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Reading the Cold War from the Margins: Literatura de Cordel as a Historical Prism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2017

Sarah Sarzynski
Sarah Sarzynski*
Affiliation:
Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California
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Extract

In November 1960, the New York Times reported on the looming revolution in Northeastern Brazil, describing how Marxist social movement leaders were organizing peasants. Reporter Tad Szulc claimed that “singers and violeiros—the traveling troubadors of the Northeast who act as human newspapers”—were spreading leader Francisco Julião's manifestos to the largely illiterate rural population and its “miserable, drought-plagued hamlets.” The human newspapers allegedly sung about agrarian reform as a form of liberation, comparing the process of revolution in Brazil with that of Cuba. Szulc wrote:

[The] nomad singers who once sang of the loves and the hatreds of the proud people here, now sing of land reform and of political themes. There is this refrain: The sugar that we sell to capitalist America/ If it serves to sweeten the milk of a Franco Spain/ For sure it will serve for the wine of the Socialist world./ What harm is there in a ship/ Carrying our common Brazilian coffee/ And selling it to a China/ Where there is no Chiang Kai-shek?

Although the poem suffers from a clumsy translation, it is most interesting that the New York Times quoted literatura de cordel (chapbook poetry) to demonstrate the severity of the communist threat in Northeastern Brazil, suggesting that violeiros were Marxist agents indoctrinating the rural poor with their anti-American songs. Szulc's portrayal contrasts with commonly held assumptions about literatura de cordel as “quaint” regional folklore, and violeiros as blind poets who performed silly stories in marginalized rural communities. In the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, literatura de cordel was a source of both entertainment and news for the largely illiterate rural population in the Northeast. It is a textual genre often performed or improvised by singers (repentistas, cantadores, or violeiros), which has led scholars to define it as folk-popular culture since it is both a written and oral expression of the people.

Type
Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 127 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2017 

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References

1 The origin of literatura de cordel has often been identified as the Iberian peninsula, although some scholars argue that cordel is a Brazilian form of popular literature. Scholars also point to the African akpalô as an oral tradition that influenced literatura de cordel. Most scholars agree that it emerged as a form of popular culture in the 1890s. See Candace Slater's chapter, “Background for the Literatura de Cordel,” in her Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 1–30.

2 The definition of literatura de cordel as folk-popular is based on a definition of folk culture as oral. Rodolfo Vilhena, Luís, Projeto e missão: o movimento folclórico brasileiro, 1947–1964 (Rio de Janeiro: FUNARTE; Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1997), 282–283 Google Scholar. Cordel scholars Mark Curran and Candace Slater also refer to literatura de cordel as “folk-popular.” Curran, Mark, Brazil's Folk-Popular Poetry: A Literatura de Cordel. A Bilingual Anthology in English and Portuguese (Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2010)Google Scholar; Slater, Candace, “ Literatura de Cordel, Folk-Popular Poetry, and the Mass Media in Today's Brazil,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 7 (1988): 97–106 Google Scholar.

3 Joseph, Gilbert M., “What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies,” in In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War, Joseph, Gilbert and Spenser, Daniela, eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 3–46 Google Scholar. An excellent example of a recent scholarly approach to this question that looks at local communities is Jaymie Patricia Heilman, “Yellows Against Reds: Campesino Anticommunism in 1960s Ayacucho, Peru,” Latin American Research Review 50:2 (2015): 154–175.

4 Langland, Victoria, Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calirman, Claudia, Brazilian Art under Dictatorship: Antonio Manuel, Artur Barrio and Cildo Meireles (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunn, Christopher, Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

5 Other studies on resistance include Green, James, We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On cultures of repression, see Cowan, Benjamin, Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Relatorio, Segundo Tenente Severino Raimondo Oliveira to the Secretária de Segurança Pública, Recife, June 15, 1961, no. 118-119; Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas s/numero, January 1956, (no. 29.796), Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-Pernambuco, Recife.

8 The definition of popular culture itself is a highly contested idea, with definitions ranging from cultural production associated with the traditional customs or folklore of a people, to revolutionary cultural production “of the people” or “for the people,” to mass culture that is popular in terms of its consumer audience. Vivian Schelling, “Popular Culture in Latin America,” in Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture, John King, ed., (Cambridge University Press, 2006): 171–201; Caesar, Terry and Bueno, Eva P., “The Politics of the Popular in Latin American Popular Culture,” in Imagination Beyond Nation: Latin American Popular Culture, Caesar, Terry and Bueno, Eva P., eds. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), 1–18 Google Scholar.

