas in Paraíba and Pernambuco.802

He recalled Julião as promoting revolution whereas Assis Lemos and João Goulart

were more interested in a process of reforms and in turning the Ligas into legal rural

unions.803 Joaquim Ferreira Filho, a lawyer who worked for the Ligas in Paraíba and

Pernambuco (but from the state of Paraíba), claimed that the difference between the

movements in the two states was that Assis Lemos believed in Ligas leadership

coming from the local peasantry whereas Julião did not see this as being important.804

But, at the same time, Ferreira thought that the revolutionary politics of Julião

contrasted the populist politics of Assis Lemos and João Goulart, who he saw as

supporting a certain peleguismo in the projects for reforms.805

800
Antônio Augusto Macedo, depoimento. Interviewed by Eduardo Raposo. 2
February 1978. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC – História Oral, 1986).
801
He recalled his involvement in the Ligas as motivated by the grave social situation
of the Northeast, in which more coffins were filled with children than adults, which
led the União Nacional dos Estudantes to form a temporary pact with the workers and
peasants in the early 1960s.
802
He remembered having regular contact with Assis Lemos, the Ligas leader in
Paraíba, and said that Julião had minimal influence on the student movement in
Paraíba. He described Lemos as being aligned with João Goulart and less radical
than the peasant movements aligned with Julião.
803
Joaquim Ferreira Filho made the same statement about the political differences
between Julião and Assis Lemos, but while Macedo claimed that Assis Lemos had
greater influence in Sapé, Ferreira said that Julião had more influence because of the
radical politics of the Liga of Sapé. Joaquim Ferreira Filho, depoimento. Interviewed
by Eduardo Raposo, 21 June 1977. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC-História Oral, 1986), 22.
804
Ibid., 13-14.
805
Ibid., 31.

402
 In a 1978 interview with Eduardo Raposo, Assis Lemos described his political

career and memories of the Ligas Camponesas, as President of the Federação dos

Camponesas in Paraíba. Assis Lemos was from Areia, Paraíba but his family had

been involved in politics at the state and national level, and as a student, Assis Lemos

became involved in the União Nacional dos Estudantes, befriending João Goulart,

and getting involved in labor organizing.806 He attended the ceremony celebrating the

first Liga established in Paraíba (Sapé), but claimed that it was only by chance that

the Liga was considered a part of the “Ligas Camponesas” because the rural

movement in Paraíba was entirely separate.807 He described the difference between

the Ligas in Paraíba and the Ligas in Pernambuco as being related to the production

of sugar cane which was greater in Pernambuco, and the fact that the area of Sapé and

Rio Tinto was dominated by the Lundgren factory town, that had created a feudal

system in which everything was controlled by the Lundgren group.808

Assis Lemos said that in 1962, the Ligas in Paraíba split into two groups: one

affiliated with Assis Lemos and João Goulart and another affiliated with Julião.809 He

described Julião as a charismatic leader who was growing in national popularity, and

received larger applause in many meetings than João Goulart, causing a certain rift to

806
He organized a strike in Areia in 1958 to protest a cement factory’s policy of firing
pregnant women that led to the unionization of the factory workers.
807807
Similar to the case of Galiléia, the Liga of Sapé was first called something
different: “Associação dos Trabalhadores e Lavradores Agrícolas de Sapé. Francisco
Assis Lemos de Souza, depoimento. Interview by Eduardo Raposo, in João Pessoa,
January 1978. (Rio: FGV-CPDOC-História Oral, 1985), 26.
808
Ibid., 42-47.
809
He recalled that Julião had split with everyone – Arraes, Goulart, Brizola – in
1962 and aligned himself with a group of ex-PCB militants who were interested in
forming guerrilla camps in Goias. Ibid., 86-89.

403
develop between the two.810 Assis Lemos described Julião as a great speaker who

could communicate in a poetic but simple language that everyone could understand

and that was often based in Biblical stories. Supposedly, everyone liked Julião

because he seemed like a simple man who was in a permanent state of suffering.811

But, by 1963, Julião had lost electoral support because of his split with Arraes and

because of his revolutionary stance on agrarian reform that included the establishment

of guerrilla focos.812 He described the problem that Julião had in terms of the

problem that Che Guevara had faced in Bolivia: they both failed because the peasants

did not understand the struggle that these revolutionaries were attempting to lead.813

Another difference that Assis Lemos described between Paraíba and

Pernambuco was that supposedly no communists or Trotskyists existed in Paraíba.

He told of Trotskyist students coming to Paraíba as “weekend revolutionaries,” but

that the rural movement in Paraíba was primarily interested in creating legal rural

unions.814 His testimony repeatedly emphasizes the cooperation between the

peasants, students, intellectuals, and urban working class. But, he emphasized that in

Paraíba, unlike Pernambuco, the leadership of the Ligas came from the peasants

themselves. He also described the differences between the Ligas and the rural union

movement. According to Assis Lemos, whereas the Ligas had complete flexibility in

810
Ibid., 82-83.
811
Ibid., 83.
812
Ibid.,136-137.
813
Ibid., 183.
814
Ibid.,143-146.

404
terms of who was a member, the rural union required members to be affiliated with a

certain type of profession.815

After the coup, Assis Lemos was arrested along with most of the other Ligas

leaders and spent 194 days in prison in various prisons in Pernambuco, Paraíba and

Fernando de Noronha.816 He described the torture that he suffered in graphic detail:

beatings, pau-de-arara, putting a newspaper in his anus and lighting it on fire.817 The

military officers were looking for arms and believed that he knew of secret arms

shipments from Cuba, using torture to try to extract a statement from Assis Lemos.818

After being released from prison, he was able to work for the Univeristy of Paraíba in

João Pessoa for only one year, cassado in 1966, losing all political rights for 10 years,

and was dismissed as a professor. He tried to protest his cassação by making a legal

argument in the Assembléia Legislátiva but was denied. Although Assis Lemos spent

years of the dictatorship in Rio, he never went into exile abroad, staying in Brazil

until he was granted his political rights.

815
Ibid., 206. The difference can also be seen as the affiliation with CONTAG
(Confederação dos Trabalhadores Rurais Brasileiros) that Julião did not support
because he felt it took the leadership and issues away from the Northeastern rural
workers, replacing it with the interests of rural workers in the South.
816
Ibid., 169 -172.
He recalled his shock when he realized that peasant leaders Pedro Fazendeiro and
João Alfredo had disappeared, because he had been relieved when they were released
from prison. When he realized what had occurred, he stated that he refused to be
released from prison without being accompanied by his family.
UNE leader Antonio Augusto Macedo described the persecution of all the
peasant leaders in Paraíba, either before or after the coup, recalling the rumor that the
disappeared leaders were cremated in the usinas, in what he called bourgeois justice.
Antônio Augusto Macedo, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC).
817
Assis Lemos de Souza, depoimento. (Rio: FGV-CPDOC), 172-173.
818
Ibid., 173.

405
 The differences of the memories and the experiences of the three Ligas leaders

show why it is impossible to write a singular history of the Ligas Camponesas. All

three men were invested in political projects that developed and changed over time.

They all had different perceptions of each other than how they would define their own

involvement in the struggle for land in Northeastern Brazil. And, these were all

leaders of what has been categorized as a singular social movement. When other

politicians and social movements – also of the political left – are taken into

consideration the history of the struggle for land in the Northeast is perhaps better

classified as the history of the divided Left. But, the same time, certain themes link

these social movement leaders. They all claim to have supported the struggle for land

or the struggle of the poor against the latifundio. They described the respect they held

for leaders in terms of their courage, their ability to communicate with rural people,

and their intelligence. And, they all knew of the dangerous situation that they were

involved with even before the coup, facing imprisonments and witnessing acts of

violence as social movement leaders before 1964, and this repression did not hinder

their activism. The next section describes interviews with the Church leaders in an

attempt to show how other well-known social movement leaders composed their

histories of the struggle for land in the Northeast.

The Catholic Church: Melo and Crespo

Researchers at the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco and the Fundação Getúlio Vargas

interviewed Padre Melo and Padre Crespo about their life histories and their

memories of the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike Julião and Freitas, these men never faced

406
exile or imprisonment but continued to organize rural workers through the

dictatorship. Both were controversial figures in the 1960s and continued to be

depicted by other social movement leaders as somewhat untrustworthy because of

alleged connections to the CIA and the US government, to the military and large

landowners, and to leftist politicians. Unlike Francisco Julião who was also a rather

controversial figure, Melo and Crespo were rarely described by other interviewees as

courageous, intelligent or great leaders. But Padre Melo was particularly criticized in

many of the interviews; for instance, ex-military officer Deolindo Moura described

Melo as being a wolf dressed in a sheepskin who lacked legitimacy and loyalty.819

Francisco Julião and Journalist Clovis Melo both described Padre Crespo as being

motivated by social Christian thought representing the post-Vatican II Church,

whereas they thought Melo was a demagogue and an agitator who had fluctuating

ideologies.820 One of the key differences in the interviews with Melo and Crespo was

their opinions about the dictatorship. Whereas Melo argued for a continuity of

political projects before and after the coup and never criticized the dictatorship,

Crespo denounced the repression of the dictatorship and remembered having spoken

against the military throughout the dictatorship.

In a 1978 interview with Padre Antônio Melo, he described himself as being

similar to Pope John XXIII, the papa camponês, a pope with peasant origins who had

819
Deolindo Moura, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes, Recife 17
September 1986 (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 9.
820
Clóvis Ribeiro do Rego Melo. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes and Jorge
Zaveruch, Recife, 16 November 1984 (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco –
CEHIBRA), 20; Julião, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 85; 145-146.

407
the goal of improving the social conditions in the countryside.821 Melo was recently

ordained as a priest (1961) when he was sent to Cabo, Pernambuco as the vigário-

cooperador. Melo based his talent rural organizing (versus that of Francisco Julião)

in the fact that he was born and raised in the rural Northeast, which gave him a

greater understanding of rural people. He said that when he arrived in Cabo, he

found five Ligas organized by Julião. The emphasis that he placed on Julião and the

Ligas Camponesas suggests that the reason why he organized a rural syndicate and

cooperative was to compete with Julião, even though he explicitly argued that this

was not the case.

He described Julião as being more interested in bringing international projects

to the countryside instead of focusing on local issues.822 He thought that Julião was

using the peasant for his personal political gain, but did not have any actual interest in

the peasants. He described Julião’s influence in Cabo as being a double

misunderstanding and claimed that the peasants never understood Julião’s political

project. They supposedly saw him for what he did not want to be seen as: an

educated man, intelligent, who was a state deputy who could help them fight for

better wages. The peasant was not a radical, according to Melo, but participated in

the Ligas because they saw the Ligas as an immediate way to improve their own

conditions.823 But at the same time, he stated that the rural union movement and

821
Antônio Melo, depoimento. Inerviewed by Aspásia Camargo and Dulce Pandolfi,
Cabo, Pernambuco, April 1978. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC – História Oral, 1982), 7.
822
Ibid., 20-21.
823
Ibid., 23-24.

