Barack Obama Is Brazilian

Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte

BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN

(Re)Signifying Race Relations in Contemporary Brazil Barack Obama is Brazilian Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte Barack Obama is Brazilian

(Re)Signifying Race Relations in Contemporary Brazil Emanuelle K. F. Oliveira-Monte Department of Spanish and Portuguese Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN, USA

ISBN 978-1-137-59480-8 ISBN 978-1-137-58353-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.

Cover credit: © Danil Trapeznikov/Alamy Stock Vector Cover design by Tjaša Krivec

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. To Christopher Joseph Monte “I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well” To Gabriel Samuel Monte and Isabella Catherine Monte (in memoriam) Acknowledgements

The idea for this project started in November 2013, when my friend Renata Wasserman invited me to be the external member of a doctoral dissertation committee of one of her students, Theresa Lindsey, at Wayne State University. I was to participate in the qualifying exam and deliver a lecture on any topic of my research. At that time, I was working on a manuscript about representations of race, crime, and violence in contemporary Brazilian literature and flm. I had several parts of the study already written, but was having diffculties organizing them coherently. Moreover, the extremely dark nature of the project started to take a toll on me. Consequently, I wanted to lecture on another topic and, after some research, I got interested in the representations of Barack Obama in Brazil. Undoubtedly, as this book underlines, Obama’s election to the U.S. presidency had a tremendous impact on the collective unconscious of the African Diaspora; hence, I became intrigued by what Obama’s victory meant to Brazil, a country famous for its racial democracy myth and where the majority of the population is of African ancestry. This manuscript started from that essay read at Wayne State University, and I thank Renata Wasserman for the opportunity to visit her department and to deliver a talk on a promising, but still very immature, topic. My gratitude also extends to my friends Carolina Castellaños, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Dickinson College, and Robert Kelz, assistant professor of German at the University of Memphis, for having invited me to present my work at their institutions in late 2015. Comments during

vii viii Acknowledgements the Q & A sessions provided me with valuable material during the manuscript editing process. When I was halfway through the book, the Charlie Hebdo attack happened on January 14, 2015. This violence was a reminder of how relevant the work of cartoonists is; they are the consciousness of their nations, making us laugh and critically refect upon current national and international problems. This book is dedicated to all the cartoonists and artists who, through their work, place key topics at the forefront of society’s debate with talent and wit. I especially would like to thank all the Brazilian artists and cartoonists who contributed to this manuscript: Renato Luiz Campos Aroeira, Roberlan Borges, Hélio de la Peña, Lute, Samuca, Pedro Marques, Fellipe Elias da Silva, Pelicano, Marcos Borges, Carlos Latuff, Cerino, Regi, Boopo, Iotti, and Sattu Rodrigues. Your amazing work informed my scholarship and made me laugh! It was a joy and a pleasure to get to know you! A special thank you goes to Diogo Ramalho, maker of the blog Humor Político, where many Brazilian cartoonists post their creations. I found many of the cartoons used in this study on this funny and fascinating site. I have built my academic career on the captivating topics of Afro- Brazilian literature and race relations. Looking back, I realize that I owe much of my professional path to my adviser in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles, Randal Johnson. I was a very young and academically unpolished graduate student, and Johnson not only provided me with invaluable mentor- ing, but also helped to shape my line of work. During graduate school, I wanted to write my doctoral dissertation on the literature of the new social movements in Brazil; prudently and wisely, Johnson suggested I limit my focus and concentrate my interests on the Afro-Brazilian movement and the question of race. I thank Randal Johnson for giving me these fascinating and important topics of a lifetime! Very few people worldwide study Afro-Latin American literature or, most specifcally, Afro-Brazilian literature and culture. I am very grateful to be part of this tight-knit and supportive group. I am forever indebted to Marvin Lewis and Russell Hamilton (in memoriam), true pioneers and two of the greatest scholars of the feld of Afro-Diaspora literature, whom I had the pleasure to work with early in my career. Their infuence on my work is undisputable. Christopher Dunn from Tulane University has always been a dear friend and empathetic colleague. When he came to give a lecture in 2015 at Vanderbilt University on his wonderful new ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix book Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil (2016), I described my manuscript during a dinner conversation, and Dunn enthusiastically encouraged me to conclude this project. Isis da Costa and Lúcia Costigan, from Ohio State University, have always been a constant presence, sharing work-related projects and life experiences. Antonio Tillis, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Houston; Ana Beatriz Gonçalves from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora; Cristina Rodriguez from North Carolina Central University; and Eliza Rizo from Iowa State University are all part of a wonderful community of Afro-Latin American scholars coming from the University of Missouri, Columbia, where I was fortunate enough to hold my frst academic position. Thank you all for being there, despite the long distance and busy schedules! Moreover, I am also very privileged to be part of such a wonderful group as the Luso-Brazilian studies community in the United States. Since my graduate school years, David William Foster has always been an amazing mentor and friend; thank you, David, for your wisdom, generosity, and friendship! I had the pleasure of working with Luiz Fernando Valente of Brown University on several committees of various professional associations, and he has always impressed me with his professional- ism and kindness. Jeremy Lehnen from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, has been a constant intellectual presence in my life, sharing academic interests and lesson plans. No woman is an island, thus my work would have not been possible without the support of amazing women scholars from different generations. Peggy Sharpe (Florida State University), Cristina Pinto-Bailey (Washington and Lee University), Susan Quinlan (University of Georgia) and Phyllis Peres (American University)—since the beginning of my career, I have been inspired by your strong work ethic and loving hearts! Similar research interests have solidifed old bonds and helped to form new ones; Rebecca Atencio (Tulane University) and Regina Dalcastagné (University of Brasília) have been very important infuences on my work and have graced my life with their friendship. Leila Lehnen (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque)—no words can ever express how grateful I am for your constant presence in my life, on a personal and professional level! I am positive that I could not be standing where I am now without the emotional and academic support of these amazing women! My colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese have provided me with sure guidance when needed. I would like to thank the x Acknowledgements

