volume 3
eu quis cantar minha canção iluminada de sol // soltei os panos sobre os mastros no ar // soltei os tigres e os leões nos quintais // mas as pessoas na sala de jantar // são ocupadas em nascer e morrer
-- panis e circensis, os mutantes, 1968
a brief respite of daily affairs, or, how the banana republic killed the radio star
If you watch a videoclip this weekend, and it might be a good idea to do so, then I highly recommend you watch this one:
Sergio Mendes was not part of the Tropicália movement, he came too early - and was probably not political enough but if you watch the videoclip you recognize the foundational elements, which are myriad, ranging from cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political. Generally the idea of the thing was twofold: (i) to create a South American cultural foundation and (ii) use this culutral foundation as a basis for a countercultural movement against the percieved squareness of the time (which was incidentally - at least partly - due to the military dictatorship). While important, I think the movement missed its mark. Still I like to imagine an alternative future where it succeeded and how a city like, say Manaus, might look like in 2030‘s Tropicália.
If you choose to watch another videoclip, and why not, then this one is also good:
Now by this time we are in full Tropicália mode - this band, the Mutantes were one of the most important members. Aesthetically, the main themes of Tropicália can be understood best in terms of „electric fusion“. The dawn of electric instruments, especially the guitar, applied to more traditional cultural aspects. In music, classic Brazilian rythms such as samba and baiao were combined electric guitars and avant-guarde experimentation bordering on artistic interventions. In art you have a lust for color and visual excess with saturated hues combined with tropical flora and collage motifs. In architecture you have an enhanced sense of spaciality and mood and lighting with contrasts of concrete and dark wood and plants.
One of the most striking (to me) aspects - and one that doesn‘t get discussed enough, at least not in the more official channels, is the psychedelic nature of the movement. The 60’s and 70‘s were ripe with such movements, Electric Kool Aid type of cultural revolutions, and Brazil was certainly not spared but the whole thing took a life of it‘s own there with the concerted effort of tying psychedelic liberation (color as voltage, sound that bends time, etc.) to local folklore and tradition. The concept that emerged out of it called antropofagia - cultural cannibalism.
In contrast to the US countercultural movement of leaving all structure behind (the „Turn on, Tune in, Drop out“ of Timothy Leary) this was more of an introspective look into the identity of the participants and their culture. What was the „Brazilianness“ that was worth defending and propagating into the future?
Instead of eschewing everything and starting again, Tropicália sought to build on clean, strong, symbolic foundations and accelerate into the future that the space (and psychedelic) era promised.
A tangram is a puzzle consisting of 7 flat shapes which can be put together to form pictures, letters or numbers. The objective of the puzzle is to form a specific shape using all seven pieces. For that, all 7 shapes in the puzzle must touch and none should overlap.
“We, Brazilians, are like Robinsons: we are always awaiting for the ship that will take us from the island in which a shipwreck threw us.”
Lima Barreto, in Transatlantismo
I, Brazilian, confess
My guilt my exile
Dry bread every day
Tropical melancholy
Black loneliness:
This is the end of the world
Torquato Neto, "Marginália II"
tropical tangram of brazil, 2025
Tropical
Bali is the only Hindu-majority province of Indonesia, renowned for its cuisine and sophisticated art forms, including the gamelan percussion orchestra music.
Baly Topical is a low-budget energy drink described by its manufacturer, Baly do Brasil, as “a blend of flavors that brings the Brazilian taste in a mix of yellow fruits. Combining flavors of tropical fruits, this flavor is like summer all year-long.”
It is manufactured in the Brazilian city of Tubarão, state of Santa Catarina. Each 250 millilitres contain 765 milligram of taurine, and it can be found in cans of 250ml, 473 ml and a 2-liter bottle.
Exile
Santa Catarina concentrates on its shoreline, some of the oldest remnants of ancient populations in Brazil. The archaeological sites of sambaquis (huge piles of seashells) date back to the year 4,800 BC and document the culture of the Jê and other indigenous peoples.
The state capital was first named Nossa Senhora do Desterro – “Our Lady of Exile” – also referred to simply as Desterro. It was founded by the bandeirante Francisco Dias Velho (1622-1687) in 1673, when he settled there with his family, aides, and 500 enslaved indigenous people.
Together with Jesuit priests, bandeirantes are considered a driving force of the landward expansion of Brazil during the colonial rule. They were reputedly pivotal in exploring 2/3 of the country’s current territory, in their missions to extract the land's natural riches, including minerals, indigenous capture and mercenary work in the 17th century, when the Portuguese crown was unable to claim interest of such a continental swath of land.
In 1894, the city’s name was changed from Desterro to Florianópolis.
Republic
Floriano Peixoto (1839-1895) was the second president of the First Brazilian Republic (1889-1930) and the inspiration for Florianópolis’ name. He rose to power illegally when Marshall Deodoro da Fonseca resigned and amassed the support of the Armed Forces and the political establishment for the move.