408
cooperative movement led by the Church was not against the Ligas, it was simply a

different strategy that operated on entirely different terms than the Ligas.824

Melo’s testimony differs from other social movement leaders in that his

narrative is triumphant. He helped the rural people in Cabo to start a rural union and

the cooperative of Tiriri that allowed them to gain control over the production of

sugar cane. He described Tiriri in glowing terms, speaking of its success, its victory

and its fame.825 He claimed that the cooperativistas of Tiriri were now landowners

and lived like petit bourgeoisie, unlike other rural people who were not involved in a

cooperative.826 He also did not denounce the dicatorship; in fact, Melo claimed that

the same acts of violence and torture had taken place during Arraes’s years as

governor.827 For this reason, Melo considered himself a man without ideology, even

though he also claimed to have been extremely interested in politics.828 He saw

ideology as dangerous and what led people to become fanatics.829

Melo used the discourse of modernization and progress, but used it to show

continuity between the democratic period of the 1950s and early 1960s and the

dictatorship. This was his view on the history of Brazil: that it has always been a

country of rich and poor and the coup of 1964 did not substantially change what was

already in place. The modernization and progress that had occurred before 1964 such

as the Paulo Afonso dam and Petrobrás continued during the dictatorship with new

industrialization efforts, the construction of the Transamazon highway, and the newly

824
Ibid., 33.
825
Ibid., 27.
826
Ibid., 35.
827
Ibid., 59-60.
828
Ibid., 15-16.
829
Ibid., 60.

409
instated telephone, television and radio systems that now functioned throughout

Brazil.830 He declared these projects as beautiful things, and said that nothing had

hindered the great and slow march forward of the great Brazilian nation.831 But,

Melo’s position on continuity and on the process of amnesty suggested that he was

not a critic of the dictatorship. In fact, in the testimony he raised cases of terrorists

who had committed murders as not being eligible for amnesty, comparing the

“terrorist acts” in Brazil to the death of Aldo Moro in Italy. In the early 1980s, this

position would have aligned Melo with the political right and with the dictatorship.832

Padre Paulo Crespo was also born in the rural Northeast, in Bom Conselho,

Pernambuco, and studied in the Instituto Católica de Paris, where he observed the

ways in which the priests worked with the rural population.833 Upon his return to

Brazil, he worked in Jaboatão (known as “little Moscow”), and in an interview with

the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Crespo told a story about how he became political

consciousness of the injustices in the Northeast. As a new vigário, Crespo made

frequent visits to houses of the landowners and the peasants. He portrayed the

poverty of the rural communities in the area: sick children without clothing, screams

of common criminals coming from the local jail because of police brutality, people

dying because they did not have enough food or health care to survive. He described

his moment of awareness in coming when he visited a large landowner in the area

who told him to wait a minute because he needed to talk to a rural worker about

830
Ibid., 77.
831
Ibid., 78.
832
Ibid., 80-81.
833
Enes Paulo Crespo, depoimento. Interviewed by Aspásia Alcântara de Camargo
and Dulce Chaves Pandolfi, Recife, 14 – 15 April 1978. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC –
História Oral, 1982), 4.

410
moving out the furniture in his house. Crespo said that the furniture was new and in

good condition, and the landowner replied that it was five years old and was an

embarrassment because other landowners saw this as a sign that he could not afford

new furniture.834 As he described, “Eu fui vendo aquilo tudo e comecei a falar nos

sermões da igreja, questionando, perguntando, o que estava acontecendo? Pessoas

morrendo de fome, maltradas, espancadas, mortas, assssindadas, sem nenhuma

providendência. (…) Isso foi me despertando com tudo aquilo que eu tinha visto com

Monsenhor Cardin, André Pierre, lá na França.”835

So, in Jaboatão, Crespo began organizing rural workers in what became

known as the Serviço de Orientação Rural de Pernambuco (SORPE).836 He claimed

that Pernambuco was the nation’s leader in the rural labor movement.837 The first

phase of the rural unionization process was to legalize rural unions. Crespo described

this process in terms of the narrative of slavery. Supposedly, Melo had met with the

Minister of Agriculture on the 13 of May 1960, and argued for legalizing rural unions

based on the fact that even if the Minister lost his post (as Princesa Isabel had lost the

throne), he would be remembered in history as the person who had changed the law to

end white slavery in Brazil.838 Although the law did not change immediately after the

834
Ennes Paulo Crespo, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes and
Jorge Zeverucha, Recife, 10 July 1985 (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco –
CEHIBRA), 8.
835
Ibid., 8-9.
836
Crespo, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC), 5-6.
837
Crespo, depoimento, (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 14.
838
Crespo, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC), 10.

411
incident, it created a platform to criticize the government and argue for the

legalization of rural unions at the national level.839

Crespo’s views on Julião and the Ligas were that the Church was involved in

organizing rural unions that had a broader community base and attracted a wide

variety of rural workers, not exclusively peasants. Crespo also claimed that while the

Ligas were based in the Northeast, the Church movement was focused on creating a

national movement in support of agrarian reform and legal rural unionization.840 He

knew Julião well – Julião’s first wife was Crespo’s cousin – and while they disagreed

on certain issues, they always respected one another.841 Crespo stated that Julião was

never a radical: Julião’s project for agrarian reform was supposedly always based on

making legal changes within the legal system.842 He claimed that the media had

made a “myth” of Julião, turning him into a Che Guevara, even though according to

Crespo, he was not like Guevara.843 Crespo recalled that by 1962, the some of the

Ligas and their leaders had become affiliated with the Communist Party, which

caused social unrest in the area and created skepticism for the Ligas on the part of the

some of the Catholic priests.844 He said that the divisions in the Left and struggles

over leadership in the Northeast was “sad” and created a good deal of confusion: what

the political parties and movements failed to recognize was that the leadership of the

peasant movement needed to come from the peasants themselves.845

839
Crespo, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 15.
840
Ibid., 13.
841
Crespo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 6.
842
Ibid., 7.
843
Crespo, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 30.
844
Ibid., 15; and Crespo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 20-24.
845
Crespo, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 25.

412
 In the FGV interview, Crespo emphasized the broad coalition of priests who

were involved in the rural union movement throughout Northeastern Brazil. He

commented on Padre Alípio, who he described as being dangerous and too radical.

Alípio supposedly followed the line of violent armed revolution whereas the majority

of the Church leaders in the Northeast supported a non-violent movement based on

reforms.846 His view of Padre Melo was that Melo was a person who wanted to have a

public presence, speaking on television and radio whereas Crespo described himself

as the opposite of this: Crespo supposedly focused on organizing rural workers to

improve their conditions. But he thought that Melo’s role in the movement was

necessary because the Brazilian elite needed to have a better understanding of the

rural issues to create support for the rural movement.847

Crespo discussed the involvement with the CIA in the interview, stating that

the Instituto Americano Para o Desenvolvimento do Sindicalismo Livre (Iadesil)

provided the rural union movement with funds to build community centers and

established the Ligas das Cooperativas Americanas but no one knew if the movement

was linked to the CIA. Funds came from all over the world but Crespo claimed that

the money was designated for projects that the peasants and rural workers in the

Northeast created.848 Similar to Melo, Crespo claimed that his motivation was not

based on any ideology, but that it came from his religious orientation and followed

the lines of Pope John XXIII.849 This orientation influenced the creation of what he

846
Crespo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 33.
847
Ibid., 34.
848
Ibid., 11-12.
849
Ibid., 14-15.

413
described as a global movement against the latifundio system and for the harmonic

and peaceful development of society.850

After the coup, Crespo described the repression that occurred in the Northeast.

He claimed that over 5,000 peasants were arrested in the days following the coup, and

Crespo felt the only way to react was to try to salvage what was possible: “sentia

como um barco que foi destruido por uma bomba e os destroços estavam no mar,

algumas tábua estavam boiando e era preciso que os trabalhadores se agarrassem

aqueles tábuas para se salvaram.”851 Padre Crespo was held “suspect” by the

military, which resulted in Padre Melo being placed in charge of the rural unions and

SORPE.852 When asked about why the Church took so long to develop a stance

against the military, Crespo replied that the Church was anti-political but had always

supported those in power. However, the repression was supposedly “so brutal” –

with the people being massacred by the military - that this experience caused the

Church to reflect upon its position. While the tortures and arrests were significant in

the days after the coup, Crespo said that with AI-5, the situation grew worse since the

military leaders had complete and total power, even greater than King Louis XIV’s

control of the state.853 Unlike Melo, Crespo was often questioned by the military for

making regular public statements against the dictatorship.854 He described the

850
Ibid., 41.
851
Crespo, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 43.
852
Ibid., 22.
853
Crespo described this: “Foi um crescente de autoritarismo, mando e até chegamos
ao ponto de AI-5, que deu totais e absolutos poderes a um homem mais do que em
qualquer época da história, nem o rei Luis XIV teve tanto poder como ele dizia ‘O
Estado sou Eu,” mesmo assim tinha menos poderes do que o presidente do Brasil com
AI-5.” Ibid., 58.
854
Ibid., 59.

414
military as profoundly motivated by the National Security Doctrine, which raised the

State as a “new God, in which everything and every one had to work to guarantee the

State’s supreme rule through any methods including death, repression, assassinations,

torture, expulsions, cassações, Institutional Acts.”855

Padre Crespo left the priesthood during the dictatorship, deciding to marry in

the early 1970s, although he remained active in the Church and as a rural leader. He

described his wife as a simple peasant woman who had no education and who was 16

years younger than him, but they had a child each year that they had been married –

five children in total – and were extremely happy and worked well together with to

organize Northeastern peasants.856 He believed that one of the great injustices of the

Catholic Church was the vow of celibacy that was against the natural right of man to

have a family. He wanted to be a priest and his parishioners wanted him to continue

as their priest, but the Church prohibited him from having a family.857 Even though

his rights were taken away by the Church, he found himself in a much more powerful

position within the Church after his marriage, selected to serve as the Regional

Secretary of the Northeast II, coordinating the pastoral activities of 19 dioceses.858

Both Melo and Crespo emphasized in these interviews their rural personal

background, which they used to state their legitimacy as rural union and rural

cooperative leaders. They also both referred to the Pope and the politics of Vatican

II, to associate themselves with a broader political movement sanctioned by the

Church. On the one hand, Melo presented a triumphant narrative depicting himself

855
Ibid., 60.
856
Crespo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 49.
857
Ibid., 47-48.
858
Ibid., 48-49.

415
as someone who had helped to bring progress to the rural Northeast, a narrative that is

more often associated with the military governments. Crespo, on the other hand,

depicted himself in terms of a more familiar narrative of the rural Nordestino: a

person from rural origins, who fought and suffered throughout his life against

injustices to help Nordestinos. The way these men explained the importance of

history also exemplifies their differences and also shows how Marxism and

Christianity in the Northeast often went hand and hand at the discursive level.