Chair, Benigno Trigo, and the Vice Chair, Victoria Burrus, as well as Earl Fitz, Cathy Jrade, Edward Friedman, and Ruth Hill for their continuous advice. Andres and Marivi Zamora and Christina Karageorgou- Bastea have been caring friends in times of need. I thank Victoria Gardner and Alicia Lorenzo for our unforgettable coffee hours, where we laughed and chatted about the tribulations and joys of the profession. I could not have asked for a more gifted, thoughtful, and appreciative core of graduate students. Kelly Samiotou, Charles Geyer, Jacob Brown, and Fernando Varella—I thank you all for being part of our academic family! Outside my department, I found colleagues who have always provided me with inestimable help. From the Department of History, Marshall Eakin, Celso Castillo, and Jane Landers are not only remark- able scholars, but also incredible people; how lucky I am to count on you all! Since I started as an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, Lynn Ramey from the Department of French and Italian has generously embraced me, giving me priceless career advice and a friend’s shoulder to lean on. When I was searching for potential presses to publish this manuscript, my colleagues highly praised Palgrave Macmillan. For this interdiscipli- nary study on comparative race relations, I was seeking a press with a strong academic component, as well as a sophisticated marketing strategy and global distribution. I am very glad that I decided to send my manuscript to such a solid and innovative company as Palgrave. I would especially like to thank Shaun Vigil and Glenn Ramirez (editor and assistant editor, respectively, of flm, culture, and media studies) for believing in this project, even when there were bumps on the road that caused unex- pected delays. Thank you for always being extremely accessible, courte- ous, and professional! I thank the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and great editing suggestions, which certainly helped to enrich the fnal product. My gratitude also goes to Ron Marmarelli, my English copy editor, who has been with me for many tortuous but fun years! My prose is forever changed because of your competent reviewing! I completed Chaps. 2 and 3 of this book while pregnant with my son Gabriel in 2014. What was supposed to be a period of trial and anxiety, because I was put on bed rest, truly became a time of contempla- tion and nurturing. In many ways, I owe my son and this manuscript to the expertise of doctors who came together to make my dream of motherhood come true. I thank Dr. Andrew Toledo as well as his amazing nurses and staff from Reproductive Associates of Atlanta for never ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi giving up on me. It so happened that the ffth attempt was the charm! I also would like to thank Dr. Douglas Brown, from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Center at Saint Thomas Medical Partner; Melissa Grooms, R.N., from Maternal and Infant Services at Saint Thomas Midtown; and Dr. Cornelia Graves, from Tennessee Maternal Fetal Medicine in Nashville, for advocating for both mother and child during a diffcult pregnancy and delivery. Gabriel and I could not have been in safer hands. It took a village to conceive my Gabriel, and so it goes that it takes a village to raise him! While I was rounding off the pages of Chaps. 3 and 4, Valerie Marshall, Elizabeth Becker, and Karen Rodgers were tending to Gabriel with love and care. I especially thank Valerie Marshall for being much more than a nanny, but rather a second mother to Gabriel and part of a loving extended family! Finally, most of my gratitude goes to my family. My father, Luiz Carlos Felinto de Oliveira, has always inspired me to relentlessly pursue my dreams; my stepmother Cristiane Ferreira Barroso has always lent me attentive ears and provided consolation in troubling times; and my brother Erick Felinto has been always present as a loving sibling. Thank you, Erick, for suggesting some of the readings in the feld of media studies! My eternal gratitude goes to my wonderful in-laws, Catherine and Joseph Monte, who opened their arms and hearts to receive me as a daughter, being there for me in sickness and in health. Christopher Monte, my husband and friend, a true companion through wonderful and terrible times, I witnessed our love to become stronger in adversity. Thank you for being a caring, considerate, and loving partner and father. To Isabella Catherine Monte, my angel in heaven, I love you and miss you. To Gabriel Samuel Monte, you are the light that brightens my days, now and forever. I love you more than words can express! I thank my family—my rock and my safe port in the storm—for always being there for me. Ultimately, I thank God, an accepting and loving God, who rejects hate and bestows grace and love upon every living thing! Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land of Racial Democracy 17

3 Barack Obama Is Brazilian 53

4 Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor 87

5 “Our” Candidate Obama: Barack Obama in the Brazilian Elections 117

6 Conclusion 141

Endnotes 151

Bibliography 181

Index 203

xiii List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father 23 Fig. 2.2 Cover of A origem dos meus sonhos 25 Fig. 2.3 Cover of Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido 33 Fig. 2.4 Barack Obama Sr. 36 Fig. 2.5 Breno Mello 37 Fig. 2.6 “Esse é o Cara” by Lute 44 Fig. 2.7 “G20: Peça ao barbudo, ele é o cara” by Samuca 45 Fig. 3.1 “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” by Roberlan 59 Fig. 3.2 “Não vote em branco” by Gordonerd 61 Fig. 3.3 “Presidente Obama: Brasil—Março, 2011” 65 Fig. 3.4 “Presidente Obama (de la Peña): Brasil—Março 2011” 66 Fig. 3.5 “Yes, We Can/Yes, Weekend” by Lou 67 Fig. 3.6 “Obama foi ao Rio” by Pedro Marques 70 Fig. 3.7 “Obama no Brasil!” by Fellipe Elias da Silva 71 Fig. 3.8 “Obama Go Home!” 79 Fig. 3.9 “Obama, volte para casa!” 81 Fig. 3.10 “Jantar com Obama” by Pelicano 81 Fig. 3.11 “I love Pré-Sal!” by Marcos Borges 82 Fig. 3.12 “Obama chega ao Rio…” by Carlos Latuff 82 Fig. 4.1 “Isso não é sério, é?” by Aroeira 89 Fig. 4.2 “Espionagem: Obama quer conhecer o Brasil a fundo” by Cerino 94 Fig. 4.3 “Não adianta se esconder, Obama!” by Regi 95 Fig. 4.4 “Olha lá, Obama…” by Boopo 97 Fig. 4.5 “Porra, Obama!” by Aroeira 98

