Although in this way they are spared the abrupt and cruel fluctuations of reputation that our artists suffer from, they nevertheless pay for the lack of serious criticism and competition. One sometimes feels that a 20th-century Brazilian Samuel Johnson, with all his dogmatism, might do wonders for Brazilian arts, — but maybe that is as bad as saying that Latin American countries need dictators.
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There are two sayings, Anglo-Saxon and Brazilian, that sound a little alike but have very different meanings. They illustrate very well our different points of view on the career of the artist. We say, puritanically: “He has made his bed and must lie in it.” Brazilians say, soothingly: Cria fama e deita-te na cama. “Create a reputation and stay in bed.” Too many genuine talents seem to take to their beds too early, — or to their hammocks. (A favorite way for Brazilian writers to have their pictures taken is pleasantly supine, in a fringed hammock.)
Chapter 8. Groups and Individuals
There is one anecdote Brazilians never tire of telling to illustrate their attitude towards race-relations. When some of the ladies at Pedro II’s court refused to dance with the famous Negro engineer André Rebouças, Princess Isabel herself crossed the room and asked him to dance with her. It is a nice story, and true; and it is also true that Pedro II employed several Negroes and mulattoes in high positions and that the devoted Rebouças followed him into exile and eventually died in poverty. Unfortunately this story does not necessarily prove racial tolerance; Princess Isabel was a true princess and had been well brought-up, — bem educada, as they say.
There is a better story. In 1950 Katherine Dunham was turned away from one of the big hotels in São Paulo with the excuse that there were no vacant rooms. Overnight this became a national scandal, and within days a law was passed against any discrimination whatsoever in the future. The fact that such a law had never even been thought of up until then tells almost all one needs to know about Brazil’s attitude towards the Negro. (The hotel was supposed to have acted as it did out of deference to the prejudices of its North American clientele.)
Brazilians are proud of their fine record in race-relations. Rather, their attitude can be best described by saying that the upper-class Brazilian is usually proud of his racial tolerance, while the lower-class Brazilian is not aware of his; he just practises it. The occasional anti-Negro, or racista (and this applies equally well to the occasional anti-semite), usually proves to be one of two types: the unthinking member of “society” who has got into anti-Negro or anti-Jewish “society” in his travels, and has lost his native Brazilian tolerance, or sadder still — the European emigrant who comes to Brazil having suffered in his own country because of his race or poverty, and (probably unaccustomed to Negroes, anyway) despises and is rude to them.
The old upper-class looks down on the new middle-class, because of its vulgarity or bad manners, much more than on the Negroes or mulattoes. Part of this is nostalgia for the days when there was no middle-class, part economic pressure, and part old-fashioned snobbishness. One often feels sorry for the small but growing middle-class; surely old-fashioned Brazil should have more patience with it. The still-simple class-divisions and types seem 19th century, — almost Dickensian, if a writer so remote from everything Brazilian can be mentioned in connection with Brazil.
A young Jewish businessman, intelligent, but not well-read or well-travelled, was astounded when, planning his first trip to the United States, he was warned about “restricted” hotels. The idea of being discriminated against had never occurred to him. Also, — and this illustrates one of Brazil’s great weaknesses, its provincialism, built up over long centuries of remoteness from Europe — (it took […] days in a sailing vessel to get to Europe from Brazil, as compared with […] days from North America) — this same young Jew was equally astounded to be told that the sufferings of the Jews under Hitler had anything to do with him, he had never realized there was such a thing as racial solidarity.
It is true that the Negro or mulatto is a “second-class citizen” rarely in important positions or even good jobs, and almost always poor. But since most of the population is in exactly the same situation and suffers the same deprivations, his sufferings do not mark him out as very different from anyone else. Negroes want to be “light,” claro, have “good” (straight) hair, and “good” (not flat) noses. They are sometimes treated with the condescending, indulgent humor found in the southern U.S. — & there are hundreds of Negro myths — but again it is not so very different from the way lower-class whites are treated. They have equal opportunity and education, as far as it goes, which is usually not very far as yet; and in the arts. Aleijadinho, Machado de Assis, Mário de Andrade — all were mulattoes. After Machado de Assis’s death a friend called on his widow. The Senhora Machado de Assis glanced at her husband’s photograph on the table and made her only recorded comment on the fact that she, a white woman, had married a mulatto. “What a pity he was so dark,” she said.
The widespread poverty, backwardness, ignorance, and suffering in Brazil are tragic; for millions, life is hungry and dirty, short and cruel. And yet — to a South African or a North American or anyone who has lived in a colonial country, — to be able to hear a black cook call her small, elderly, white mistress minha negrinha (my little nigger) as a term of affection, comes as a revelation, — a breath of fresh air at last.
It was not planned; it just happened. But Brazil now realizes that her racial situation is one of her greatest assets. Racial mixtures can be seen all over the country. In the north, in the Amazon region, Portuguese and Indian have produced the caboclo, small, well-built, straight noses, bright eyes — a very attractive physical type. The northeast, after generations of poor diet, has produced the cabeça-chata, or “flat-head,” who is also apt to be small, somewhat rickety, with thin arms and legs and a large head, but quick, and certainly prolific. In the south under better living conditions and with little or no Negro admixture, the type is more Portuguese, sometimes with German blood, bigger, fairer, with clear skin, calmer — but pugnacious, even inclined to violence. It is in and around the big cities of Rio and São Paulo that one gets every racial type mixed together, types that have lost their racial clarity along with their former agricultural skills and beautiful backlands manners. A man in Goiás will know the name and habits of every beast and bird around him; but the people of regions that have fallen into agricultural decay are sickly-looking bad farmers, to whom every insect is only a bicho, or every tree is the “five-leaf,” and all are subject to destruction. The importance of nutrition in Brazil is shown by the fact that the richer and older the family, the taller and bigger-boned they are apt to be. Sometimes their servants from the “north” or the “interior” appear almost like dwarfs beside them.