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10 Candace Slater, Stories on a String, 4.

11 The region has often symbolized the past roots of a people, a local or provincial space that is odds with the modern nation. Maria Dainotto, Roberto, “‘All the Regions Do Smilingly Revolt’: The Literature of Place and Region,” Critical Inquiry 22:3 (Spring 1996): 486–505 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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14 Hewitt, Cynthia, “Brazil: The Peasant Movement of Pernambuco, 1961–1964,” in Latin American Peasant Movements, Landsberger, Henry A., ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), 375–376 Google Scholar. A 1963 report of the US Agency for International Development (US AID) on the Northeast listed life expectancy at 35 years and infant mortality at 33 percent, with 70 percent of the population suffering from parasitic infections. Only 32 percent of school-age children attended school compared to 43 percent for Brazil as a nation. US AID Mission to Brazil, Alliance for Progress in Northeast Brazil, April 29, 1963: 16.

15 Page, Joseph, The Revolution That Never Was (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972),12 Google Scholar.

16 Lima, Carlito, Confissões de um capitão (Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2001)Google Scholar.

17 An earlier rural social movement known as the Peasant League (Liga Camponesa) was affiliated with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), which existed briefly in Pernambuco (1947-49). Although Julião denied any connections to the PCB organization, the connection between the two Ligas Camponesas appears to have been considered a fact. In the DOPS archival holdings on the Ligas Camponesas, information about the two movements have been placed in the same folder.

18 Among others, such organizations included Cooperativa dos Usineiros, the Federação das Associações Rurais de Pernambuco, the Associação dos Produtores de Aguardente, the Associação Pernambucana de Cafecultura, the Sociedade Auxileira da Agricultura de Pernambuco, and the Associação de Fornecedores de Cana.

19 Rugai Bastos, Elide, As Ligas Camponesas (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1984), 69 Google Scholar.

20 Julião, Francisco, Que são as Ligas Camponesas? (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1962), 37 Google Scholar. Julião's fascination with literatura de cordel continued after 1964. In 1981, he recorded Julião, verso e viola, a cordel composed of three long poems about rural unions, the rights of women, and nationalism. Only 500 copies of the recording were made, and the work is virtually unknown, in part due to censorship. Santiago, Vandeck, Francisco Julião: luta, paixão, e morte de um agitador (Recife: Assembléia Legislativa do Estado de Pernambuco, 2001), 100 Google Scholar.

21 Julião, Que são as Ligas Camponesas?, 38.

22 Julião, Que são as Ligas Camponesas?, 39.

23 Julião, Que são as Ligas Camponesas?, 41.

24 “O ABC do Camponês.” January 1956, Prontuário Funcionario, No. 29.796 (no. 204), Ligas Camponesas, Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-PE, Recife.

25 The titles of the six parts are “The Association and the Path, The League, The Rural Union, The Cooperative, A Just and Humane Law, and The Vote for Illiterates.” Curran, Mark J., História do Brasil em cordel (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1988), 169–170 Google Scholar. According to Curran, Rafael de Carvalho was born in Paraíba in 1918 but lived in São Paulo and was known as a “poeta-ativista político.” He wrote about themes of social justice and poverty in the Northeast.

26 Curran, História do Brasil em cordel, 170.

27 Rafael de Carvalho, Carta de alforria do camponês, cited in Curran, História do Brasil, 170–171.

28 For example, the words for wife and children, “mulher” and “filho” are spelled “mule” and “fio.”

29 “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, March 6, 1963,5; “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, March 13,1963,5; “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, May 22,1963.

30 Francisco Julião, interview by Aspásia Camargo, December 1977, transcript, Yxcatepec, Morelos, Mexico, CPDOC, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, 116–117.

31 Pereira do Souza, “Versos Camponeses: Nordeste Escravo,” LIGA, December 25, 1962,3.

32 “Para o pobre campones/que planta no tabulerio/ se vem dinheiro e sem chuva/ se tem chuva é sem dinheiro/ e escravizado ao patrão/ ele passa o ano inteiro. . . . Se ficar o bico come/ se correr o bicho pega/ toda a miseria do mundo sobre ele descarrega./ por isso so ha uma saida/ é a unica que não nega: é ingressar numa Ligas/ que fale em Reforma Agraria/ que fale em fazer governo/ com a classe operaria/ com medico, banco, instrução/ e assistencia funeraria. “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, November 27, 1962, 3.