xv xvi List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 “Obama!!” by Iotti 99 Fig. 4.7 “Ô Obama, a sua esposa não vai gosta” 104 Fig. 4.8 “Você é muito mais gata que a Angela Merkel” 106 Fig. 4.9 “Não fque assim … Você sabe que só espiono você!” by Aroeira 109 Fig. 4.10 “Chupa, Obama… Essa vai pro Face Agorovsky” by Aroeira 111 Fig. 4.11 “Encontro de Cópula” 114 Fig. 4.12 “Dilma rejuvenesceu” 115 Fig. 5.1 “Use bem seu voto” 125 Fig. 5.2 “Dilma, Coração Valente” 128 Fig. 5.3 “Dilma Rousseff” by Sattu Rodrigues 129 Fig. 5.4 “Uai We Can” by Sérgio Kalamakian 132 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Barack Obama’s election to the American presidency in 2008 sparked a renewed interest in the theme of race, not only in the Americas, but also worldwide. In the United States, the election of a black man to the offce of the most prominent country in the global, political, and economic landscape led some analysts to postulate that North America was living in a post-racial era; that is, theoretically the nation had forged an environment that surpassed racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice (Ifll; Kinder and Dale-Riddler; Tesler and Sears). Obama’s road to the presidency goes beyond the personal story of a middle-class mixed-race boy who through education ascended socially and landed in the White House. Obama is an open sign, in which people’s expectations, anxieties, and hopes are placed and displaced in order to respond to society’s needs and perspectives. In “The Tale of Two Obamas,” David Theo Golberg analyzes the “two Obamas in the body of Barack” (201): Obama the Person and Obama the Phenomenon. In a so-called post-racial era, Golberg underscores that Obama emerges as a new face of America: self-describing as a “mutt” and a “mongrel,” he becomes the “quintessential American … unabashed and unashamed about his resonant mestizaje” (202). The “new Negro” is thus refashioned into the post-racial politician, as an African–American who goes beyond black, in whom the American trumps the African, pushing the latter category to the background. In his article, Goldberg reminds of

© The Author(s) 2018 1 E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_1 2 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE the dangers of post-raciality; in other words, post-raciality is about new markets and new identities, a multiplication and proliferation of racial inputs, which turn multiplicity into denial: a denial of historical racial conditions and contemporary constraints, or a denial of “the legacy of racially driven inequalities” (203). In the neoliberal landscape, the intersection of race and class renders the once black subject whiter by vir- tue of his class standing (203), but offers no respite from society’s real oppressive conditions. In this new post-racial era, the African–American is never American enough, continuing to be the “other.” Goldberg concludes by affrming that post-racialism creates a pernicious society in which racism does not emerge in formalized state policy, but appears more diffused in the social body (and is, in this sense, not less damag- ing): “racisms are manufactured and manifested more silently, informally, [seen as] expressions of private preference schemes … reproducing the given and seemingly gone” (211). Obama’s rise to the presidency led American scholars and the general public to refect on the new meaning(s) of race in America, which was revealed to be “a new” that had more of the same. In poor communities, black people remained oppressed, and, outside their perimeters, they were quickly reminded that, no matter their privileged class status, they were still confned to stereotyped representational schemes. Racial tensions continued to be visible during Obama’s presidency; in fact, they acutely escalated in the last years of his mandate. Racial profling and killings of black citizens at the hands of police have brought tensions to a boiling point, leading to riots (such as the one in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown on August 9, 2014) and the formation of the movement “Black Lives Matter” (after George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin). The movement is a call to black people to

actively resist our dehumanization, … a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. (“About the Black Lives Matter Network”) 1 INTRODUCTION 3

“Black Lives Matter” placed racial tensions once more at the core of U.S. human rights debates. In the Obama era, racism outmaneuvered post-raciality, demonstrating that the election of a black president did not bring a less bigoted social reality. Still, Obama’s symbolic appeal persists, even after he has left power. Going beyond American national politics, his election also had a tremendous impact on the imaginary of the African Diaspora. What did Obama’s victory mean to Africa, a continent plagued by authoritarianism and profound economic inequalities? Even prior to the Afro-American candidate’s victory, Cameroonian writer Alain Patrice Nganang1 announced that he was campaigning for Obama and celebrated the candidate as “his brother”: “je me sois dit qu’il m’était important d’aller battre champagne pour mon frère, car après tout, Obama est mon frère.” [I told myself that it was important to go and campaign for my brother, because after all, Obama is my brother.] Brotherhood is, therefore, expressed not only by the color of the skin or African ancestry, but—and most importantly—by the hope for change, locally and globally. Nevertheless, a shadow of doubt is cast when the Cameroonian writer poses the intriguing question “Et si Obama était camerounais?” In this article, “And What If Obama Were Cameroonian?” published in June 2008, Nganang notes that despotism in Cameroonian politics renders this proposition impossible. The established ruler would quickly crush an opposing Cameroonian Obama, as happened with economist Celestine Monga, who was imprisoned for criticizing President Paul Biya in an open letter in 1991. Biya ascended to power in 1983, after the resignation of President Ahmadou Ahidjo, and remains in the Cameroonian presidency today. Nganang, therefore, concludes that in Cameroonian politics, the racially and democratically charged credo “Yes, We Can” would be displaced by the oligarchical, repressive word “power,” thereby indicating the impossibility of forging a true Diasporic democracy in the African nation. Also in the post-election setting, Mozambican writer Mia Couto2 published in November 2009 “E Se Obama Fosse Africano?” [What If Obama Was African?], an article that saluted Obama’s victory. Like Nganang, Couto perceives Obama’s victory as a symbol of hope and change:

Os africanos rejubilaram com a vitória de Obama. Eu fui um deles. Depois de uma noite em claro, na irrealidade da penumbra da madrugada, as lágri- mas corriam quando ele pronunciou o discurso de vencedor. … Na noite 4 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

de 5 de Novembro, o novo presidente norte-americano não era apenas um homem que falava. Era a sufocada voz da esperança que se reerguia, liberta dentro de nós. Meu coração tinha votado, mesmo sem permissão: habitu- ado a pedir pouco, eu festejava uma vitória sem dimensões. Ao sair à rua, minha cidade havia se deslocado para Chicago, negros e brancos comun- gando de uma mesma surpresa feliz. (209) [Africans rejoiced with Obama’s victory. I was one of them. After stay- ing up all night, in the unreality of the penumbra of the dawn, tears ran (down my face) when he gave his victorious speech. … On the night of November 5, the new North American president was not only a man who spoke. He was the suffocated voice of hope that reemerged, freed inside of us. My heart had voted, even without permission: I used to ask for little, I celebrated a victory without dimensions. When I went to the streets, my city had moved to Chicago, blacks and whites sharing the same happy surprise].

