Brazil in the Global World: Five Centuries of Lost Memories (original) (raw)

1997, Macalester International

To anyone crossing the 8.5 million square kilometers of Brazil, the image used thirty years ago by Roger Bastide, 1 "land of contrasts," would still be apropos. There are contrasts of every sort: geographical, historic, cultural, economic, social and regional. The idea of the existence of "several Brazils"-or at least the dualism of an "archaic" nation and a "modern" other-is an old one in the tradition of Brazilian studies. The sources of this idea can be traced back to nineteenth-century Romanticism. A little earlier than Bastide's consecration of the image of "contrasts," another French Brazilianist, Jacques Lambert, formulated the famous thesis of "two Brazils." One of them was predominantly urban, coastal, White, Europeanized, and relatively developed; the other was rural, technically and economically backward, non-White, and attached to non-European cultural traditions. Brazil reproduces in itself the world contrasts: we find in it aspects which recall those of New York or Chicago, besides others which evoke those of India or of Egypt. 2