33 María Alonso, Ana, Thread of Blood: Colonialism, Revolution, and Gender on Mexico's Northern Frontier (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Tinsman, Heidi, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform,1950–1973 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, March 20, 1963, 3. Another poem begins with the assertion that if a rural man doesn't know what he wants, he and his family will end up hungry, like “cattle without a cowboy.” But if he knows what he wants, and isn't afraid to fight for it, he will be able to obtain money, food, and housing for everyone. “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, March 27, 1963, 5.

35 “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, July 24, 1963, 5.

36 “Versos Camponeses,” LIGA, October 15, 1963, 5. The “revolution” referred to was not the military coup of 1964.

37 Londres, Maria José F., Cordel: do encantamento às histórias de luta (São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1983)Google Scholar. The story may also be a variant of a Joãozinho and Mariquinhas story that tells of two children victimized by an old witch who wants to fatten them up to eat them. Alceu Maynard Araújo suggests that this theme is central to such stories, even though there are many variations. Araújo, Folclore nacional: ritos, sabença, linguagem, artes e técnicas (São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos, 1964), 203.

38 Slater, Stories on a String, 71.

39 Dineen, Listening to the People's Voice, 62.

40 Londres, Cordel, 256–257.

41 João José da Silva, “A vingança de Joãozinho no poço dos jacarés,” n.p., n.d.

42 Another example is found in José Pacheco's poems about Lampião, cangaceiro and icon of the Northeast, which was republished in LIGA. Pacheco's folhetos are not necessarily “revolutionary,” although LIGA interpreted them as stories of a brave warrior who fights for the people. An explanatory paragraph that preceded The Arrival of Lampião in Hell where it appeared in LIGA described how the peasants created literatura de cordel as a form in which to protest their real-life situations. José Pacheco, A chegada de Lampião no inferno, in LIGA, March 20, 1963, 5. LIGA also republished a verbal peleja (duel) between two poets battling about their manly strength. João Martins de Ataide e José Ferreira Lima, “Martelo agalopado,” Juazeiro, April 1957, reprinted in LIGA, May 22,1963, 5.

43 For instance, a letter from the owner of the Engenho Cananduba in Jaboatão claimed that Julião was using these “illiterate and ignorant beings, manipulating them, their good faith and ignorance, as a way to increase disorder [and] anarchy and subvert our regime.” Odette Pereira Carneiro, Grania Pedacinho de Céu, Sucupira, to the Secretária de Segurança Publica do Estado de Pernambuco, June 2, 1960, Prontuário Funcionário: Ligas Camponesas Engenho Malemba, 1959-60, no. 29343 (Paudaulho, no. 28, 1959-60), Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-PE, Recife.

44 Letter from police sergeant Delegado, Rio Formoso, to the Secretary of Public Security, April 5, 1962, Secretária da Segurança Publica, DOPS-PE, Recife, S75, no. 1423-62.

45 José Joaquim da Silva (Zito), in discussion with the author, Engenho Galiléia, Pernambuco, November 2005.

46 Dineen, Listening to the People's Voice, 51–52. Dineen argues that this situation is created by ideological differences: “the constant tension between the intervention of dominant class values and popular resistance to such intervention.”

47 Carneiro Campos, Renato, Ideologia dos poetas populares do Nordeste (Recife: Instituto Joaquim Nabuco/Campanha de Defesa do Folclore Brasileiro/FUNARTE, 1977), 35 Google Scholar.

48 Beltrão, Luiz, Comunicação e folclore: um estudo dos agentes e does meios populares de informação de fatos e expressão de idéias (São Paulo: Edicões Melhoramentos, 1971), 69 Google Scholar.

49 João José da Silva, “Palavras do Padre Cícero sobre a guerra nucleal [sic],” n.p., November 16, 1961.

50 This argument about modernity versus Catholicism is similar to that made in poems condemning the public execution of Caryl Chessman in San Quentin, which were based on the premise that Brazil is a better country than the United States because it is Catholic. Cantel, Raymond, Temas da atualidade na literatura de cordel (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 1972)Google Scholar.

51 Expedito Sebastião da Silva, “O cinqüentenário de Juàzeiro e dados históricos”(Juazeiro: Tip. São Francisco, December 24, 1961).

52 Josué Anacleto da Silva, “A transformação do tempo e a valor da natureza,” n.p., n.d.. The poet makes a reference to 1960 in the poem.