Despite rejoicing this “happy surprise,” the Mozambican writer, much like his Cameroonian colleague, asserts the impossibility of an African Obama ever reaching power. This imaginary candidate would face insurmountable challenges on the road to the presidency of any African country. For example, the established ruler would employ any type of non-democratic strategy to keep his power, such as changing the constitution to extend his mandate or limiting the opposition candidate’s access to the media (Mia Couto 211). Most interesting, nevertheless, is that Obama’s biracial status would be a political handicap: “Sejamos cla- ros: Obama é negro nos Estados Unidos. Em África ele é mulato. … [O] novo presidente americano seria vilipendiado em casa como represent- ante dos ‘outros’, dos de outra raça.” [Let’s be clear: Obama is black in the United States. In Africa, he is a mulatto. … The new American president would be scorned at home as the representative of the “others,” of the ones of the other race.] (212) His mixed heritage, therefore, makes him an “unauthentic African,” whitening him in the eyes of the general public. The question of whether Obama is a black or mulatto man is central to his mutable identity. Obama would refer to himself mostly as black, but at times also hint that he is a mulatto, playing with this dual racial register and bringing more malleability to his racial status. In this sense, when considering Obama, black and mulatto (or biracial) will be used interchangeably in this study, as this represents the fexibility of Obama’s 1 INTRODUCTION 5 own racial register. This investigation analyzes an ever-changing Obama, who oscillates between being a “cosmopolitan mulatto” and a “black icon,” categories that play extremely well within Brazil’s fexible racial system and that country’s notion of social harmony. Undoubtedly, the 2008 American election captured the hearts and imagination of the entire globe; hence, Alain Patrice Nganang and Mia Couto expressed the feelings that populations experienced on the African continent. But what about Brazil, a country that has traditionally promoted its image of “racial paradise”? This current study proposes that Obama’s victory complicated the supposed harmonious balance of Brazilian racial discourse. International scholars have long investigated race relations in the United States and Brazil, frequently comparing and contrasting these two racial systems (see Gilberto Freyre; Carl Degler; Thomas Skidmore; Florestan Fernandes; Carlos Hasenbalg 1985, 1992, 1999; Nelson do Valle Silva; and more recently Edward Telles, just to name a few). Since the redemocratization period, Brazilian academ- ics, the black movement, and certain segments of civil society have been challenging the notion of racial democracy. In the midst of these new racial debates, Obama poses Brazilians with a new dilemma. To Brazilians he is “uma verdadeira batata quente,” a hot potato, leading them to face the realities of their own racial system. Would it be possible for this country to elect a black president committed to Afro-Brazilians and marginalized segments of the population? Or is racial democracy forever destined to be a myth, an appeasing discourse that, in reality, relegates blacks to society’s lower strata? In the market of racial relations, Brazilians have always considered the United States as the undesirable model, a society marked by profound racial violence and segregation, whereas Brazil emerges as a nation that has embraced all races and ethnicities, and that has always been known for its racial tolerance and absence of racism. However, the election of a black candidate to the highest offce of the most powerful nation in the world has been revealed to be a conundrum for Brazil, as this nation is faced with the possibility of considering the candidacy and election of a black president. In the land of presumed racial harmony, would it be possible to have an Afro-Brazilian president, identifed with black discourse and demands? In this sense, what did Obama’s victory mean to Brazil, a country in which over 50% of the population is black? This manuscript seeks to delve into the abovementioned questions, while examining Obama’s depictions in the Brazilian media, especially 6 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE vehicles of political humor, the charges políticas [political cartoons]. In the visual representations analyzed, another set of questions arises. How is Obama portrayed? What elements of Brazil’s racial conceptions are projected upon Obama’s fgure? Does Obama confrm or challenge the Brazilian racial representations’ imaginary? In a country where the myth of racial democracy has been systematically challenged by the black movement, and yet has demonstrated a tremendous enduring power, what does the election of a black American president represent? How do Brazilians (re)signify their own racial discourses in light of Obama’s victory? Barack Obama Is Brazilian delves into these intriguing questions, revealing a continuous dialogue between the United States and Brazil, a dialogue in which racial categories are continuously rearticulated and reformulated. This investigation seeks to demonstrate that Obama’s depictions either confrm or challenge Brazil’s racial relations imaginary. In this sense, if Brazil could not elect a black president, Brazilians had to show how Obama was not really American, but in reality a “true” Brazilian, if not by his nationality, then by his “essence.” To that end, Barack Obama Is Brazilian examines how Brazilians rearticulated Obama’s rise to power in light of their own racial perceptions, anxieties, and aspirations, using various types of cultural products, from the Brazilian Portuguese translation of Obama’s Dreams from My Father to political cartoons and Internet memes. Ultimately, this study intends to dialogue with the rich tradition that compares racial systems in Brazil and the United States, examining how their dynamics affect both nations. In this sense, the constant process of contrasting/comparing produces an intense dialogue on racial perceptions and representations between these two countries. Chapter 2, “Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land of Racial Democracy,” is subdivided into three sections. The frst section, “Dreams from My Father Revisited: From U.S. Black to Brazilian Mulatto,” discusses the publication and reception of Obama’s Dreams from My Father in Brazil, which occurred before the U.S. election, in the beginning of 2008. Mainstream media and blogger reviews seem to pay special attention to the episode in which Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, watches Marcel Camus’ flm Black Orpheus (1959). Here the Greek myth is transposed to a favela [slum] in Rio de Janeiro, and Orpheus is a poor Afro-Brazilian samba composer who hopes to achieve fame and fortune with his music, and attracts Eurydice, an inno- cent black woman from the countryside who recently migrated to the 1 INTRODUCTION 7 city. Ann Dunham watched the movie when she was young and loved Black Orpheus so much that she insisted Obama come with her to see the movie when he was an undergraduate student living in New York City. Although Obama was highly critical of the flm, it is important to note that the Brazilian translation of Dreams from My Father tried to highlight Brazil as a positive site of race relations by mistranslating some of the words in the English original. The Portuguese translation conveys an idea more attuned with the celebrated Brazilian notion of mestiçagem [miscegenation], downgrading Obama’s racial critique. The second section of Chap. 2, “Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack Obama,” investigates a curious book released in 2009, Fernando Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido [If it were not for Brazil, Barack Obama would have never been born.] As the title indicates, the phenomenon of Barack Obama—the man and the candidate— would not have been possible without Brazil. In other words, Brazil not only forged Obama himself (as Ann Dunham sought to recreate the movie’s exotic love affair with Obama Sr.), but also offered a “road map” for Obama to celebrate multiculturalism and multiracialism in the United States. From the “Brazilian spirit”—the essence of a country shaped by the harmonic mixing of races—Obama was born; therefore, Jorge suggests that Obama is Brazilian, if not by his birthplace, then by his “essence.” The last section of Chap. 2, “Lula and Obama: How Hope (Momentarily) Trumped Classism and Racism,” analyzes how the mainstream and social media depicted the relationship of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva and Barack Obama. This section focuses on Brazil’s rise in the global political and economic arena. The country withstood well the 2008 global economic crisis, taking its place as the sixth largest economy in the world. Brazilian President Lula (2002–2010) provided jobs to the lower-middle classes by increasing government spending and lifted 36 million people from extreme poverty, becoming one of the most prominent world leaders of the beginning of the twenty-frst century.3 Meanwhile, enduring the waves of the 2008 economic crash, the recently elected Obama sought to strengthen U.S.