Crespo described the importance of history as being something that is made in

small steps accompanied by the cooperation and solidarity of a larger group of

people. He did not believe in history being made by individuals but that history was a

product of groups of people working together.859 Melo ended his interview with the

researchers at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas with an anecdote. He described having

seen the theater play, “Eles não usam black-tie.”860 Gianfrancesco Guarnieri’s play

usually is interpreted as a Marxist narrative, but Melo interpreted it as being Christian

because of the solidarity the mother expressed in the play when she argued with her

son about crossing the strike line and returning to work in the factory. Melo thought

it was poetic and beautiful that she believed in the concept of worker solidarity and

saw her own suffering as part of the common good: she wanted everyone in the favela

and the factory to be able to have better conditions. Melo’s example raises the

metaphor of the family and the nation, and the need to keep the family together even

through suffering to improve the conditions for the entire national family. Through

this example it is easy to see the slippage or fluidity of discourses, or at least how

859
Ibid., 49.
860
Melo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 90-91.

416
Melo could ignore the Marxist theme, and read the play as Christian and also in-line

with the military discourse of needing to sacrifice and work together as a family for

social progress for all.

The Brazilian Communist Party in Northeastern Brazil

Communist Party leaders in the Northeast were largely absent by name from many of

the sources in the 1950s and 1960s – with the exception of the Communist Party

publications – due to the illegality of the Brazilian Communist Party and the

Communist Party of Brazil. By the early 1980s, people with communist affiliations

acquired a greater political voice because of the military’s persecution of the

Communist Party and the push to question the legitimacy of the military regime. The

politics of the Cold War had shifted by this period and it was not as precarious to

identify with the Communist Party. This section analyzes the memoirs and

interviews with Paulo Cavalcanti, a PCB militant from the Northeast who published a

four volume memoir entitled, O caso eu conto como o caso foi; and, Gregório

Bezerra, one of the key leaders in the PCB’s rural syndicate movement in the 1960s,

who was arrested and tortured with great visibility in the early days of the coup. One

of the differences between the PCB testimonies and those of the Church and Ligas is

generational. The PCB leaders emphasized their previous political experiences in

detail that stretched back to the 1930s. This established these leaders as the “old”

Left, affiliated with the Partidão.

Paulo Cavalcanti was from Olinda originally, and came from a family of large

landowners from Escada, Pernambuco. He described in the interview with Eliane

417
Moury Fernandes how his political career began in the sertão as a Promotor Pública

in Sertânia in 1947. To describe the type of inequalities and power structures of the

rural Northeast that led to his political involvement, he recalled a specific case of a

death of a rural worker who a large landowner and doctor both claimed died of liver

failure but when Cavalcanti examined the body, he found eight fractures: The man

had died of a severe beating by the administrator.861 In his memoir, he described the

first changes in the sertão as coming from the Prestes Column and Lampião, who he

saw as the first attempts to give the rural people hope for freedom from the system of

coronelismo.862 He claimed that the PCB’s involvement in the countryside only

started under the government of Cid Sampaio, around the same time as the Ligas

Camponesas.863

He described Julião as being a mystic Marxist who wanted to imitate the

Cuban experience in the Northeast.864 Cavalcanti claimed that Julião used the

“historical ghosts” such as Antônio Conselheiro strategically and intelligently to turn

the Northeast into an area seen as a “barrel of gunpowder.”865 He recalled German

and Swedish filmmakers coming to the Northeast in the early 1960s to film Julião

861
Paulo de Figueiredo Cavalcanti, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury
Fernandes, Recife, 22 April 1982. (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-CEHIBRA,
1996), 18-19.
862
Paulo Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, como o caso foi (da coluna Prestes à queda de
Arraes, Memórias) (São Paulo: Editora Alfa-Omega, 1978), 66-67.
863
Cavalcanti, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-CEHIBRA), 60-61.
864
As he stated, “Eu já disse uma vez que a gente não sabe onde termina Marx nas
idéias de Julião e começa Cristo, ou onde termina Marx e Cristo e começa Chaplin.
Ele é muito chapiliano, muito marxista e muito cristão, mistura tudo isso dá Francisco
Julião Arruda de Paula.” Ibid., 86.
865
Ibid., 87.

418
who they saw as the “new Guevara” or the “Guevara of the Northeast.”866 He also

stated that he opposed the politics and strategies of Julião and said that the military

and the right used Julião to justify the coup.867 But, similar to other people

interviewed, he said that Julião played an instrumental role in raising the issue of

agrarian reform throughout Brazil.868 In his memoir, he went as far to state that even

though the two had profound disagreements, they had a long-standing friendship that

“eu preservo com carinho.”869

Cavalcanti described proudly the rural union of Palmares, which he described

as being the biggest union in all of Brazil, overpowering even the urban unions in São

Paulo’s ABC region, with 25,000 associates and a well-established infrastructure.870

He claimed that the PCB was a greater force in Palmares than the Ligas Camponseas,

and that by 1962, most of the leaders were peasants or rural workers.871 This was

significant in the popularity and success of the rural union of Palmares because, as

Cavalcanti said, the “Nordestino peasant is extremely skeptical of outsiders.”872

In his memories of the MCP (Movimento de Cultura Popular), Cavalcanti

described his view of history.

“A história não tem coincidências, não tem acasos, tudo na história

aconteceu porque tem que acontecer, não por fatalidade. A história
não registra acasos nem coincidencias, a gente não pode ficar
esperando sentado que as coisas se modifiquem, a gente tem
que..temos que nos inserir no curso dos acontecimentos e ajudar a

866
Ibid.
867
Ibid.
868
Ibid., 86.
869
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto (da coluna Prestes à queda de Arraes, Memórias),
298.
870
Cavalcanti, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-CEHIBRA), 88.
871
Ibid., 88-89.
872
Ibid., 89.

419
 marcha, inexorável dos fatos, mas com a nossa participação. O
homem faz a história na medida em que..Até as personalidades fazem
história, a história não é feito só pelo povo, pelas massas; o próprio
marxismo diz que o líder, a personalidade faz história, mas na medida
em que ele toma pé, toma conhecimento das lutas sociais, do seu
dinamismo, do seu processo de desenvolvimeto, isso se insure na
realidade, ele aí dá o curso, o curso correto aos acontecimentos, é o
papel das lideranças.”873

In his memories of the coup, Cavalcanti described the military’s actions as

being “uneducated” and extreme, with numerous arrests and invasions of people’s

homes. In one anecdote he described how the military sacked people’s homes and the

public library, searching for “subversive” materials. He said that the illiterate soldiers

simply took all the books in people’s homes, and described how one of the books they

considered “subversive” in the state library was on Cubism because it supposedly had

a similar spelling to Cuba.874 In his memoir, Cavalcanti discussed his imprisonment

and relations with other political prisoners after the coup, and also described his

experiences living in São Paulo clandestinely. He described in detail the arrest,

beating, and imprisonment of Gregório Bezerra, which was well publicized as a

bloody and gruesome spectacle.

Gregório Bezerra was Cavalcanti’s hero.875 As he described, “Luís Carlos

Prestes was the ‘Caveleiro de Esperanza’ oriented in top-down political organizing.

Gregório entered the PCB anonymously, as a military soldier and grew within the

873
Ibid., 81.
874
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, (da coluna Prestes à queda de Arraes, Memórias),
346.
875
Cavalcanti described Bezzera as a great Communist: “valentia, dignidade,
capacidade de luta, ternura humana e aguda percepção dos problemas sociais.” Paulo
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto, como o caso foi (A luta clandestina) (Recife: Editora
Guararapes, 1985), 282.

420
Party to become an extraordinary figure.”876 In his memoir, Cavalcanti wrote, “Para

mim, Gregório Bezerra encarnava a mais autêntica figura de líder popular, por suas

origens sociais, por seu amor às massas sofridas e desamparadas, por seu nível

ideológico, por uma permanente presença da consciência de classe.”877 He discussed

Bezerra’s role in the 1935 Communist Intentona as extremely brave. As he

described,

Gregório Bezerra é uma lenda nos Estados nordestinos, misturando-se

com a de Antonio Silvino e Lampião, ‘o mito de Padre Cícero, as
rezas de Frei Damião, do operário ao matuto, do jovem moço ao
ancião, ninguem duvidando dele, que tem lá no coração, o amor que a
gente cria por não saber dizer não, quando se vê faltar carne, na mesa
de quantos são a maioria do povo, passando fome e aflição,’878
To legitimize the perception of Bezerra in the popular imagination, Cavalcanti

reproduced a poem (literatura de cordel), that described Bezerra as extremely brave

and “made of steel and flowers (feito de ferro e de flor).”879 The eulogy Cavalcanti

pronounced at Bezerra’s funeral depicted him in terms of regional identity: “Sua vida,

da infancia até hoje, foi um resumo da vida do homem rural, retrato típico de uma

paisagem humana que o Nordeste brasileiro oferece ao paísnos seus dramas pugentes

de fome e sofrimento a cada período de crise.”880

Eliane Moury Fernandes in interviewed Gregório Bezerra in Recife in 1982

and Bezerra wrote his own extensive memoir while in prison after the coup. Bezerra

was born in Panelas do Miranda, Pernambuco, one of seventeen children, whose

parents were illiterate peasants without land. Bezerra recalled his political interest

876
Cavalcanti, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-CEHIBRA), 68.
877
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto (A luta clandestina), 281.
878
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto (da coluna Prestes à queda de Arraes, Memórias),
149.
879
Ibid., 148-149.
880
Cavalcanti, O caso eu conto(A luta clandestina), 287.

421
starting as a result of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which he said had great

repercussions in Pernambuco. At the time, he was working as a stone worker and his

union went to the streets to march for solidarity.881 He was arrested – at the age of 17

– and sentenced to seven years of prison of which he served five. In prison, he met

Antônio Silvino, who he described as an honest man who gave him good advice

about keeping his mouth closed about Communism. According to Bezerra, Silvino

had told him that one day, Communism would prevail but it would take a long time

because when “quando Deús dá um homem como Lenin na Russia, passa cem anos

para dar outro em qualquer outro país do mundo.”882

Throughout the interview, Bezerra made frequent references to Nordestino

identity. For instance, in one story about when Bezerra was in the army and had to

choose a burro for service, he remembered selected the best burros, to which one of

the other soldiers said, “You don’t even seem like a Nordestino! Remember, in the

Northeast you have to pick the animal for the Northeast. The skinny ones are the

strong ones and these are the best for the machine gun squadron.”883 He also recalled

the hatred the Paulistas felt for the Nordestinos when he was in São Paulo during the

1932 Revolution. He recalled them saying that if Getúlio was not able to mobilize so

many Nordestinos – mainly the flagelados – then the Paulistas would have been

victorious.884

881
Gregório Bezerra, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes, Recife
28 May 1982 (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, CEHIBRA), 1-2.
882
Ibid., 16.
883
Ibid., 21.
884
Ibid., 31.

