Masculinity Left to Be Desired

Chapter Five explores social and cultural practices that challenged traditional conventions of gender and sexuality in Brazilian society. In the late 1970s, emergent feminist and gay movements succeeded in expanding the range of leftist political debates to include discussions around gender roles, sexual desire, corporal pleasure, and other issues previously regarded as personal or private and therefore outside the realm of the political. These activists sought to link political repression to diverse forms of sexual repression such as the maintenance of male dominated gender relations, the policing of female sexuality, or the violent suppression of homosexuality. Here the author draws on the alternative press, especially the largest gay journal Lampião da Esquina. He examines here the influential work by performers who subverted gender norms, like former tropicalists Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, the gender-bending troupe Dzi Croquettes, and gay icon Ney Matogrosso. The author also discusses left-wing intellectuals, including former guerillas such as Fernando Gabeira, who sought to redefine notions of masculinity during the final phase of military rule.

Experience the Experimental

Chapter 2 explores the connections between the artistic avantgarde and the counterculture. A small, but influential group of artists sometimes identified as “marginal” or “underground” coalesced in the aftermath of Tropicália. Cultura marginal may be located at the intersection of two cultural phenomenon: On one hand it had deep affinities with the emergent counterculture. On the other hand, cultura marginal was indebted to the mid-century constructivist avant-garde, especially neo-concretism. The author discusses the work of experimental artist, Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, who developed a series of environmental and performative works that demanded the active participation of spectators to create meaning. The author explores Oiticica’s dialogue with experimental writer and songwriter, Waly Salomão, whose work circulated within the rarified field of experimental writing, while also finding a mass audience through popular music, notably in the performances of Gal Costa. The author devotes a section to the journalist and artist Torquato Neto, who promoted cultura marginal and also performed in “Nosferato no Brasil,” a celebrated example of Super 8 film. Finally, the author analyzes the publication Navilouca, a graphic and textual project that brought together key figures of cultura marginal and the avantgarde.

Desbunde

Focusing on Rio de Janeiro, the epicenter of the countercultural scene in Brazil, the first chapter analyzes the emergence of a local hippie movement, known by the neologism desbunde, in the late sixties and early seventies, the most repressive period of military rule. For young people who opposed the authoritarian regime, there seemed to be three options: join the clandestine struggle, leave the country, or desbundar, or “drop out,” and live on the margins of society. The author analyzes the circulation of countercultural ideas and styles in a vibrant alternative press, such as O Pasquim, and the spaces associated with them, such as the Ipanema neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The author devotes a section to the work of Luiz Carlos Maciel, a journalist who propagated countercultural ideas and practices with reference to Brazilian and international contexts. The author also focuses on the work of Raul Seixas, a Brazilian rock musician who advocated for an “alternative society.” This chapter examines the tensions between the counterculture’s disengagement from capitalist society and the emergence of a consumer market with its own advertising language, which sought to appeal to a broader section of urban middle-class youth.

Power and Joy

The Introduction discusses the term “counterculture” in relation to diverse historical contexts to refer to individual and collective resistance to political authority, social conventions, or established aesthetic values. To illustrate some of the values and concerns of the counterculture, the author discusses three poems associated with poesia marginal in Brazil. While noting its theoretical formulation in relation to youth culture and dissent in the United States during the 1960s, the author shows how the term applied to diverse Latin American contexts during the Cold War period, notably Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. In relation to Brazil, I discuss the counterculture in relation to the the rise of an authoritarian military that stifled civil society dissent and censored artistic expression, producing what some critics called the vazio cultural, or “cultural void.” Finally, I show how the counterculture emerged with Tropicália, an artistic movement that coalesced in 1968 with particular strength in the field of popular music.

The Sweetest Barbarians

The third chapter discusses the northeastern state of Bahia, particularly its capital Salvador, which emerged as something of a mecca for Brazilian and other South American youth, who identified with the counterculture. An important center for Afro-Brazilian culture, Bahia was imagined as a place of non-western spirituality and cultural alterity, much in the way that Mexico and India were respectively seen by North American and European hippies. Youth from all over Brazil and South America flocked to Salvador and to the beach community Arembepe, where they founded a permanent commune. Bahian musicians, including former tropicalists who toured together as the Doces Bárbaros (“Sweet Barbarians”) popularized this image with songs alluding to Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, and other symbols of regional black culture. The local alternative press, such as the paper Verbo Encantado, also promoted Bahia as a destination for alternative youth. In an effort to boost tourism, the state government promoted Bahia as a mystical destination for young travelers, even as it sought to control and suppress the influx of hippies and the spread of drug consumption.

Epilogue

In “Os sobreviventes” (The survivors), a short story by Caio Fernando Abreu, a couple takes stock of a decade while chain smoking and sipping on vodka. To the sound of Angela Ro Ro, a lesbian torch singer who was popular in the late 1970s, the couple reflect on their past struggles, their shifting sexualities, and their intellectual passions. They are survivors of the long period of military rule who nurtured utopian dreams and indulged their passions and senses, but they have now been left disillusioned just as the country is returning to democratic rule....

Black Rio

Chapter Four examines the specifically black urban counterculture associated with the so-called Black Rio movement. Black Rio was a cultural phenomenon that brought together predominantly black, working-class youth from Rio’s north zone for dance parties, called bailes soul featuring recorded music from the United States. The author discusses in particular the work of Dom Filó, a black activist and baile soul promoter. At the same time, local Brazilian artists, like Tim Maia and Gerson King, forged a distinctly Brazilian soul music sung in Portuguese. Largely dismissed by critics as a passing fad, the Black Rio movement can be understood as a cultural response to dominant racial discourse, which celebrated Brazil as a racially democratic mestiço nation largely free from racism. Though not overtly or stridently political, the Black Rio movement created conditions for Afro-Brazilian youth to affirm a distinct ethnic identity. This chapter places these black cultural movements in the context of countercultural discourse, seeking to explore points of dialogue and discord with other social movements.