53 Joaquim Batista de Sena/Poeta Seny, “História da reforma agrária e o comunismo no Brasil” (Fortaleza: n.p., n.d.). Sena was from Paraíba, but after establishing himself as a poet he moved to Rio de Janeiro, later returning to Fortaleza because of family problems. He directed the publishing company Fatimas Graças. de Carvalho, Gilmar, Publicidade em cordel: o moto de consumo (São Paulo: Maltese, 1994), 80.Google Scholar

54 The author of “A Liga Camponesa e a resposta de Julião” describes agrarian reform as “black [preto] communism”.

55 Testo de Ferro, “A Liga Camponesa e a resposta de Julião,” n.p., n.d., cited in Mark J. Curran, História do Brasil, 167.

56 Testo de Ferro, “A Liga Camponesa e a Resposta de Julião.”

57 One of the exceptions, João Soares, the self-acclaimed “poeta-reporter,” continued to write journalistic folhetos after 1964 but received criticism for changing his political views. Soares had written triumphantly about the election of Miguel Arraes in the early 1960s, but later wrote instead of the progress of Brazil's “economic miracle” under the military regime. In the 1980s, he appeared to change direction again, writing folhetos criticizing the military government. Soares defended his swaying political beliefs by claiming that he was a “journalist” who was not opinionated or political but “objective.” The precarious economic situation of many of the poets also must be taken into consideration; Soares was also hired by a number of politicians and business leaders to write promotional folhetos. Luyten, Joseph M., A notícia na literatura de cordel (São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 1992),101–117, 120Google Scholar.

58 Sena, “A vitória do Marechal Castelo Branco e a derrota dos corruptos,” reproduced in Curran, História do Brasil, 188–189. Sena wrote folhetos before 1964 that opposed the Ligas Camponesas, so his presence as a pro-military poet after the military coup is not surprising.

59 Rodolfo Coelho Cavalcante,“A vitória do Marechal Castelo Branco,” 189. Throughout the military regime, Cavalcante was the most outspoken supporter of the regime and proclaimed himself its “protector.”

60 Coelho Cavalcante, “A vitória do Marechal Castelo Branco,” 190–191. Curran claims that many folheteiros put food on the table during this period by producing “moral” and patriotic stories.

61 Enoque Pinheiro Neto, “A construção da barragem,” n.p., n.d.

62 Homero do Rêgo Barros, “Ecos da revolução de 31 de março” (Recife: L. G. de Lima, 1965).

63 Moreira Alves, Márcio, A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution (New York: Anchor Books, 1973)Google Scholar.

64 Augusto Arantes, Antonio, O trabalho e a fala (estudo antropológico sobre os folhetos de cordel) (São Paulo: Editora Kariõs/FUNCAMP, 1982), 42 Google Scholar.

65 Arantes, O trabalho e a fala, 42–43.

66 In a 1978 interview in Recife, the poet Edson Pinta da Silva stated: “Today, if a poet publishes a chapbook criticizing the government, he's had it. He's done for, he disappears.” Cited in Dineen, Listening to the People's Voice, 52.

67 Oliveira, A representação da mulher; Slater, “Literatura de cordel,” 99.

68 Arantes, O trabalho e a fala, 45.

69 O estado de São Paulo, May 21, 1976, cited in Arantes, O trabalho e a fala, 45.

70 Slater, “Literatura de cordel,” 100.

71 The collectors of the tax were often corrupt and demanded higher payments. Arantes, O trabalho e a fala, 43.

72 Dineen, Listening to the People's Voice, 77.

73 Curran, História do Brasil, 183; Slater, “Literatura de cordel,” 99; Gilmar de Carvalho, Publicidade em Cordel, 78.

74 Oliveira, A representação da mulher, 12.

75 Luyten, A notícia, 40–41; Oliveira, A representação da mulher, 12; Curran, História do Brasil,183.

76 For more on these changes, see Pereira, Anthony, The End of the Peasantry: The Rural Labor Movement in Northeast Brazil, 1961–1988 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

77 Arantes, O trabalho e a fala, 42.

78 José Joaquim da Silva, former Ligas Camponesas participant, in discussion with the author, Engenho Galiléia, Pernambuco, November 2005.

79 Among Zito's titles: “Bus Drivers and Ticket Collectors in the Garbage Can”; “Julião Died Like This”; “Lampião, the King of Bandits”; “The Struggle against Old Age”; “Beaked Hat: A Life of a Dog”; “Zezé’s Grave”; “The Northeastern Man and Torture in the Countryside”; “My Life in Poetry”; and “The Jail and Cell 106.”

80 Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 340 Google Scholar.