422
 Bezerra spent a good portion of his life in prison, receiving tortures and

beatings. Besides his arrest and imprisonment after the 1964 coup, he was also

arrested and beaten after the 1935 Communist Intentona, sentenced to 28 years of

prison.885 And yet he always described himself as remaining faithful to his political

convictions and resisting the torture and death threats. He was released after the end

of the Estado Novo, and went to work in Goias in the rural luta clandestina.886

Bezerra described Julião as a great ally, a nationalist and democrat who was

intelligent and a great leader. He said Julião had “uma sensibilidade de massa

extraordinária, ele falava para o camponês com uma linguagem simples que ele

entendia.”887 He described the difference in their political beliefs as related to the

Cuban Revolution. Whereas Julião felt that Brazil could also succeed with an

agrarian, anti-imperialist revolution, Bezerra felt that Cuba and Brazil had two

different situations that made such an objective impossible to reach.888 He described

Julião as being “persona grata” of Fidel.889 And he said that one of the major

problems with the Ligas is that their leadership did not come from the peasantry.890

He claimed that although many different groups of the Left had been active in rural

social movements in the early 1960s, the PCB had the majority and thus felt more

secure about obtaining hegemony of the rural movement.891

885
Ibid., 45.
886
Ibid., 101.
887
Ibid., 106.
888
Ibid., 107.
889
Ibid., 136.
890
Ibid., 140.
891
Ibid., 109.

423
 Bezerra painted the success of the PCB rural unions in terms of ideas

associated with modernization. He said that the rural union of Palmares had raised

the standard of living in the countryside that that people had enough money to

consume meat, beans, rice, pasta.892 With the minimum wage law established in

1963, the stores filled with things to buy: clothing, bicycles, radios, mattresses, chairs.

“Os rapazes já compravam suas bicicletas para passear aos domingos com as suas

namoradas. As donas de casa já compravam mesa e tamborete para comer

sentadas.”893 While most of the other rural leaders depicted the achievements in

terms of having land and creating rural organizations, Bezerra described the success

as related to the possibility to buy material goods. Bezerra also claimed that the rural

workers saw this success as related to the government of Miguel Arraes, who they

referred to as “pai Arraia.”894

Bezerra remembered the details of his violent arrest. He was beaten until

blood flowed from every inch of his skin, hair ripped out of his head, dragged behind

a car, and paraded through the streets of Recife. The military officers shouted to the

people on the street to look at the “monster,” the “dog” who wanted to burn babies

but Bezerra remembers that what gave him strength was the fact that the people

refused to look. At one stopping point in the parade, a group of women started crying

when they saw his condition but this only made the military officer beat him more.895

This belief in people was the major narrative that framed his life history, repeatedly

892
Ibid., 111.
893
Ibid.
894
Bezerra described two separate stories of peasants who destroyed their radios after
hearing the radio announcers speak poorly of Arraes, which according to Bezerra,
demonstrated the great allegiance the rural workers felt for Arraes. Ibid.,112.
895
Ibid., 161-162.

424
stating his roots, political actions, and entire life experiences as being motivated by

the “povo Brasileiro.”896 He was imprisoned for five and a half years in almost

complete isolation. He was one of the political prisoners who was released because

of the kidnapping of the US Ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burk Elbrick in

September 1969. Even though he accepted his liberation from prison, he spoke

against the action of the kidnapping, writing a letter, “Declaração ao Povo

Brasileiro.” The letter stated that he continued to be a Marxist-Leninist, and would

continue to fight alongside the people of Brazil but that he was completely against the

fight against individuals.

Although the Northeast had rural unions in the 1980s, Bezerra did not see

them as truly defending rural workers rights. He claimed that the military regime had

succeeded in killing, torturing, capturing, and beating but that they had done nothing

for agrarian reform because he saw the military was linked to the bourgeoisie and

foreign multinational companies.897 He described the changes that had taken place in

the countryside during the dictatorship as developing the best land into a true paradise

for multinational companies and latifundiarios while at the same time turning the

lives of rural people into a “true hell” of suffering and exploitation.898 Bezerra

described the military dictatorship as ruining the rural Brazilian family: men no

896
As he stated at the end of the interview, “Nunca sentei em um banco de escola,
minha escola, minha universidade tem sido o povo. O pouco que sei foi o povo quem
me ensinou. Ele foi o meu educador, o meu professor.” Ibid.,170.
897
Ibid., 155.
898
Ibid.

425
longer could work their land, children were hungry and could not attend school, and

women turned into prostitutes.899 As he described:

“Também [a ditadura militar] aumentou a prostituição, inclusive a

infantile, o que é uma calamidade. Mocinhas, onze, doze anos,
prostituídas. Essas creaturinhas não se prostituem pelo vício, mas em
conseqüencia da fome, da miséria. Na maioria das vezes vendem o
seu corpo em troca de meia dúzia de pão seco, de um punhado de
arroz ou de farinha ou de um copo de leite para levar para alimentar
sua mãe ou seu irmão que está com fome. Então, é um capitalismo
selvagem, brutal.”900

Film Interlude: Cabra marcado para morrer

During the Cold War, film became more accessible to independent or revolutionary

filmmakers, and technology advancements made it feasible to produce films outside

of the studio system. In Brazil, the CPC da UNE (Center Popular of Culture of the

National Student Union) participated in film projects such as Eduardo Coutinho’s

Cabra marcado para morrer. Cabra marcado is a documentary that ties together

past (1964) and present (1980s). One part of the documentary is about a film project

started in 1964 by Coutinho and the UNE Volante about the life and death of João

Pedro Teixiera, the filming of which was interrupted by the military coup. Another

part is about the rural workers from Galiléia and the non-professional actors who

participated in the film, and their experiences and memories of the 1960s, of the

filming process, and during the dictatorship. A third part tells the story of Elizabeth

Teixeira and her children. Elizabeth had gone into hiding after the coup to avoid

persecution, changing her name and leaving her children behind with relatives, to

899
Ibid.
900
Ibid.

426
eventually arrive in a remote town in Rio Grande do Norte. She only remained in

contact with her eldest son, Abraão, and worked as a schoolteacher. The

documentary forces Elizabeth and her children to deal with their past and their family,

which spread throughout Brazil and even to Cuba during the dictatorship. The

youngest children had no memory of their mother or father.

This interaction between people’s memories and actual footage and images of

people twenty years earlier provides rich material for analyzing the contact between

visual images and oral histories and the “reality effect” of the documentary. As

SarahYakhni argues, “Essas imagens adquirem um caráter de material de arquivo –

imagens que eram concretas e datadas passam a ter um cunho exemplar e mais

abstrato, no sentido à retórica do personagem.”901 Coutinho mixed film footage of a

fictional re-enactment of the story of João Pedro Teixeira with the memories of the

non-professional actors who were actually Ligas participants, at times interjecting

soundbites from the 1980s to narrate the 1964 footage. This constant interplay

between past and present, a fictional film and the interviews with the actors about

their lives creates a perception of a historical reality.902 John Beverley’s

interpretation of testimonial literature provides a way to analyze this factor, since

Cabra marcado shares many characteristics with this literary genre:

What is important about testimonio is that it produces, if not the real,

then certainly a sensation of experiencing the real that has
determinate effects on the reader that are different from those
produced by even the most realist or “documentary” fiction. More

901
Sarah Yakhni, “ ‘Cabra marcado para morrer’ – um filme que faz história,”
download. Published 28 August 2000. (USP, Faculdade de Ciencias sociais)
902
In addition, Coutinho used newspaper clippings and photographs from the early
1960s to legitimize his narrative as the history of the Ligas Camponesas.

427
 than an interpretation of reality, the testimonio is a trace of the Real,
of that history which, as such, is inexpressible.
The documentary also fills the need of recuperating the real, the lost history,

producing an even stronger reality effect due to the visual images, interviews, and the

historical context when the film was released. As Antonio Montenegro has argued,

the film was an attempt to recuperate the memories, and to “interrupt, to erase the

silence, the loss, the pain and the sadness [of the dictatorship].”903

While the film was politically significant in shaping and informing a

consensus about the dictatorship and the Northeast in the early 1980s, it must not be

conflated as being a “true” history of the Ligas. Coutinho never addresses the issue

that the narrative of the film – while based on a true story – was in fact a script that

he created, as Ramos explains, “com personagens tipificadas e diálogos distanciados

da cultura camponesa que desejavam retratar.”904 Coutinho intended the original film

to also have this realistic authenticity, using João Pedro’s wife and children, although

filming in a completely different location than Sapé, Paraíba, and based on

Coutinho’s representations of the Ligas and of rural people.905 In other words, the

903
Antônio Torres Montenegro, “Cabra marcado para morrer: entre a memória e a
história,” A História vai ao cinema: vinte filme brasileiros comentados por
historiadores. Org. Maria de Carvalho Soares and Jorge Ferreira, (Rio: Editora
Afiliado, 2001), 191.
904
Ramos points out that the original film was tightly scripted, based on the
information that Elizabeth had shared with Countinho in a meeting in Sapé in 1963.
Alcides Freire Ramos, “A historicidade de Cabra marcado para morrer (1964-84,
Eduardo Coutinho).
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/document1520.html?format=print. Accessed 29
November 2006. P.4.
905
Ramos examines the style of camera angles used to make the film seem as if it was
all shot in one location in real time. He discusses how this realistic style, close to
Italian neorealismo, helped to creat an effect so that the viewer confuses the images
and sounds with a sense of reality. Alcides Freire Ramos, “A historicidade de Cabra
marcado para morrer (1964-84, Eduardo Coutinho).

428
“archival” film footage and interviews portrayed Coutinho’s version of the Ligas and

of rural Nordestinos, which must be seen as part of the political project of the CPC da

UNE filmmakers and intellectuals, not the “actual” story of the peasants. This issue

is not addressed in the 1984 version; in fact, Coutinho’s intention seems to be to

portray the story of the film as the actual story of the Ligas. As Antônio Montenegro

argued, the ways in which the filmmakers interviewed the participants in the 1980s

also left little space for them to respond in their own words; they simply responded to

the questions asked with a few phrases, giving Coutinho greater control over the type

of narrative constructed in the film.906

While some of the images were shot to connect the 1964 history to the present

in the 1980s and create this reality effect, their staged quality exemplifies that the

documentary is in fact a representation. For instance, Coutinho chose to film a

“classic” portrayal of Nordestino women: the image of a woman resting her arm on a

window of a rural house, peering outside. Photographers of the “third world” seem to

love repeating this image: a solemn woman inside a poor house looking out her

window to the world that she sees, in many ways reflective of Dorthea Lange’s image

of “Migrant Woman” from 1936. Coutinho filmed Elizabeth in this position in 1964

and in 1984, providing a familiar image to identify her as a “poor woman.” Another

frequently repeated image is that of the staged photograph of Nordestino families,

often seen in photographs in people’s homes and used by Brazilian filmmakers to

http://nuevomundo.revues.org/document1520.html?format=print. Accessed 29
November 2006. P. 6.
906
Antônio Torres Montenegro, “Cabra marcado para morrer: entre a memória e a
história,” A História vai ao cinema: vinte filme brasileiros comentados por
historiadores. Org. Maria de Carvalho Soares and Jorge Ferreira, (Rio: Editora
Afiliado, 2001),186-187.

429
identify a family as Nordestino. The family lines up tallest to shortest and pose

rigidly, like stick figures, without smiles on their faces. Coutinho also uses this

image to portray a continuity between 1964 and 1984, although in the images from

the 1980s, the staging of such an image is even clearer because he shows one rural

family not exactly in order, shifting the children around to create the visual depiction

that is associated with images of Nordestino families.

The final image of the 1964 footage that Coutinho uses in 1983 film is of

Elizabeth going to the window and saying, “Tem gente lá fora.” Although the

audience does not know the situation or who was outside, Coutinho masterfully uses

this phrase to infer the threat of the military coup. He asks many of original

participants to repeat the phrase, suggesting that they all remembered the last scene

shot in 1964, and immediately shifts the narrative to discuss what happened after the

coup on the Engenho Galiléia and with the film crew. Coutinho uses a voice-over to

describe how the film crew fled in groups of three into the forest and took separate

buses to Recife to avoid arrest.

