The push for developmental reformism – the key concept of underdevelopment – and the idea that the Brazilian people must be the agent for their own transformation, began to take hold among government technocrats and intellectuals. This emphasis on agency and reform coincided with a flourishing of the arts, where these concepts also rapidly became influential. For example, São Paulo’s Teatro de Arena, opened in 1953, maintained a permanent cast of young actors and scenic artists who were committed to modernism and dramatic realism in order create a ‘truly Brazilian form of dramaturgy’.19 In February 1958 the group presented Gianfrancesco Guarnieri’s play Eles não usam black tie20 in a small, downtown makeshift space with approximately one hundred seats. Against the background of the daily routine of factory workers, the play discussed the power of capital and the right to strike for higher wages. It was a huge success and was seen as a genuinely new form of Brazilian drama.
Other vanguard theatrical groups emerged, such as the Oficina (Workshop) and Opinião (Opinion), but the commitment to modernism and dramatic realism was by no means restricted to the theatre; it spread to the cinema where it assumed a variety of forms. Companhia Cinematográfica Vera Cruz, in São Paulo, set out to produce films of European and North American calibre, following Hollywood aesthetics, but with essentially Brazilian characteristics.21 Unfortunately, the experience was a failure. Although the company dealt with local themes – Lima Barreto’s22 O cangaçeiro23 was a huge success – the production system was too expensive and the characters tended to become stereotyped. The return on the company’s financial investments was too slow in coming, and the Vera Cruz Film Company went bankrupt in 1954.
However, a similar experiment in Rio de Janeiro was highly successful. Atlântida Studios produced a continuous stream of films that were low-budget, unpretentious, and completed very quickly. The critics turned up their noses, but the public adored the films and a new type of popular comedy – the chanchada – became the hallmark of Atlântida and drew massive crowds to the cinema.24 It is not hard to understand why. The chanchadas parodied the great Hollywood successes using popular language reminiscent of the circus, revues and stand-up comics. In many cases the cast had previously worked in the circus or in radio, or both – Grande Otelo, Oscarito, Dercy Gonçalves, Zé Trindade and Ankito. The characters spoke directly to the audience, and there was always the addition of a little samba, a few jokes, and beautiful girls. The plots seemed ingenuous, but were inspired by the lives of ordinary Brazilians, who saw themselves reflected in these films. There was always a happy ending and the chanchada was enormously popular: people could see and hear themselves on the screen.
In 1955 the young filmmaker Nelson Pereira dos Santos was the first to depict the reality of Brazilian poverty on the screen. He converted Celso Furtado’s stance into the language of film: underdevelopment must be identified in order to be confronted. The film Rio, 40 graus (Rio, 40ºC) abandoned the Hollywood aesthetic. It was produced quickly and cheaply, and shot on location all over Rio de Janeiro – the zoo, Maracanã Stadium, the Sugarloaf, Copacabana, the Christ statue. The cast was made up of amateur actors.25 The director had a clear idea of what he wanted to depict: the living conditions in the favelas. He approached the subject with delicacy, without prejudice and with unprecedented realism, but also with subtlety, leaving room for the imagination. The film showed the beauty of Rio de Janeiro on a sweltering Sunday, but what most impressed the spectator was the reality of a city plagued by poverty and violence. The opening scene is unforgettable: a broad panorama of Rio de Janeiro closes in on the morro do Cabuçu favela. In the next shot, five boys appear walking down through the favela hillside, as if the city below belonged to them – a scene that is full of lyricism. Rio de Janeiro had never been so forcefully depicted. Many viewers did not understand the director’s vision or did not agree with it. Among these was Colonel Geraldo de Meneses Cortes, head of the Federal Department of Public Safety, who banned the film from being shown throughout Brazil. He justified his decision by saying that the official temperature of the city had never reached 40°C – the maximum that had ever been registered was 30.7°C – and that the director was not only a liar but a communist whose film was an unforgivable mockery of the federal capital.