–Brazilian economic ties. Lula and Obama developed an amicable and close relationship, because they both rose from underprivileged backgrounds to occupy the most important public offce in their respective countries. In fact, Brazilian media frequently compared Lula and Obama: the frst a poor northeastern migrant who worked as a metallurgist in São Paulo and was 8 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE one of the founders of the Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party], the latter an African–American middle-class man who was a social activist in poor black neighborhoods in Chicago and became a senator for the state of Illinois. Sectors of the Brazilian media emphasized that, while Lula worked for the poor, Obama bridged the gap between blacks and whites by embracing his biracial heritage. Both leaders are inclusive— they connect class and race gaps respectively—, encompassing wider segments of society. It is not a coincidence that Obama’s motto was “hope and change” and Lula’s was “a esperança venceu o medo” [hope conquered fear]. Both the U.S. and Brazilian societies trumped racism and classism to realize their true American dream: no matter who you are, America, the New Continent, will embrace you. Thus, Obama’s “rhetoric of hope” greatly resonated with Brazilians. Nevertheless, when considering Obama’s rhetoric, Brazilians downplayed its political aspect (the trust in the institutions of an egalitarian state, which will ultimately uplift its citizens) to emphasize its social element (the inclusiveness of a multiracial society that incorporates its citizens through the power of miscegenation). In this sense, Chap. 3, “Barack Obama Is Brazilian,” seeks to understand how the Brazilian media reinvented Obama according to their country’s own racial anxieties and desires. Stephanie Li’s notion of “race-specifc, race-free language” provides a useful road map to comprehend the construction of Obama as a sign within various geographical and cultural contexts. Li proposes that Obama forges a “race-specifc, race-free language” speech that refects the legacy of multiculturalism in the United States, where the praising of diversity coexists with anxieties about how to face difference. The “race-specifc, race-free language” discourse emphasizes racial diversity, while refusing to speak about racial tensions. Chapter 3 examines how this conception converges with the Brazilian ideal of racial democracy: the celebration of African roots, and yet the denial of racial frictions. Obama is, therefore, a malleable sign that perfectly fts the Brazilian myth of racial harmony. To that end, the frst section of Chap. 3, “Obama, President of Brazil,” analyzes how Brazilian artists reimagined “Obama as Brazilian” prior to and immediately after the 2008 U.S. election. The same trend emerged during the 2011 Obama trip to Brazil, only 100 days short of the beginning of the government of the frst female elected president in the country, Dilma Rousseff. Section two of Chap. 3, “Obama as ‘One of Us’: Obama’s 2011 Visit to Brazil,” discusses how the media 1 INTRODUCTION 9 reappropriated the U.S. president as Brazilian, linking him to symbols of national identity, such as soccer and samba. Obama himself seemed to be very comfortable in his role as a Brazilian. In his frst encounter with President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva in Washington on March 15, 2009, he joked with journalists when he affrmed that he looked like a Brazilian (D’Ávila). Obama’s biracial heritage and multicultural personal history allow him to reinvent himself as a “brother,” instead of posing as a foreigner. In his article “Jambo Bwana: Kenya’s Barack Obama,” Keguro Macharia analyzes Obama’s performance of identity during his frst visit to Kenya as recounted in Dreams from My Father. When, in an open market, Obama wanted to buy a necklace, his sister Auma warned him that he was being charged the “wazungu price” [foreigner’s price, in Swahili], and not the “Kenyan price.” Obama asked his sister to tell the seller that he is Luo, an ethnic group from Kenya and Tanzania (qtd. in Macharia 214). Macharia notes that Obama understands that “the proper kind of identity allows one to gain certain privileges … and to negotiate the strangeness of a foreign space” (214). Therefore, in a foreign space (be it Kenya or Brazil), Obama perfectly articulates the interaction between friendship and kin- ship, exploring how to navigate multiple identities. By articulating his “Brazilianness,” Obama hoped to be accepted as an equal, consequently enjoying all privileges that would pertain to this group. Moreover, Obama’s themes of change and hope had a universal appeal, forging a “politics of empathy” (Sampson 54) which tapped into the voters’ emotions in order to elicit positive sentiments. According to Tony D. Sampson, the fascination with Obama went far beyond the United States, spreading to several parts of the globe mainly via social media networks (155). Obama’s “politics of empathy” stirred a “worldwide love contagion” that opposed the violence of emerging neocon- servative groups (154–155). Thus, “Obama-love,” as Sampson names it, represented affective fows that rejected homogeneity and celebrated difference, which revealed the positive role of globalization in relation to the issue of race (156–157). Since race is a key element of the affective themes in Brazil, Obama could be easily reshaped to become part of the country’s culture and identity. However, not all visual representations portrayed Obama in a positive light. As Macharia indicates, there are “moments in which Obama is both “brother” and “stranger,” the face of U.S. imperialism and the smile of racial fraternity” (214). In this sense, Obama at times emerges 10 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE as the dominant face of imperialism, threatening to exploit Brazil’s natural resources. Section three of Chap. 3, “Obama: The ‘Friend’ or the ‘Foe’?” investigates the negative representations of Obama; that is, when the U.S. president arises as a symbol of intervention or domination or both. In fact, his visit to Brazil was not devoid of controversy; on the contrary, many political groups fercely criticized his presence on Brazilian soil, and protests erupted in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. Social movements and political cartoons gave special attention to the Pre-Salt, Brazil’s recently discovered rich oil reserves, suggesting that Obama was actively seeking to steal the country’s natural resources. Chapter 4 examines this same dynamic—close and distant; kin and foreign; friend and foe—vis-à-vis Obama’s relationship with 2010 Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff. “Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor” studies the interesting relationship between these two important worldwide political fgures: the frst black U.S. president and the frst female Brazilian president. Focusing on the 2013 espionage scandal, the section “Obama, the Spy Who Loved Brazil” analyzes the Obama administration’s active and systematic surveillance of several countries, including Brazil. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was eavesdropping on Brazilian private and public companies, as well as on President Rousseff and her staff. This revelation put an enormous strain on U.S.–Brazilian relations, and the Brazilian government and media swiftly and strongly condemned the espionage affair. Cartoonists once more portrayed Obama as a tool of U.S. imperialism, an enemy who was inconspicuously waiting for the right moment to steal Brazil’s riches. However, visual representations also put an interesting spin on the espionage scandal. The section “Obama, the Voyeur Who Loved Dilma Rousseff” examines how Obama surprisingly appears rather positively in many cartoons and Internet memes; he is represented not as a villain interested in material exploitation, but rather as an emphatic lover who is clearly captivated by Dilma Rousseff’s charms. Therefore, these visual representations transform the espionage affair from a serious international incident into a romantic episode, forging a noteworthy interplay of race and gender that celebrates mestiçagem, a fundamental concept to Brazil’s national identity. These depictions of the curious love interest between Obama and Rousseff are even more surprising when one considers that the Brazilian president had to be feminized to appeal to a larger number of voters. Her past as a guerrilla fghter against the 1 INTRODUCTION 11