The DOPS-PE files on Cabra marcado are located in the prontuário

funcionário for the Rede Ferroviário do Nordeste. A series of testmonies suggest that

the military took an interest in the film project and its connection to the Northeastern

Railway because the Railway had loaned the filmmakers a truck and two drivers

because the Railroad (ex) manager thought that the film would be good as a tool of

advertising for the Railways.907 A report on the film project from 18 August 1964

907
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Rêde
Ferroviária do Nordeste, no. 448. Relatorio. “Rêde Ferroviária Federal S/A.
Subcomissão de prcesso sumário de investigações” No.0278B, 97. DOPS-PE. Recife.

430
labeled the filmmakers as “subversive” and affiliated with the Communist Party. The

report described the film as having the objective to exploit the circumstances that

involved the life and death of João Pedro Teixeira, who had been involved in a

subversive movement in Sapé, Paraíba.908 In a 26 August 1964 report, the ex-

manager of the railway was found guilty of committing the crime described in Article

10 of the Law of National Security: helping in an incorrect manner, with the services

of the Rede Ferroviária do Nordeste these entities who represent the Communist

Party. The fact that he loaned the truck and drivers free of charge further implicated

the ex-manager, proving his guilt.909 This report demonstrates the actual danger that

Elizabeth Teixeira faced after the coup. In the film, she describes running from one

house to another after the coup, before finally deciding to go into hiding and internal

exile in an isolated rural community in Rio Grande do Norte, cutting contact with her

family and community.

Coutinho’s film also shows his quest to relocate Elizabeth and her children.

Even though Elizabeth was a social movement leader and ran for state deputy in

1962, many of the scenes with Elizabeth and her children are uncomfortable because

of the filmmaker’s technique. At times she seems visibly disturbed by the questions

and the camera focused on her. When she is moved to tears, the zoom effect seems

exploitative of her emotional state. And, at the end of the film, she starts in a political

discussion with Coutinho, stating that the same problems and needs exist in the

908
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Rêde
Ferroviária do Nordeste, no. 448. Relatorio. “Rêde Ferroviária Federal S/A.
Subcomissão de prcesso sumário de investigações” No.0278B, 93. DOPS-PE. Recife.
909
Secretária da Segurança Publica – Pernambuco. Prontuário Funcionário: Rêde
Ferroviária do Nordeste, no. 448. Relatorio. “Rêde Ferroviária Federal S/A.
Subcomissão de prcesso sumário de investigações” No.0278B, 97. DOPS-PE. Recife.

431
Northeast as they did in 1964: hunger, exploitation, the need to organize. But, what is

unclear about this scene is if Elizabeth knew she was being filmed. In other

interviews on camera, she chooses not to speak of politics but in the final scene, the

camera appears to be hidden. We can only see glimpses of her, as if the camera was

poking through bags and around people to record her statement clandestinely. It is

not clear if this is an effect or actually a hidden camera.

While the documentary is a history of the Ligas according to Eduardo

Coutinho and Elizabeth Teixeira, it also served to denounce the military dictatorship.

Elizabeth’s story related a powerful message about the memories of the struggle for

land before 1964, the destruction of the Nordestino family by the dictatorship, the

resilience and strength of Nordestinos to survive and remain committed to their

political beliefs, and suggests the possibility of reuniting the family. The footage of

Elizabeth in the film portrays her as being first and foremost a mother. Most of the

scenes in the 1964 footage depict her surrounded by her children, engaged in typical

maternal activities. Then, we see her living alone in the 1980s, known as Dona

Marta, working with school children and surrounded by women in the Rio Grande do

Norte town, washing clothes in the river; all scenes that portray Elizabeth as part of

the feminine Northeastern world. Yet, this mother and wife was a militant Ligas

leader who ran for state deputy, roles that contradict the traditional view of the

woman of the Northeast.910

910
Contrary to the portrayal of Elizabeth in Cabra marcado, Assis Lemos
remembered that she had very little leadership in the Ligas after the death of her
husband. He portrayed her campaign for deputy as being a political tactic and
manipulation by Julião. Even though he saw her as an extraordinary woman, he said
that after her husband’s death, she only took care of her 11 children. But she became

432
 However, the metaphor of the family being torn apart or dismembered by the

military dictatorship works well because of this portrayal of Elizabeth as a traditional

mother and female figure. The coup forced her into hiding and forced her to protect

herself and her children by abandoning them. Coutinho tracks down her children and

interviews them about their memories and experiences. Most left the Northeast for

São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The son who received a scholarship to stay in Cuba

after the coup was in medical school was portrayed as the only child who received an

education. The eldest daughter committed suicide with arsenic and another son was

killed. Most of the children had no memory of their mother or father. The contrast

between the 1960s version of the Teixeira’s as heroes, martyrs and militant leaders

and the erasure of this experience that had occurred in the years of the dictatorship

appears in the stories of the children. They survived but most seemed to be living on

the margins of the big cities in the south, lacking any idea of the role their parents had

played as major peasant leaders in the 1960s.

The documentary was a powerful means to remember a certain version of the

history of the Ligas and João Pedro and Elizabeth. Cabra marcado was popular

throughout Brazil and created a stir in the cultural critics and intellectual community

in Brazil. The testimonies and memoirs of other Ligas leaders provide an analytical

tool to understand the narrative the documentary created and how it is only one part

of the story of the Ligas and the rural social movements. But the film also addresses

the history and memory of two separate groups: one, the “female” experience and

a symbol of rebellion in Paraíba because she was in fact a simple woman without
education who was seen as dedicating herself to defending peasants. Assis Lemos de
Souza, depoimento. (FGV-CPDOC), 177.

433
how Elizabeth’s story in the documentary forms a part of a broader narrative of

Northeastern female political activists; the other, the story of the Ligas in Sapé. The

next two sections analyze oral histories with Northeastern women who were political

leaders and with a large landowner and Ligas leader from Sapé to contextualize the

narrative put forth in Cabra marcado para morrer.

A Return to Northeastern Politics with New Voices: Women and Paraíbanos

To contextualize the experience of Elizabeth Teixeira, I refer to a number of oral

histories conducted with women who were involved in a variety of political

movements in Northeastern Brazil from the 1950s to the 1980s, and conducted with

key figures in Sapé, Paraíba. The fact that women and rural Paraíbans were

interviewed by research organizations in the early 1980s must be seen as related to

the film, Cabra marcado, but also as a part of the changing scholarly and political

interest in locating such voices. An interest in women’s roles in politics and social

movements and an interest in local history influenced the decision of researchers to

conduct oral history interviews with people whose roles had not been well

documented in the 1950s and 1960s.

Women’s Experiences and Memories

While it is impossible to argue for a generalized Northeastern “female” experience,

what the oral histories with five female political activists suggest is that female

political leaders – regardless of their political affiliation – couched their participation

434
in politics as orientated by their roles as mothers and wives. While this type of

identification is not particular to Northeastern Brazil, an analysis of their use of the

discourse deserves attention to show how female political leaders in Northeastern

Brazil chose to describe their involvement in politics.911 In other words, the identity

of “mother and wife” holds a symbolic power as illustrated by the depiction of

Elizabeth Teixeira in Cabra marcado para morrer. Read in the context of the

military regime’s appropriation of the discourse of “protecting” the national family,

these women – both on the left and the right – legitimized their role in national

politics through their identities as mothers and wives. At the same time, on both the

right and the left, women’s involvement in politics was often portrayed as a way to

stimulate men into being “real men,” to participate in social and political movements

to protect their wives and families.912

911
For instance, in Daniel James’s Doña Maria’s Story, Maria Roldan – a
meatpackers’ union leader and Peronista – consistently described the reasons for her
political activity in terms of being a good mother and wife. Maria Roldan described
her political activity in terms of her female virtues, and the nurturing role in the home
taken as a metaphor as the guardians of the nation. Daniel James, Doña María’s
Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity (Durham: Duke University Press,
2000).
912
The issue of women being depicted as starting their own political movements
because the men were not can be read as a way to question the masculinity of “third
world” men. Modernization theory, for instance, portrayed the difference between
“modern” and “traditional” men as having to do with modern man’s belief in
protecting his wife and family, or the “weaker” members of society. Alex Inkeles and
David H. Smith, Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 17-25. While this is taken from a 1974
book, Inkeles earlier work (1964) drew similar if not the same conclusions. Cited in:
Alvin Y. So, Social Development and Change: Modernization, Dependency, and
World-Systerm Theories (Londgon: Sage Publications, 1990), pp. 41-43.
The overlap between Modernization theory and scientific racism in this case is
particularly strong. According to Positivist thought, the less developed “races” had
little distinction between male and female roles unlike the more developed races that
divided men and women into separate, unequal spheres.

435
 While some of these women – such as Elizabeth Teixeira – played major roles

in political movements and organizations, their participation was almost absent from

the sources produced in the 1950s and 1960s. But, by the early 1980s, researchers

and filmmakers looked to these female leaders to narrate the experiences of the pre

and post coup periods. This change reflects a rise in women’s social movements and

feminist movements throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but similar to the case of the

Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, it also illustrates the power that women

held as mothers to challenge the rule of the military because of the discourse of the

family. Other than Elizabeth, the women interviewed were all middle-upper class

women. In this section, I analyze testimonies of women involved with the Ligas,

with the PCB and with the right-wing Cruzada Democrática Feminina de

Pernambuco, showing how these women narrated their own histories and political

involvement.

Naíde Regueira Teodósio worked for the Serviço Social Contra o Mocambo

for Miguel Arraes in the Centros Educativos.913 She considered herself affiliated with

the Communist Party (PCB), although she never had an official membership or

participated in their meetings.914 She was also Vice-President of the Federação de

Mulheres do Brasil, led by Branca de Almeida and Ida Marina Rego, a woman’s

organization loosely affiliated with the PCB that was shut down by the police in the

913
These were free centers for health and educational services for workers and maids.
According to Naíde, there were 14 Centros with over 200 members in Recife.
914
Naíde Regueira Teodósio, depoimento. Interviewed by Dulce Chaves Pandolfi,
Rio de Janeiro, 01- 15 July 1991. (Rio de Janeiro: FGV/CPDOC – História Oral,
2000). **not transcribed, 11 cassettes**

436
1950s.915 The Women’s Federation focused on the role of women in Brazilian

society and the participation in social life.916 In her opinion, the coup took place

because the hegemony of the latifundiarios and the national bourgeoisie was being

threatened.917

She was arrested in mid-April 1964 and imprisoned for seven months, accused

of instigating class struggle in Pernambuco. She described being arrested along with

her husband in front of her children and taken to DOPS. Although she claimed that

people who were arrested the following years of the dictatorship were treated much

worse, Naíde was subjected to the fear that she would not leave DOPS alive, and

subjected to false executions. But, at the same time, in this first arrest, she met with

some policemen who seemed ill prepared as torturers and interrogators. For instance,

because she was maintained a sense of calm, one of her interrogators asked her to rub

her eyes with an onion so that she appeared to be suffering.918 But, she also claimed

that the treatment at the Casa de Detenção was much worse than at DOPS. She

described the fear she felt during four days she spent at Casa de Detenção, where a

“King-Kong” figure threatened to torture her to death. She was held in a small room

without beds with seven other women, all political prisoners. After seven months in

prison, she was released and worked for three months, only to be arrested on 31

915
According to Naíde, the Women’s Federation was different from the Liga
Feminista in that the Liga saw women as equal to men, having equal rights, and
Naíde found this very superficial because she did not think the problem was about
women and men but about class struggle. Ibid.
916
In the PCB-PE newspaper, Jornal dos Bancários, this view of the role of women in
society was also emphasized, often depicting fashion and cooking.
917
Naíde Regueira Teodósio, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes
and Fátima Quintas. Recife, 27 October 1983. (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco-
CEHIBRA), 19.
918
Teodósio, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC).