When Mr Café Filho withdrew from the government, Colonel Cortes lost his post and the film was allowed to be shown again. From then on Nelson Pereira dos Santos was recognized as a groundbreaking filmmaker in Brazil, and Rio, 40 graus became the source of inspiration for the vanguard movement: Cinema Novo. The most emblematic films of the Cinema Novo were released in the aftermath of Juscelino Kubitschek’s government. They include Vidas secas (1963), also directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos; Os fuzis (1964) by Ruy Guerra,26 and the first showing of Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (1964) (Black God, White Devil), written and directed by Glauber Rocha.27 The precursor of all these films was Rio, 40 graus, which Glauber Rocha had referred to as ‘the first revolutionary film exploded in the Third World prior to the Cuban Revolution’.28
Glauber Rocha was both the great leader of Cinema Novo and the most talented among the movement’s artists. Deus e o diabo na terra do sol is not his first work, but it is without doubt the most eloquent: a landmark for Brazil, and an international example of 1960s vanguard cinema. The film draws on historical, literary and musical elements mixed with popular culture and plunges into the violence and mysticism that emerge from the inner depths of Brazil. This is filtered through a narrative of great aesthetic effect. Deus e o diabo na terra do sol has iconic moments: the relentless eye of the camera following protagonists Manuel and Rosa to the sound of the aria from Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 is one of the great scenes in Brazilian cinema.29
The three main objectives of Cinema Novo can be summarized as follows: to change the history of Brazilian cinema, to change Brazil, and, time permitting, to change the world as well.30 The movement produced a generation of filmmakers: Cacá Diegues, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ruy Guerra, Gustavo Dahl, Paulo César Sarraceni, Leon Hirszman, Walter Lima Jr, Arnaldo Jabor and, of course, Glauber Rocha. The connection between art, violence and history, used as a means to explain Brazil, is the distinguishing mark of the films produced by this generation. They sought to identify the problems of ordinary Brazilians and saw themselves as nothing less than the incarnation of the nation’s conscience. But the language adopted by these films was accessible to a limited public only. In Cinema Novo aesthetic and political content override commercial considerations – the film is an end in itself. But from the point of view of the creation of a cinematographic language, the works of the movement remain unsurpassed in Brazilian cinema.
Whereas Rio, 40 graus and others in its genre depicted the reality of a poverty-stricken urban population, the Bossa Nova revealed a completely different Brazil – one that was young, happy and luminous. It was a breath of fresh air for the country’s cultural life, and for the political atmosphere too. At first hearing, many people failed to grasp its rhythmic subtlety and the relationship between Bossa Nova and Brazil. Some thought the dissonance was a sign of alienation of the composers, who did not discuss politics; others interpreted it as an attempt by the Carioca middle class to Americanize samba. But whether for or against, no one was indifferent. As a musical movement, Bossa Nova was short-lived, at least at that moment. It started in 1958 and lasted until around 1963.31 Nevertheless, in that short time a new musical genre was created, whose rhythmical patterns turned samba on its head and whose dissonant harmonies inaugurated a new, concise style of interpretation. The precursors of the movement were a group of musicians who admired the freedom of American jazz – Dick Farney, Lúcio Alves, Johnny Alf, and the band Os Cariocas – and it was brought to fruition by a group of young composers who wanted to create a very different sonority from that of the omnipresent samba and the sensibility of conventional music. These included Tom Jobim, João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes, Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Ronaldo Bôsc
oli, Newton Mendonça, Sérgio Mendes and Eumir Deodato. The muse of Bossa Nova was Nara Leão, who became its definitive interpreter, hostess and, eventually, its adversary. Bossa Nova’s greatest composers were Tom Jobim, who created the characteristic harmonies that accompanied the dissonant vocal line, and João Gilberto, who created its distinctive rhythm.32 Mr Gilberto offset the rhythm of the vocals against his millimetric precision on the guitar.
In 1958 when the two men recorded João Gilberto’s first LP, the public’s reaction was largely unfavourable. Still, people understood a new and different form of music was emerging, with a simplified rhythm that allowed for more sophisticated harmonies. The movement took off, both as a musical language that people wanted to sing, and as a social movement, and became the seed that produced the musical forms of the 1960s – the afro-sambas of Baden Powell, the protest songs against the dictatorship, Tropicalismo and the Clube da Esquina. Bossa Nova also became a commercial craze, both in Brazil and the United States. It became a brand name for associating products – trousers, glasses, powdered milk and even a particular way of combing one’s hair – with the idea of youth, modernity and daring.33
And Bossa Nova conquered the world: it was assimilated by popular music in innumerable countries, starting in Europe and the United States, and recorded by leading international artists, including Frank Sinatra, who in 1967 recorded an entire LP of Bossa Nova songs, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim.34 Bossa Nova expressed the best of Brazil and confirmed its viability: modern, cosmopolitan, sophisticated, beautiful and free. For Brazilians it was a jump ahead – advancing ‘fifty years in five’ – a way of distancing Brazil from its underdevelopment, at least in the area of culture.
Meanwhile, in the economy, there was less cause for optimism. The Targets Plan was failing to overcome the obstacles that impeded development.35 The first evidence of this failure was the plan’s negative impact on economic growth. Although President Kubitschek, like President Vargas before him, was investing heavily in infrastructure, unlike his predecessor he was not a nationalist, but rather a very astute pragmatist. In his memoirs, the economist Roberto Campos, a member of Juscelino Kubitschek’s technocratic team and an ardent believer in international capital, wrote that the president valued ‘where the factory was’ and not ‘where the shareholder lived’.36
Not everyone shared Roberto Campos’s faith in the benefits of internationalizing the Brazilian economy. Trade unions, students, intellectuals and above all communist militants were highly critical of an economic development process that could lead to local industry becoming dependent on the intermediation of multinationals. The historian Caio Prado Jr, for example, was unforgiving: ‘Brazil has never had a government as submissive to international interests as that of Mr Juscelino Kubitschek,’ he wrote.37 The consequences of internationalization may well have been inevitable for a country that had depended for so long on the export of raw materials, but there can be no doubt that the critics were right about one thing: the damage caused was considerable.
