Brazilian Legacies

Abstract

Robert Levine’s Brazilian Legacies is an interpretive essay for the non-specialist; it explores the legacies of history for contemporary Brazilian society. This is one of the first in a new series by M.E. Sharpe, aimed at an undergraduate or general audience. In it, one of the United States’s most prolific and well-known Brazilianists brings his forty years of research and observation of Brazilian society to bear on the promise and the problems of modern Brazil.In chapter 1 Levine examines the impact of slavery on modern Brazil, arguing that questions of color and race have been and are central to Brazilian society and culture. In chapter 2 he discusses class divisions, and how they emerged and have been maintained over time. In chapter 3 he explores a theme of “insiders” and “outsiders,” and roots that trend in Portuguese colonial policy. Chapter 4, “The Brazilian Way,” looks at patron-client relations and political corruption, linking them to a Brazilian political and cultural history that has reduced the role and status of the citizen in politics, and to weak national institutions that allowed the development of informal local powers. Chapters 5 through 7 examine the strategies that Brazilians have developed for coping with and resisting this system, from religious beliefs to carnival to crime. The book concludes with an essay, “Towards a New Civil Society,” in which the author outlines some of his thoughts on the Cardoso presidency and the way that Brazil has been changing in the last ten years.Brazilian Legacies is in many ways a rewarding book. It is filled with the stories and insights of its author, who has broad familiarity with the Brazilian northeast and the center-south alike. The author has a sympathy for Brazilians and their daily struggle to survive (whatever their social class), and an enthusiasm about his subject that makes reading this book quite enjoyable. Many of the passages, including those on the Collor impeachment, are gripping, especially for one who lived through the dramatic economic reforms of the first days of his presidency. Those alone make the book worth reading.Nevertheless, the book is frustrating: there is no clear framework here, nor any clear argument. Instead this is a jumble of fascinating stories, anecdotes, and observations mixed with some of the historiography on Brazil written since World War II. Much of the newer historiography does not seem well integrated with that of the older tradition. For example, chapter 3, “Outsiders,” contains a great deal of new material on women, children, gays, indigenous people, and rural migrants, yet the central organizing theme “outsiders” seems dated. Arguably, many of the people whom Levine terms “outsiders” are subordinates in Brazilian society, but that is not the same as being an outsider. Scholars have long shown that race, ethnicity, class, and gender intersect in complex ways, but those intersections do not emerge here. Similarly, religious belief is treated in a ways that seem contradictory: the religious movement of Antonio Conselheiro and his followers at Canudos is treated an example of resistance against oppression, while the Afro-Brazilian religion and liberation theology are simply coping mechanisms which the poor use to make their daily struggle manageable. Moreover, use of the patron-client system by the poor counts as “part of the system,” but not as a coping strategy.These comments should not be taken to mean that Brazilian Legacies is without merits. It is engagingly written and full of information about contemporary Brazil as well as Brazilian history. It would work reasonably well as the last book in a Brazilian history class, allowing students to learn about the contemporary scene and debate the merits of the arguments. It would also be a good book for non-specialist and Brazilianists alike to read for an update on events in Brazil in the 1990s.