437
March 1965, and imprisoned again for another five months. Upon this release, she

fled to Rio to escape further persecution. She claimed that “aprendi muito com a

prisão, a conhecer melhor o ser humano, com toda sua grandeza e sua miséria.”919 It

gave her a new sense of strength, supposedly, 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. And she

felt frustrated that no one reacted or protested the arrests and the military coup.920

Naíde had little contact with the Ligas Camponesas, but she her opinion was

that they needed to have a more “realistic” approach for changing the situation in the

countryside.921 While in prison, she shared a cell for a time with a young woman who

had been in the Ligas Camponesas, and the conversations they shared helped shape

her opinions about the Ligas. The woman had been arrested in Rio and suffered

tortures while in prison at Bangu. Naíde thought the Ligas were a positive step in

organizing the rural workers but that they fought too much against Arraes instead of

supporting his government.922 She believed that Julião held a great capacity for

communicating with rural people but that he disappointed everyone after 1964.

Dr. Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos had closer contact with Francisco Julião and

the Ligas Camponesas as an elected leader of the UNE in the early 1960s, and later

became the first and only woman elected to the Direção Nacional do Partido (PCB).

919
Teodósio, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 22.
920
She returned to Recife in 1967 and worked as a professor even though she faced a
“casscão branca,” and found her house had been completely robbed by the military.
Her two sons participated in the resistance against the dictatorship, and were both
arrested in 1973 and taken to DOPS where they suffered torture. She contacted
newspapers throughout the world, and had one account published in France about the
torture of her son. Teodósio, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC).
921
Teodósio, depoimento. (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 12.
922
Teodósio, depoimento, (FGV/CPDOC).

438
In the early 1960s, she worked for the MCP, specifically in the Adult Literacy Project

in Palmares, leading the team that went to work on the engenhos from January to

March of 1964.923 She worked directly with Gregório Bezerra and all the peasant

leaders of the region, organizing a large protest on 13 March 1964 in Palmares. She

saw Julião as a “figura legendária,” and the movement as something idyllic, romantic,

and naïve.924 When she went to live with the peasants on the engenhos, she realized

the precariousness of the entire struggle because of the state of misery and poverty.

She claimed that everyone knew the phrase, “Cuba sim, Ianque não,” but the poor

peasant did not know where Cuba was or who was a Ianque. She remembered

Miguel Arraes as being a “father-like” figure for the peasants, and through labor laws

and wage regulations, suddenly the peasant had enough money to buy a bicycle or a

battery-operated radio.925

After the coup, Yara hid in a house of religious people who asked her to leave

because of their fear of harboring political prisoners, and she was arrested a few days

later. She described the first days as facing psychological torture: She was brought to

a deserted place and the soldiers held a knife to her neck.926 She was released, with

help from her father who she described as a “reactionary.” According to Yara’s

interview, her husband Mário Mattos died in the early years of the dictatorship, and

afterwards she resumed her political work. From 1965 to 1966, she worked for

COOPERARTE, an educational assistance program run by usineiros and the Church,

923
Dr. Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos. Interviewed by Eliane Moury Fernandes, São
Paulo 27 October 1986 (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – CEHIBRA), 7.
924
Ibid.,10.
925
Ibid.,14.
926
Ibid., 23.

439
but it was shut down. Yara traveled to Rio for a meeting and was arrested there in

1969 and spent one year in the DOPS prison, supposedly facing many sessions of

physical torture.927 She was accused of being a “pombo correio,” of making

connections between the Northeast and the South.928

Anatailde de Paula Crêspo, the daughter of Francisco Julião and Alexina

Crespo, was a teenager in the early 1960s. Anatailde spent 18 years in exile, living in

Cuba, Chile and Sweden and she described herself as always being politically

involved in campaigns against dictatorships and imperialism.929 For instance, when

Salvador Allende was President of Chile, Anatailde moved from Cuba to Chile and

was arrested after the 1973 coup and sent to the National Stadium. As a teenager, she

and her two brothers and one sister went to Cuba after Julião and Alexina decided the

death threats they received endangered their children’s lives. In a brief testimony

published in 2004, Anatailde described her memories of the experience of the Ligas.

She emphasized the fact that her mother and father were both militant leaders of the

Ligas, while also describing the gendered difference in their militant duties. She

remembered her house always being “cheia de camponeses aos quais minha mãe

servia refeições e em cujos corpos tratava ferimentos causados pela violência de

latifundiários e jagunços; meu pai atendendo a todos com seu saber jurídico e

políticoe com alguma ajuda material.”930

927
Ibid., 28.
928
Ibid., 29.
929
“Depoimento: Anatailde de Paula Crespo,” Na trilha do golpe: 1964 revisitado,
eds. Túlio Velho Barreto and Laurindo Ferreira (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco,
Editora Massangana, 2004), 98.
930
Ibid., 97.

440
 Even though her parents were both involved in the Ligas, her memories of

their involvement in the social movement divides their leadership into more typical

gender roles with her mother feeding and caring for the peasants’ health concerns and

her father providing legal advice and financial resources. Her 2004 testimony also

reflects the metaphor of how the military dictatorship in Brazil broke up the family,

describing the separation of her entire family during the dictatorship, a “diaspora

familiar,” in which she was unable to see her father and sister for about 10 years.931

Yet, she survived, and her testimony reiterates the Northeastern narrative of years of

suffering and survival. She ended the testimony with a quote from a letter she had

received from Julião after being released from prison in Chile: “O importante é

sobreviver com dignidade.”932

Alexina Crespo, Julião’s first wife, was interviewed in 2004 about her role in

the Ligas. While she described herself in the first part of the interview as a

“traditional” and “simple” mother and wife, she depicted herself as a militant

guerilleira in the second part of the interview. For instance, she remembered being

Julião’s assistant, taking notes on the peasants who arrived at their house and their

reasons for seeking legal assistance. She met Julião because he was her professor,

and had four children at a young age.933 She also was asked to give medical care to

those who “could not go to the hospital,” even though she was not a doctor or a

931
Ibid., 98.
932
Ibid., 99.
933
Her oldest daugher, Anatailde, gave birth to her first child while in Cuba, making
Alexina a grandmother at 34 and her son, Anacleto, had his first child when he was
14 years old.

441
nurse.934 She explained that she did this to help her husband and that the job required

her assistance, “not any maid.” She described herself as having always been

politically conscious and involved, but she said that she was not a “Maria Quitéria,

Anita Garbaldi. Eu fui e sou uma mulher muito simples. Eu não me considero nada

assim extraordinário.”935

At the same time, Alexina lived in the Soviet Union for a month with her

children, as well as Cuba, Korea and Czechoslovakia and she met Mao-Tse-Tung,

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and she supposedly was prepared to fight in the luta

armada, writing pamphlets for the illiterate peasants, but the conditions did not make

guerrilla warfare a feasible option.936 When Alexina returned to Northeastern Brazil

from one trip to Cuba in 1963, she discovered that Julião had a new “companheira”

who was pregnant. The way that she described her response illustrates perhaps a

rejection of the “traditional” female role: Supposedly, her mother told her, crying,

that Julião was with a new woman and Alexina recalled replying: “Se ele optou por

outra companheira, é porque ele não me quer mais. Eu vou ficar atrás dando

escândolo? Deixe ele viver a vida ele.”937 What is interesting about this recollection

is that she positioned herself as rejecting the reaction of her mother – the feeling of

not knowing what to do and crying – and portrayed herself as independent, strong,

and perhaps even more active as a militant after the separation.

Even though she no longer lived with Julião, she continued to be active in the

Ligas and recalled organizing a cinema to make money for the Ligas. She also went

934
Ibid., 162-163.
935
Ibid., 164-165.
936
Ibid., 165-168.
937
Ibid., 168-169.

442
undercover in 1963, traveling to bring money to the guerrilla training camps in Goias

and worked in Goias with Clodomir de Morais, allegedly making bombs.938 She

participated in guerrilla training in Cuba, learning how to use all different types of

weapons (bazooka, mortar, machine gun) and receiving a clandestine name (nom de

guerre), “Maria.”939 And she recalled the caches of weapons hidden in Rio, and a

number of attempts at bombing certain areas of Rio.940 At the time of the coup,

Alexina was in Cuba working for the magazine, Mulheres, which spoke about women

in struggles.941 She spent the years of the dictatorship working with exiled

communities in Europe.

On the political right, Ângela de Araújo Barreto Campello was one of the

leaders of the Cruzada Democrática Feminina de Pernambuco, who said she felt relief

when the military coup occurred on 31 March 1964. In an interview in 1985, she

reflected, “we always believed in the Armed Forces in Brazil…in the way that they

were the guardians of order and who, always and at that time, defended the national

integrity.”942 According to Ângela, the early 1960s had been a time of permanent

revolution and real panic, especially for those who liked order and governmental

stability.943 She claimed that Julião and the Ligas only were interested in destroying

things and did nothing for the rural worker; they only set cane fires and rebelled.944

938
She described the bomb preparation in great detail in the interview. Ibid., 172.
939
Ibid.,169-170.
940
Ibid., 171-173.
941
Ibid., 169.
942
Angela de Araújo Barreto Campello, depoimento. Interviewed by Eliane Moury
Fernandes and Constaça Sá, Recife,1 June 1985. (Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco
– CEHIBRA), 14
943
Ibid., 4
944
Ibid., 6.

443
Likewise, she thought that the adult education programs were necessary in

Pernambuco, but that Paulo Freire only wanted to make the rural population rebel.945

As a part of the Cruzada, she worked with Padre Melo in Cabo and her brother was an

agronomist who worked closely with Padre Crespo. She believed that both priests

had nothing to do with Socialism or Communism; they were dedicated to solving the

problem of poverty in the Northeast.946 The March of the Family with God,

according to Ângela, was a spontaneous rebellion of women who were not satisfied

with the state of things in the early 1960s.947 As for the military dictatorship, Ângela

claimed that they made many magnificent things happen, even though they had a few

shortcomings.948 When asked about torture, Ângela claimed “it is a very delicate

thing because we can only say there was torture if we saw it happen. We can only

say that there were excesses when we see those excesses.”949

Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello de Melo was one of the founders of the

Cruzada Democrática Feminina and has won a number of literary prizes for her

poetry.950 She described her political engagement as starting after she was injured

along with her sisters while participating in a meeting that was attacked by pro-Arraes

protesters. When she heard an advertisement on the radio in 1964 that called all

women who were against the status quo to meet at the Colégio São José, she decided

945
Ibid.
946
Ibid., 11-13.
947
Ibid., 7-8.
948
Her understanding of the shortcomings is that every government in the world has
shortcomings and the military government was no exception. Ibid., 19.
949
Ibid., 15.
950
“Entrevista: Maria do Carmo Barreto Campello de Melo,” 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).