Centralization versus decentralization has been a recurring theme in Brazilian politics since before the Republic, and Peixoto was a centralizer. He brutally suppressed his antagonists in two major conflicts, the Federalist Revolution and the Naval Revolts.
The former was particular violent: it lasted between 1893 and 1895 in the South of Brazil and is also known as the War of the Beheadings, where local elites of Peixoto’s loyalists battled liberals who wanted more autonomy. The cult of Peixoto’s personality and the politician’s authoritarianism are depicted comically in Lima Barreto’s novel Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma (The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma).
Patriotism
In the novel, Quaresma leaves a mental hospital, after being interned due to his acute patriotic feelings, and ends up in Rio during the Naval Revolts.
He meets Peixoto, an opportunistic and opaque individual, who makes him into a major and the head of a clumsy artillery platoon. For denouncing the ongoing arbitrary executions to the President, Quaresma himself is convicted for treason and ends up before a firing squad.
The abolition of slavery in Brazil by the daughter of Emperor Pedro II, Princess Isabel, was one of the main factors behind the monarchy’s downfall that led to the Proclamation of the Republic.
Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881-1922) was himself a grandson of slaves and it was on his 7th birthday that Princess Isabel signed the Abolition of Slavery into law. He recalls the celebratory mood of the day as a first-person witness of the event in the chronicle “Maio”, published in 1911.
Paraguay
Before the Abolition of 1889, there were many bills to gradually restrict slavery in Brazil. The Atlantic slave traffic was a very lucrative activity that involved many key elite personalities, which delayed this process for decades and objected to the enforcement of existing laws.
Libertarian ideas were perceived as extremist in the political establishment throughout most of the 19th century. The War of Paraguay (1864-1870), also known as the Triple Alliance War, was an important landmark to change this scenario.
The Triple Alliance was formed by Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to contain the expansionists urges of Paraguay, a then recent country undergoing an intense industrialization process.
Slaves played a major role in the conflict, enrolled as troops in Brazil. On one hand, local elites were allowed to draft slaves as substitutes for their own sons. On the other hand, an imperial decree of 1866 liberated slaves serving in the army.
The coexistence of black population within the army for years allowed a broader mentality of the military elites, who would partially take office in parliamentary duties in the coming decades. The liberated slaves would take place in the free society and claim their rights, specially in urban areas for the upcoming years, when a series of laws would at last effectively restrict and end slavery.
Mauá
Manufacturing was prohibited in Brazil until 1808. It was only made possible after the Portuguese Royal Family fled from Napoleon and transferred the court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 – the first legal printing press entered the Brazilian territory that same year.
The Viscount of Mauá (1819 - 1889) is considered the first Brazilian industrialist and banker in 19th century. Among his major features are the creation of the first railway in the country in 1854 and navigation of the Amazonas River by steamboat.
The encounter of a rural dweller with the modernity of the trains is the starting point of the pioneer 1869 Brazilian comic strip by Angelo Agostini (1843-1910), As aventuras de Nhô Quim, ou impressões de uma viagem à corte (“The adventures of Nhô Quim, or impressions of a trip to the Court”).
Nhô Quim is a hick from the state of Minas Gerais, “son of rich but honorable people” who gets a trip to the Court (then the capital, Rio de Janeiro) from his father as a distraction from a young love. The strip shows his inadequacy with the urban costumes and fashions of the court.
In the train sequence, he shows his hospitality offering a stranger a piece of cheese kept in his boot, almost jumps off the vehicle chasing his hat, and thinks he is dead after entering a long tunnel.
As aventuras de Nhô Quim, Ou impressões de uma viagem à Corte - Angelo Agostini, 2024
Beyond
The imprisonment of the steamboat Marquês de Olinda in Asunción was the landmark for Brazil to declare war against Paraguay in 1864. The boat transported the president of the province of Mato Grosso, who died in prison and never again reached its capital, Cuiabá.
Cuiabá is the endpoint of Lourenço Mutarelli’s (1964) conspiracy novel O filho mais velho de Deus e/ou Livro IV (“God’s eldest son and/or Book IV”).
Most characters in the book are named after serial killers. The protagonist George Henry Lamson is known there as “George, the gringo”. He drinks alcohol vigorously and eats escaldado with the locals and tells them about a love affair he had with a reptilian, Sarah, in New York.
George is a trivial character, who took part in a witness protection plan in the US. He’s from Minneapolis and his most interesting ice-breaker is to have studied with the actor who played MacGyver in the TV series – an information met with surprise only in Brazil, where people seem to suffer from “reverse xenophobia”.
It is described that, when not eating with his local friend Julio, George would eat at McDonald’s, where he’d have heard a nice joke if he understood Portuguese well enough:
“He was in the line of McDonald’s and two 11-year-old boys were before him. They wore school uniforms and looked like good boys.
One of them said:
–Look, with two more reais we can order a rustic potato.”
The other answered:
–With two reais I fuck your mother and can still spare two reais.
Ah! The Brazilians..."