1960s military dictatorship and as President Lula’s chief of staff created an image of Rousseff as a rigid (and consequently unattractive) woman. Therefore, “Obama, the Voyeur Who Loved Dilma Rousseff” draws from Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject, as well as Barbara Creed’s notion of the female body as a source of horror and site of abjection, to explore how Rousseff’s body emerges as the focus of a male gaze that concomitantly produces repulsion and desire. In the political cartoons examined, her physical body and political power transmit elements of seduction and fear, which would, in turn, produce the humorous gag: the paradoxical pairing of the seductress female with the masculinized woman-in-charge. Humorous Internet blogs and memes also imagined a romantic connection between presidents Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff, many of them centering on an event that was known as “the kiss episode,” when they greeted with an affectionate kiss on the cheek at the G20 meeting on September 2013. Pictures of their kiss were highly publicized and circulated in the Brazilian mainstream and social media. Hence, this section of Chap. 4 also investigates how Internet memes based on this amicable interaction between Rousseff and Obama represented a set of Brazil’s affective and emotional discursive, rhetorical, and visual references. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the imagined romance makes up part of the country’s collective imaginary that ratifes the idea that Brazilians per- ceive themselves as being more socially and racially accepting people. When considering memes, rather than employing Susan Blackmore’s evolutionist approach, this study favors Tony D. Sampson’s virology notion in order to better comprehend the memetic Internet phenomenon. Blackmore’s classic The Meme Machine borrows the term “meme” from neo-Darwinist biologist Richard Dawkins’s best-selling book The Selfsh Gene. Dawkins describes human evolution as a competition between genes, in which genes’ only purpose would be to replicate themselves, passing on certain traits to future generations. Genes are, therefore, “selfsh,” as they are exclusively concerned about their own reproduction (Blackmore 4–5). According to Dawkins, “all life evolves by the differential surviving of replicating entities” (qtd. in Blackmore 5); that is, organisms survive and thrive because of selfsh replicators that indefnitely copy their DNA. Dawkins believes that the same process happens in the realm of culture, in which “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation,” what he names a “meme” (from an abbreviation of the Greek root 12 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE mimeme and the French word même [memory]), is continuously replicated through the process of cultural imitation (Dawkins 192). Memes propagate “by jumping from brain to brain, liken[ing] them to para- sites infecting a host, treat[ing] them as physically realized living structures, and show[ing] how mutually assisting memes will gang together in groups just as genes do” (Blackmore 6). The idea of God, for example, is an excellent example of a meme, replicated by spoken and written words, as well as by visual representations and musical traditions. God as a meme has great survival value because of its strong psychological appeal, as “the god meme” “... provides a superfcially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence” (Dawkins 193). Drawing from Dawkins’s concept of memes, Blackmore seeks to develop “an effective theory of memetics” (23); that is, to understand how selective imitation can successfully propagate an idea (29). To Blackmore the age of digital technology offers unlimited means of dis- seminating memes (142); nevertheless, memes can only survive by a process of cultural selection in which the human brain discards some visual and discursive information, but chooses to store other data that it deems important (216). Blackmore’s neo-Darwinist, evolutionist reading of memes has attracted criticism from digital scholars (see Matthew Fuller; Davi Johnson; and Tony D. Sampson, just to name a few).4 Tony D. Sampson argues that Blackmore’s conception of a meme carries a deterministic feature, since it misguidedly “focuses on the readiness of a human mind to blindly accept a programmed idea” (67). Moreover, Sampson notes that her use of evolutionary selection in the age of digital media does not completely explain why certain memes “survive” and why people would creatively develop variations of them (72), variations that pertain to particular messages of certain specifc groups. He writes: “[t]here is an interaction between code and environment, in which the circulation and interruption of productive fows exceed the causal- ity of an evolutionary code” (74). Opposing the neo-Darwinist model, Sampson proposes that the interaction between circulation and interruption in the age of technology is based instead on social relationality; that is, fows of ideas are carried on by particular affects, emotions, and sensations (3–4). In fact, conscious and unconscious imitations, desires, and inventions “contaminate” the net of social relations. Sampson, therefore, seeks to develop a theory of viral contagion that includes relational encounters within the collective body, in which “the affective transfer is always, from the outset, social” (86, author’s emphasis). 1 INTRODUCTION 13