444
to attend and was relieved to find many women who shared her political beliefs, and

participated in the improvised march.951 She explained her reason for participating,

“Porque eu quero meu país para nós, brasileiros. Eu quero

Pernambuco para os pernambucanos e cada Estado para o seu Estado
e todos nós dentro de um Brasil maior. Eu não aceitava essa
intromissão de doutrinas exóticas, doutrinas que não correspondiam à
nossa tradição e aos nossos anseios. Então, pegamos uma bandeira
de Pernambuco e desfilamos pela Conde de Boa Vista…nós pedimos
a ajuda das Forças Armadas para que o país não fosse entregue assim,
a idéias estrangeiras, a idéias completamente diferente do nosso
pensamento.”952
Maria do Carmo supported the coup, describing it as “a necessary surgery that

had to take place at that precise moment so that the sick later could heal and not turn

into a chronic illness.”953 In virtually the same words as Angela, Maria do Carmo

expressed that she was relieved when the military took power, seeing it as the only

way that Brazil could have escaped from turning into a “totalitarian” regime.954 After

the coup, she described the Cruzada as being the “consciousness” of the military

regime: helping those who suffered from social injustices, going into the cane fields

and rural areas and working with the poor.955

While the women were involved in different – often competing – political

movements, their narratives all emphasize their identity as mother and wives, and

951
While most of the testimonies claim that the march was spontaneous and
unplanned, when the women arrived at the IV Army headquarters, Gilberto Freyre
and other politicians gave public speeches, which calls its “spontaneity” into
question. As Maria do Carmo claimed, “foi uma coisa espontânea, bonita, só de
mulheres, carregando a bandeira de Pernambuco e pedindo mundanças.” The
repeated claims by female participants about its spontaneity may have been a way to
frame the march as legitimate, a “natural” response and plea for the restitution of
order by women and mothers. Ibid., 39.
952
Ibid., 36-37.
953
Ibid., 43.
954
Ibid., 45.
955
Ibid., 34, 46-47.

445
employ the metaphor of the family to describe their experiences. While the meaning

of motherhood and the family differed in each case, as in the case of Elizabeth, this

discourse was available to describe and legitimize their role in politics and their

experiences during the dicatorship. Before concluding the chapter, I analyze the

memories of two competing political leaders in the municipality of Sapé, the area

where Elizabeth and João Pedro led the Ligas. This final section shows how

Elizabeth (and Coutinho’s) narrative of the Ligas of Sapé was one narrative in a field

of many different memories about the struggle for land in Sapé.

Sape: A Landowner and a Ligas Leader

Elizabeth and João Pedro Teixeira had been Ligas leaders in the area of Sapé,

Paraíba, which grew to become the largest Liga in Brazil with anywhere from 6,000

to 12,000 associates. While there were some sugar cane plantations, Sapé was

relatively diverse in terms of agricultural production with small landowners

producing potatoes, beans, yucca, and pineapple. The Liga combined rural workers

from numerous engenhos in the area (although other municipalities in the area also

had strong Ligas), and the popularity of the Liga as well as the repression by the

landowners led to an escalation of local violence, such as the assassination of Jõao

Pedro in 1962. The landowners had formed their own association shortly after the

establishment of the Ligas, LILA (Ligas dos Latifundiários), and a number of

peasants and Ligas leaders were assassinated in the early 1960s. The story of the

assassination of João Pedro was reported nationally and internationally and

supposedly drew attention to Sapé as being the center of the rural movement in

446
Brazil. When Coutinho and the film crew of Cabra marcado decided to re-enact the

story of the Liga of Sapé and João Pedro’s death, they decided to move the film

location to the Engenho Galiléia because of the unrest in the region of Sapé. While

the original film was the story of Sapé, the 1983 documentary focused on the rural

workers from Galiléia and Elizabeth and her family. To contextualize the history and

Elizabeth’s experience apart from the film experience, I analyze two oral histories

who lived in the area of Sapé in the 1950s and 1960s: a large landowner and a rural

social movement leader.

Sabiniano Alves do Rego Maia was a rural landowner who owned multiple

properties in Pernambuco and in Sapé, Paraíba, started the Associação dos

Proprietários Rurais da Paraíba in 1962, and was the President of the ARENA party

from 1972-1975. Sabiniano had direct contact with the Ligas and remembered them

as problematic because the Ligas insisted that the rural workers could stay on the

property even if they did not pay rent and did not work, which took all the power

away from the landowner.956 Supposedly, he had three properties in Paraíba and the

Ligas kicked him off of one of his properties, threatening that if he returned, they

would kill him with a scythe.957 This threat of violence he remembered as being

commonplace in Sapé in the early 1960s, with many small landowners and rural

workers threatening to slit people’s necks if they interfered with the Ligas.958 He

claimed to have no protection, declaring that at the time, they were living in an

956
Sabiniano Alves do Rego Maia, depoimento. Depoimento. Interviewed by Maria
Antonia Alonso de Andrade and Humberto Mello. João Pessoa, 16-19 March 1981.
(Rio, FGV/CPDOC- História Oral, 1985), 71.
957
Ibid., 73.
958
Ibid., 75.

447
“anarchist” regime led by João Goulart. He stated that Francisco Julião had created a

lot of misery in Pernambuco with the Ligas and that the Paraíban politicians had

supported the Ligas. When asked about this, he referred to a story about how the

mother of Che Guevara had been a guest in Paraíba in the governor’s palace.959

After 1964, he returned to his property that had been seized by the rural

workers. He told of how he explained to those who stayed that he was the property

owner and they could stay or leave. The leaders of the Sapé Ligas had disappeared

after the coup, later found dead on the side of the road, but Sabiniano claimed to

know nothing about who was responsible for their deaths. Sabiniano declared

himself a supporter of agrarian reform, but not the way the pre-1964 government

wanted to execute such a project. He referred to himself as a poor Nordestino, who

only owned 3,000 hectares of land, which was nothing for the large landowners in the

south. His argument followed the reasoning of the Nordestino victim: the property

owners of the South were also the federal politicians asking for land reform in the

Northeast.960 He also claimed that life for the rural worker improved greatly after

1964 with new health projects and rural credit made available.

Ivã Figueiredo participated in the Ligas and was a vereador of Sapé, a small

landowner and businessman and was affiliated with the PSD. According to Joaquim

Ferreira Filho, he became involved in the Ligas because he was a PSDista, a party in

Sapé that was the opposition to the UDN, associated with the usineiros.961 Assis

Lemos described Ivã as having great personal courage because he came from a family

959
Ibid., 72.
960
Ibid., 84-85.
961
Ferreira Filho, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 21-22.

448
that supported the latifundiarios and all of his brothers participated in the Liga of

Latifundiários. In fact, Pedro Ramos, the large landowner of the engenho Miriri who

ordered the assassination of João Pedro Teixeira was married to Ivã’s sister.962 He

traveled to Cuba in 1961 with an invitation from Julião and Ligas leader Pedro

Fazendeiro along with about 50 Brazilians, touring the cooperatives, and showing the

Brazilians what Cubans had done after the Revolution.963 Upon his return from Cuba,

he was imprisoned for 22 days for no apparent reason but was asked many questions

about the trip to Cuba.964

In a 1978 interview with Eduardo Raposo of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas,

Ivã recalled the Ligas and the political struggle in Sapé in the early 1960s. He said

that by 1959, the tensions between the large landowners and the rural workers had

reached a critical point in which the landowners wanted to turn the agricultural lands

into cattle ranches, displacing the rural workers, who then started a Liga. He recalled

that Julião had founded the first Liga in Sapé in 1960, with Severino Barbosa (small

landowner) as president and João Pedro Teixeira as Vice-president.965 He

remembered the conflicts that had started in the Liga of Sapé between Assis Lemos

and Julião and how Elizabeth had approached him, looking for electoral support but

he had said that he supported Assis Lemos.966 He depicted Julião as starting the Ligas

but then Assis Lemos, from Paraíba, as being more influential as the Liga grew, but

962
Assis Lemos de Souza, depoimento. (FGV-CPDOC), 51.
963
Ivã Figueiredo, depoimento. Interviewed by Eduardo Raposo and José Otávio in
Sapé, February 1978 and January 1979. (Rio: FGV/CPDOC-História Oral, 1985), 25-
26.
964
Ibid., 28.
965
Ibid., 4.
966
Ibid., 13-14.

449
the divisions were arbitrary to some extent. Many of the Ligas leaders supported both

Assis Lemos and Julião.967

Ivã remembered the incidents of violence in the area as escalating after 1962.

He recalled the landowners being well armed with rifles and machine guns and said

that the peasants never had guns: They were only armed with knives, machetes, and

hoes.968 He said that Julião instigated the violent response to the numerous

assassinations of Ligas leaders, whereas Assis Lemos preferred a more peaceful

strategy of protest. He described the importance of having an identity card of the

Ligas, which entitled the rural worker to protection by the lawyers of the Ligas for

free.969 Contrary to claims made in the 1960s that the Ligas exploited the peasants,

Ivã recalled the passbook as being a symbol of belonging to an organization that

united peasants and worked to their benefit. He described the monthly payments as

being something completely normal because any type of association needs money to

function.970 And the organization allowed the peasants a greater voice in politics. As

he described, the police learned to respect rural workers because they saw that they

were outnumbered and the latifundiarios and judges realized that they had to

negotiate with the peasants as well.971

As for the military dictatorship, Ivã described it as only bringing misery to

Sapé and creating a sense of resentment in the rural workers of Sapé for the Ligas.972

Ivã claimed that after the revolution, the landowners expelled all the rural workers

967
Ibid., 16.
968
Ibid., 23.
969
Montenegro, “Cabra marcado para morrer,” 64.
970
Ibid., 63-65.
971
Ibid., 65-66.
972
Figueiredo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 24.

450
from their houses and property, turning them into bóias-frias, or day laborers.973 The

rural workers congregated in what he defined as a “rural slum” known as Nova

Cuba.974 With the coup, he said the police came to Sapé and arrested many people,

filling the jails, but he escaped to the woods to go into hiding. From there, he

eventually escaped to a small town on the border of Rio Grande do Norte, where he

continued to be followed by the police, until he crossed a river by swimming, leaving

the police on the other side.975 Shortly afterwards, he went into internal exile in Rio

de Janeiro where he lived for seven or eight years.976 He described the violence and

the attempts to destroy – or blow up – the memories of the Ligas in Sapé with a

poignant anecdote about the tombstone of João Pedro Teixeira that was blown-up

with dynamite.977

Ivã personally was forced to sell – or as he said donate – his small estate in

1973 out of financial necessity.978 Ivã used the example of the planned visit to Sapé

by President Kennedy as a way to discuss the skepticism that peasants had for all

governmental promises for agrarian reform. He claimed that similar to the JFK

administration, the dictatorship had promised an agrarian reform without blood, but

had done absolutely nothing other than offer these promises.979 He claimed that the

rural unions had done nothing for the peasants because they were completely

973
Montenegro, “Cabra marcado para morrer,” 43-44.
974
Ibid., 45.
975
Ibid., 38-39.
976
Ibid., 42.
977
Ibid., 47.
978
Figueiredo, depoimento. (FGV/CPDOC), 3.
979
Montenegro, “Cabra marcado para morrer,” 32-33.