The Targets Plan allowed Brazil to increase its industrial capacity significantly. However, the plan did not sustain the industrialization. In his haste to advance the country in just five years, Juscelino Kubitschek improvised. He invested in accelerated growth without evaluating how the process was to be financed. He used shortcuts, such as facilitating the entry of foreign capital into the country through the concession of fiscal and economic privileges and depending on international funding for the accelerated industrialization. These shortcuts were prejudicial to the country in three ways: the first was the relative ease with which foreign companies took over the control of developing sectors of the Brazilian economy; the second was the constant increase in the country’s balance of trade deficit, with the consequent increase in its foreign debt; and the third was the decision to create growth while ignoring inflation.
Juscelino Kubitschek knew all too well that any programme to fight inflation would have political costs – imposing restrictions on wages, credit and government spending. In the short term, the government exerted some control over demands for wage increases, largely due to the negotiating skills of João Goulart, who was extremely popular with urban workers and the trade unions. In fact the Kubitschek/Goulart duo was not only the personification of the alliance between the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Brazilian Labour Party (PTB) and the continuity of the Vargas political legacy; it was also the key to maintaining good relations between the government and the trade unions. The alliance was crucial to sustaining the precarious balance between the opposing political forces38 that characterized the Kubitschek government.
Naturally, containing government spending in order to control inflation would have meant imposing restrictions on the Targets Plan. Between slowing down the rate of growth and relying on funding that worsened inflation, President Kubitschek chose the latter without hesitation. He argued that some degree of inflation was inevitable and that the economy would gradually stabilize. He left his successor the task of dealing with an inflation rate that had reached alarming proportions: in 1957 it was 7 per cent; in 1958, 24.4 per cent; and in 1959, 39.4 per cent.39
The other major impediment to development was political in nature. Juscelino Kubitschek introduced his Targets Plan, the most ambitious modernization programme in the history of the country, but implementing a project of such magnitude did not include any measures to reduce social and political inequality. The strategy also relied on a certain degree of ‘improvisation’. President Kubitschek created a ‘parallel administration’ within the state bureaucracy.40 The intention was to circumvent the political patronage system – the practice of distributing favours and jobs to those who helped the government get the votes it needed in Congress – without having to openly contest it. This ‘parallel administration’ was made up of a number of centres for planning and carrying out government policies. These centres were sophisticated and received generous funding. Their purpose was twofold. For one thing, through the centres, the government was able to recruit dynamic administrators capable of rapidly implementing the Targets Plan, and for another, strategies could be thereby implemented while bypassing the inefficiency of public administration in Brazil – political patronage and the trading of government posts in return for political favours.
As far as the question of agrarian reform was concerned, the Targets Plan went no further than rhetoric. The immense estates were the greatest symbol of underdevelopment; but the ownership of land was a source of power, meant representation in Congress, and sustained regional support for the Social Democratic Party. The estate owners had never been challenged, not even by Getúlio Vargas, and Juscelino Kubitschek was cautious enough not to interfere with the status quo.41 In the 1950s, 70 per cent of the Brazilian population still lived in rural areas. The urban population was only to overtake the rural population at the end of the 1960s. The difference between the poverty and social inequality in the country and in the cities was enormous. In the interior the situation of the poor remained unchanged: schools, basic sanitation and healthcare were in scarce supply and rural workers continued to be excluded from the labour benefits introduced by Getúlio Vargas. The intervention goals of the Kubitschek government in this sector were limited to palliative measures: the expansion of rural credit, food distribution, help for the victims of the 1958 drought and the construction of wells.
While Juscelino Kubitschek focused on the urban world, on the cities he believed would produce a new, modern society, by the early 1960s the rural workers began to organize themselves into a major political force. The rural workers’ movement had started demanding land and rights in the 1940s, prior to President Kubitschek’s government. Initially, the movement was motivated by the increasing number of rural workers expelled from their land due to real estate speculation and the system of grilagem – a long-established practice of forging documents in order to claim landownership. The practice caused social upheaval: large-scale migration to the citie
s, the rapid and disorderly growth of city outskirts, and the exponential growth of favelas. This pattern of migration was to last until the 1980s. Meanwhile, the demands for land and rights in rural areas intensified. Armed uprisings began in 1946, with a revolt in Porecatu, a settlement in the state of Paraná, where hundreds of armed peasants demanded the return of land that had been fraudulently occupied. Eight years later, in 1954, the revolt of Trombas and Formoso in the state of Goiás erupted. The troubles continued until 1961, during which time the peasants founded the ‘Republic of Trombas and Formoso’, governed by institutions of their own design. The Trombas and Formosa regions obtained legal registration of land for 10,000 small farmers and their families. In 1956 peasants in municipalities in the southwest of Paraná took to the town streets, expelled local authorities, and invaded the offices of colonizing real estate companies involved in land speculation. The rural workers destroyed IOUs, promissory notes and title deeds – many of which had been forged by the companies.42
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