451
controlled by the large landowners, and not led by peasants themselves.980 He ended

the interview by stating that the revolution ended the movement and ended

everything.981

The differences between Ivã Figueiredo’s and Sabiano Alves do Rego Maia’s

testimonies could easily be narrated as the difference of experiences for the poor

versus the rich, the peasant versus the rural elite. It is a story of losers and winners,

as the edited collection by the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco suggests in its title:

Vencedores e vencidos.982 And, this is a classic narrative of the Northeast: the short-

lived struggle of the rural poor ending with violent repression that only serves to

empower the rural elite and worsen the misery of the peasant. But what is interesting

about both testimonies is the fact that they saw change as occurring in the Northeast,

which challenges the dominant deterministic narrative of the Northeast as being

immune to change, as forever linked to traditional culture and lifestyle.983 And while

980
Ibid., 62.
981
Ibid., 69.
982
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).
983
A good example of this narrative was published in one of the mainstream
newspapers of the Northeast, O Jornal do Commercio, in 2003: The perseverance of
symbols of Nordestino 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...more than a century later. (...) The fact is
we remain imprisoned by the ghosts of Pedra Bonita and Canudos. What may seem
unimaginable for those who go to shopping malls and for those who have virtual
relationships on the internet...is that people continue to live as they lived in Colonial
Brazil. Although it seems unlikely, in thousands of towns in the Interior of
Pernambuco or in any other Northeastern state, recorded data find shacks made of
mud and wood,...wood-burning stoves, water hauled from distant wells, rags and a
lingering hope in the grace of God. “Tudo como dantes,” Jornal do Commercio, 2
August 2003, p.4.

452
the dictatorship repressed many Nordestino peasants and tried to suppress the

memory of the Ligas – even with the destruction of João Pedro’s grave – the

memories carried a ray of hope, even if only in the fact that a strong rural labor

movement had once existed and had created solidarity, imbuing the identity of

Nordestino peasant with a sense of power and strength that had taken an

overwhelming use of force to disband.

Conclusion

While the trope of tragedy weighs heavily in many of the testimonies as a way to

portray the period of the military coup and the dictatorship, ideas of resistance and

resilience suggest that the fight for land and for rural people’s rights had not ended in

Northeastern Brazil. The intention of this chapter was to show how and if the history

of the Ligas was incorporated into the dominant regional narrative. From the oral

histories, films, and memoirs produced in the 1980s, it is clear that the experience of

the Ligas and of the dictatorship influenced Nordestino identity. Similar to the

narratives of Canudos, the cangaciero, slavery, modernization and poverty, the ways

people remembered the rural social movements of the 1950s and 1960s and chose to

frame their subjectivity was not fixed or deterministic. While certain themes repeated

in many of the memories, the definitions attached to these themes often held different

meanings; for instance, the metaphor of the family. The negotiation between the

dominant narrative, the oppositional or subaltern narrative, and people’s personal

subjectivities exemplifies the fluidity of regional identity in Northeastern Brazil. This

multiplicity of identities contrasts with the prevalent notion of Northeastern Brazil as

453
having an entrenched regional identity based on in historical narratives of inequality

and poverty, violence and messianism, sugar production and exploitive labor

relations, hunger and drought, and survival and resistance.

One of the places where this regional narrative is most fixed is in popular or

mass culture. The issue of representation is a key component to the idea of

Nordestinidade. As in the case of representations of Canudos, the cangaceiro, and

slavery, the social movements of the 1960s also were represented in forms of mass

communication: film, popular poetry, theater, novels, artwork. The representations in

mass communication served to consolidate the history of the Ligas into a singular

narrative. Many of the images and narratives reproduced stereotypical notions of the

Northeast and the Nordestino, facilitating the historicization of the Ligas into a

narrative of regional identity. In other words, even though the oral histories suggest a

broad range of experiences and political struggles, the existing regional narrative

fortified by representations in popular culture narrowed the differences into a master

narrative of the Northeast: short-lived political struggle met by violent state

repression that created greater suffering along with the determined will to survive.

In this chapter, I examined how Brazilians produced a memory and history of

the Ligas Camponesas and the rural social activism before 1964 as well as how these

histories were shaped and connected to the experience of the military coup and the

regime. Most of the interviews, memoirs and films used in this chapter were

produced in the specific historical context of the abertura that must be taken into

account when analyzing how people remembered the social activism and dictatorship.

During this period, the Brazilian military still had control but numerous forces were

454
mobilized to call for an end to the dictatorship and a return to democracy. Thus,

many of the interviews suggest a certain reconciliation between social movements

and politicians who seemed to be adversaries in the early 1960s, perhaps in an

attempt to create a unified front against the dictatorship.

In a 1997 article, Daniel James expressed his concern about “memory

studies,” a concern that is shared by many historians and anthropologists. James

began the article with the contention: “Memory, it seems, is everywhere

nowadays...we are in the midst of a boom in the academy centered on the production

of texts about memory, commemoration, and forgetting.”984 While this certainly

continues to be a valid criticism of the amorphous study of memory, the categories of

memory and forgetting go beyond simply being a part of academia. Memory is a

central issue in the present-day Latin America politics. In recent years, the debate has

intensified about how to forget, remember, or reconcile the period of the military

regimes. The state and certain sectors of the population have fought for the need to

forget what happened in the past and they have actively promoted this idea by

transforming former torture centers and jails into shopping malls and artisan craft

markets, and by claiming that to have progress, Latin America cannot dwell in the

past. In other cases, political initiatives have re-opened court trials against military

officials or opened the possibility for those who suffered to receive remunerations

from the state. And, as often expressed in the testimonies from the Northeast, one of

the more common statements is reconciliation: Military officers published memoirs

stating their respect for the social movement leaders of the 1950s and 1960s, calling

984 DanielJames, “Meatpackers, Peronists, and Collective Memory: A View from the
South,” The American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (Dec., 1997),1404.

455
military leaders the “real criminals” and admitting their implication but also their

attempts to humanize the prison experience for the prisoners and lessen the

repression.985 Political prisoners also left space for the military officers and enlisted

men who they met in prison, who showed humanity and who seemed as oppressed as

the prisoners, even though they were standing on the other side of the prison bars.

While many recent studies on the Brazilian dictatorship argue that the violent

methods of arrests, imprisonment and torture mostly occurred after AI-5, starting in

1968, the experience of the Northeast challenges this argument. Rural people, social

movement leaders and Northeastern politicians not only faced arrest, imprisonment

and torture, but a number of disappearances also show how this type of repression

existed with the onset of the coup. The other issue to consider is the fact that a

number of the military leaders were the commanding officers of the IV Exército in

the 1960s (Castello Branco, Costa e Silva). Although some scholars have argued that

the level of attention – nationally and internationally – that the Northeast received in

the 1960s was exaggerated for the degree of “threat” the region posed to “national

security,” it is impossible to understand the politics of the democratic period and the

dictatorship without taking into consideration the Northeast. The memories in the

oral histories and films describe the local experience as well as a more universal story

of the Cold War in Latin America.

985
Carlito Lima’s testimonio on his experiences as a military officer who
“befriended” Francisco Julião, Gregório Bezerra, Miguel Arraes, Paulo Freire and
others is a strong example. Lima published his own memoir of the era, perhaps in an
attempt to reconcile with the guilt of having served in the military during the
dictatorship. He cites many of the other memoirs from these political prisoners,
showing his dedication to understanding how he ended up on the side of the military
instead of being a political prisoner himself. Lima, Confessões de um capitão.

456
Appendices

457
 Bibliography
References

Archives, Libraries, Foundations, Collections:

Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress, Washington DC

Arquivo do DOPS (Departamento de Ordem Político e Social), Recife, Pernambuco

Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth, UNICAMP, São Paulo

Arquivo do Estado de Pernambuco, Recife

Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo, DOPS, São Paulo

Biblioteca Nilo Pereira, Recife

Biblioteca da Universidade Catolica de Pernambuco, Recife

Biblioteca da Universidade de São Paulo – ECA, História

Biblioteca da UNICAMP, Campinas, São Paulo

Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro

Casa de Cultura Serra Talhado, Pernambuco

Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro

Centro Cultural IBEU, São Paulo

Centro de Documentação e Memória da UNESP, São Paulo

Centro de Pesquisas e Documentação, (CPDOC), Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de

Janeiro

Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo

FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro

Fundação Casa Rui Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro

Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais, Recife, Peranambuco

Museu do Arte Moderno, Cinemateca, Rio de Janeiro

458
Museu do Cangaço, Triunfo, Pernambuco

Museu do Estado, Recife, Pernambuco

Museu Municipal de Buíque, Pernambuco

Museu do Sertão, Petrolina, Pernambuco

National Anthropological Archives, Washington DC

National Archives and Record Administration, NARA, Washington D.C.

Robert Alexander Interview Collection, Rutgers University

Newspapers

English
The Christian Science Monitor
Newsweek
The New Republic
The New York Times
The New York Times Magazine
The Reader’s Digest
The Washington Post

Portuguese
Boletim Canavieiro: Associação dos Fornecedores de Cana de Pernambuco
Boletim do Serviço de Extensão Cultural
Cinelândia
Correio da Manhã
A Defesa: Jornal de Orientação Católica (Caruarú, Pernambuco)
O Diário de Pernambuco
O Estado de São Paulo
Filme Cultura
Gazeta de Patos (Patos, Paraíba)
O Guararapes (Jaboatão, Pernambuco)
A Hora (Recife, Pernambuco)
A Hora (São Lourenço, Pernambuco)
Jornal do Bancário
O Jornal do Brasil
O Jornal do Commercio
Lavoura Canavieira, IAA
Letras do Sertão (Paraíba)

459
LIGA
Nordeste
Novos Rumos (PC do B)
A Razão (Escada, Pernambuco)
Revista Civilização Brasileira
Revista da Cultura Cinematográfica
Revista do Instituto Histórico da Vitória de Santo Antão
Revista do Nordeste
Rotary Club do Recife – Boa Vista
Terra Livre
A Vitoriense (Vitória de Santo Antão, Pernambuco)

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Unpublished Interviews

Fundação Getúlio Vargas, CPDOC

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

462
Fundação Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Sociais
Paulo de Figueiredo Cavalcanti
Yara Lúcia Brayner Mattos
Ennes 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
Linduarte Noronha
Ipojuca Pontes
João Raimundo Mello
Rucker Vieira
Vladimir Carvalho

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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)

463
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 zumba (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)
Ipojuca Pontes, Canudos (1978)
Geraldo Sarno, Coronel Delmiro Gouviéa (1979)
Eduardo Coutinho, Cabra marcado para morrer (1984)

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