Hence, one could argue that the Brazilian memes about “the kiss episode” partake of certain affective and emotional themes pertaining to the country’s collective unconscious: to imagine an affair between the “Brazilianized” Barack Obama and the feminized Dilma Rousseff is to reshape and ratify Brazil’s myth of racial harmony. In this sense, political humor (be it in the form of cartoons or memes) rereads the myth of mestiçagem, recreating different and interesting scenarios in which other characters emerge to disrupt the biracial romance. Important international political fgures, such as Angela Merkel or Vladimir Putin, appear to trouble the couple’s relationship, but Obama ultimately wins the Brazilian president’s (and the country’s) heart, as many political cartoons, satirical memes, and Internet sites suggest. Chapters 2 and 3 investigate how the Brazilian media and political cartoons “Brazilianized” Barack Obama, and Chap. 4 examines the construction of an Obama seduced by the Brazilian charms of Dilma Rousseff, who consequently fnds himself immersed in the nation’s mythic ideal of racial accord. Chapter 5—“‘Our’ Candidate Obama: Barack Obama in the Brazilian Elections”—investigates “Obama-mania” in Brazil, conversely focusing on how Brazilian political candidates reappropriated Barack Obama in pursuit of victory in local and national elections. The frst section, “The ‘Obamization’ of Brazilian Politics, or How Obama Stole the Scene from Brazilian Politicians,” investigates how candidates “obamized” Brazilian elections: from black candidates who renamed themselves after the U.S. president to politicians who used the Obama campaign’s visual and discursive cues, candidates tried to replicate Obama’s story of personal and political success in the Brazilian voting booths. The second section of Chap. 5, “‘My Name Is Claudio Henrique, but You Can Call Me Barack Obama,’” studies how Afro-Brazilian candidates seeking political posts have sought to follow Obama’s personal story of overcoming social, economic, and racial barriers to become one of the most infuential leaders of the beginning of the twenty-frst century worldwide. In this sense, it is important to note that while candidate and president Obama frequently downplayed racial issues, Afro-Brazilian “wannabe” representatives placed race at the core of their political campaigns, promoting a “darkening” of Brazilian politics. Moreover, the section “Rousseff as ‘Mother of the People’ vs. Aéciobama and ‘Brazil Can Do Better’: The 2014 Presidential Campaign” analyzes how candidates Dilma Rousseff and Aécio Neves 14 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE tailored the 2014 presidential campaign to attract important segments of society, especially Millennials, who became increasingly disillusioned with national politics. Youngsters were very infuential in the articulation of the 2013 wave of protests in Brazil and became 10% of the electorate in 2014. While Dilma Rousseff put her gender at the forefront of her campaign, constructing her role as a metaphor of the Brazilian people’s “mother,” Aécio Neves concentrated on his youth and opposition to twelve years of Workers’ Party rule, evoking Obama’s slogans of “hope” and “change” in his presidential campaign. Neves’ supporters also refashioned Obama’s visual cues—such as the famous Shepard Fairey posters of Obama—using the Brazilian presidential candidate’s image in order to evoke the thematic elements of progress, hope, and change. Obama was a center-left candidate from the U.S. Democratic Party; contrariwise, Neves represented a center-right candidacy in Brazil as a candidate of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira [Party of Brazilian Social Democracy], the PSDB, showing that Obama’s visual and discursive elements have such a broad appeal that they can be easily reappropriated and reshaped under distinct—and sometimes opposing—ideological spectra. Finally, the conclusion ponders Obama’s legacy after Donald Trump’s 2016 election. This section examines the shortcomings and virtues of Obama’s administration, and refects upon the impact of Obama’s sym- bolism internationally. Will his legacy be enduring? After the historical election of the frst black U.S. president, a right-wing populist candidate was elected. Donald Trump was one of the most vocal sponsors of Birtherism, and his campaign had strong xenophobic and racist undertones. In this sense, how much did the issue of race play a role in the 2016 elections? Was Trump’s victory a backlash from white, lower-class voters who felt disfranchised by neoliberal economic policies and threatened by the political rise of minorities? In the conclusion, I investigate male white privilege in the United States and Brazil and further conjecture about the possibility of the election of a black president committed to Afro-Brazilians and disfranchised segments of society. Or one could infer the contrary; in other words, that the world’s political moment will give rise to another populist right government, ideologically capturing the largest country and the most important economy in Latin America. In summary, will Obama’s legacy be all but forgotten or will it be lasting, possibly continuing to infuence Brazil’s political, social, and racial imaginary in years to come? 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Methodology The data on Obama’s visual representations in Brazil could certainly involve an impracticably large collection of depictions. Data for this study was gathered through Internet research using the search tools Google and Yahoo in the United States and Brazil, as they are the largest search engines used in both countries (Bing is the second largest in the United States, but only the third in Brazil).5 Political cartoons and memes were selected from random sam- ples, using the abovementioned image links of Google and Yahoo. For Chap. 2, the keywords entered were “Obama and Lula”/“Obama e Lula” and “Obama Lula this is the guy”/“Obama Lula ele é o cara,” and for Chap. 3 the phrases “Obama visit Brazil 2011”/“Visita Obama Brasil 2011” were used. For Chap. 4, the keywords “Obama Dilma espionage 2013”/“Obama Dilma espionagem 2013” were employed, and for Chap. 5 the following phrases were input: “Obama- mania Brazil”/“Obama-mania Brasil” and “Obama Brazilian elections”/“Obama eleições Brasileiras.” From these randomized sam- ples, certain interesting patterns emerged, such as the representation of a romantic relationship between Barack Obama and Dilma Rousseff, examined in Chap. 4. In regards to Obama’s coverage in the Brazilian mainstream media, three main Internet library platforms were employed: LexisNexis Academic, ProQuest and Factiva. Periodicals consulted were the newspapers Folha de São Paulo (from São Paulo) and O Globo (from Rio de Janeiro), as well as the magazine Veja (from São Paulo). Folha de São Paulo, O Globo, and Veja were chosen because they have the largest print and digital circulation in Brazil.6 “Obama” was the general keyword used to ascertain Brazilian coverage of the U.S. presidential elections (as examined in Chap. 2), which presented pertinent articles from September 1, 2008 to November 30, 2008. “Obama” was also the input for Chap. 3, and the articles selected ranged from January 1, 2011 to March 31, 2011, when the media continuously reported on the U.S. president’s March 2011 visit to Brazil. For Chap. 4, the search “Obama and Dilma and espionagem,” from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013, produced relevant results from the abovementioned databases. Finally, for Chap. 5, the keywords “Obama elections Brazil”/“Obama eleições Brasil” were used in the search engines Google and Yahoo (United States and Brazil), and articles in the “News” sections of these web pages were surveyed. CHAPTER 2

Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land of Racial Democracy

Dreams from My Father Revisited: From U.S. Black to Brazilian Mulatto In early April 2008, seven months prior to the U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father was released in Brazil. Acquired by Editora Gente, a publisher specializing in self-help books, the autobiography quickly captured the attention of Brazilian readers. Immediately after its release, A origem de meus sonhos made the best-seller list (remain- ing there for one week) and went through six editions. According to Carolina Rocha, senior editor at Editora Gente, the publisher decided to acquire the second edition of Dreams from My Father because Obama was one of the most important global fgures at the time, and the book ft the publisher’s catalogue, which included autobiographies of world leaders (personal interview). Moreover, the idea of the self-made mulatto who reached unattainable goals ft well with the Brazilian publisher’s editorial formula. Editora Gente’s web page delineates four main trends: happiness, success, wealth, and future (“Linhas editoriais”). Obama certainly represents the epitome of all of those: the working-class biracial individual who surpassed racial prejudice and economic constraints to become the leader of the world’s most powerful nation, pointing to a brilliant future for race relations everywhere. Reviews by writers in the Brazilian press and independent bloggers unanimously praised the autobiography. These reviews highlighted the reasons the autobiography was so successful in the Brazilian literary

© The Author(s) 2018 17 E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_2 18 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE market: the combination of universal themes (the search for identity, overcoming obstacles, and individual triumph) with national aspirations (the “cosmopolitan mulatto”).1 Some emphasized Obama’s quest for personal identity, others that Obama was not a “typical” African- American. Amanda Cordeiro remarks: “Ele [Obama] conta sobre sua infância, como ser ‘mulato’ num país onde só existem negros, brancos e latinos. … Todo negão com problemas de auto estima devia ler esse livro e ver como um negro pode se impor e ter orgulho de ser quem ele é sem fcar bancando o coitadinho afrodecendente. Black power total” [He tells about his childhood, how to be ‘mulatto’ in a country where only blacks, whites, and Latinos exist. … All blacks with problems of self-esteem should read this book to see how a black person can self-affrm and have pride without claiming to be a poor Afro-descendent. Total black power] (emphasis mine). Cordeiro focuses on Obama’s “mulattoness,” placing him at a third, interstitial space between blacks and whites. The mulatto Obama does not succumb to the plight of young African-Americans— poor education, joblessness, and recurrent incarceration—and affrms his self, constructing a positive identity.2 The successful mulatto prevails; black power is in the individual “hero” Obama, in a process that undermines the collective black community. Paulo Fagundes Visentini also notes that “Obama não é um afro- americano típico, carregado de ressentimentos sociais. Ele trabalhou nos guetos, sentiu a discriminação pessoalmente, mas tem um outro tipo de estrutura mental. Numa América que passou do otimismo liberal do ‘Fim da História’ de Fukuyama ao ‘Choque de Civilizações’ de Huntington e à Guerra ao Terrorismo, Obama se revela um cosmo- polita, de que tanto a América necessita hoje” [Obama is not a typical Afro-American, flled with social resentments. He worked in ghettos, felt the discrimination in person, but has another type of mental structure. In an America that passed from the liberal optimism of Fukuyama’s “End of History” to Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” and the War on Terrorism, Obama emerges as a cosmopolitan, which America so needs today] (emphasis mine). Despite being discriminated against, Obama surpasses obstacles to forge “another type of mental structure,” devoid of social resentment and defeatism. On the contrary, he constructs himself not as an African-American man, but as a cosmopolitan. Again, blackness gives place to a more universal—and appealing—conception: Obama is, at the same time, paradoxically one (unique) and all (familiar). 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 19

In his review, Maurício Santoro emphasizes Obama’s search for identity, comparing it to the mythical Greek quests: “a história de um rapaz tentando descobrir quem é, e o que pode esperar da vida, a partir da busca por entender a trajetória extraordinária de seu pai, também cham- ado Barack Obama. A trama tem ressonância mítica: lembrei da Odisséia, de Têlemaco dizendo que gostaria de ter conhecido o pai, e partindo para encontrar Ulisses” [the story of a young man trying to discover who he is, and what he can expect of life, which has as the starting point the extraordinary trajectory of his father, also named Barack Obama. The plot has mythical resonance: it reminded me of Telemachus’ Odyssey, (Telemachus) saying that he would like to have known his father, and going away to meet Ulysses]. “It is a spectacular book … very rich in human observations of a variety of themes,” Santaro concludes, noting that the autobiography reveals the personality of a man who might become the most powerful man in the world. Santoro does not focus on racial issues; on the contrary, he highlights the individual quest for identity (raising Obama to a heroic mythical status) and his “human observations” (equalizing the myth to that of a typical man). Hence, to Santoro, Obama is concomitantly ordinary and extraordinary, which helps to create an iconic fgure that is widely accepted and greatly revered. Despite having high praise for the autobiography, Santoro is very critical of its Brazilian Portuguese version, especially the wrong translation of the title that “desvirtua o fo condutor da obra” [distorts the book’s leitmotif]. The Brazilian readership could certainly identify with aspects of Obama’s biography, drawing parallels with the nation’s supposedly inclusive racial system, which permits a more fuid conception of race identity. Dreams from My Father is constructed as a Bildungsroman, in which the homodiegetic narrator surpasses social, economic, and racial obstacles to be assimilated into society, consequently displaying the rhetoric of African-American integrationism (Turner Jr. 15) and focusing on progress toward social harmony (6). Indeed, as Bertram D. Ashe asserts, “Obama’s quest for identity is less about being biracial and more about being bicultural,” noting that a more “hybrid, fuid, and elastic sense of black identity” marks the autobiography (103). Ashe goes as far as affrming that decentering and destabilizing black identity are at the core of Dreams’ authorial project (107). Ignacio López-Calvo also indicates that Obama “embraces more inclusive, open-ended, and across- racial line alternatives” (79), complicating the traditional black and white dualism in U.S. society (66). Although racial conficts dominate the 20 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE narrative, causing the narrator’s identity crisis, Obama seems to carve a path of racial redemption that allows him to surpass feelings of alienation and displacement in order to be incorporated into mainstream society. Therefore, instead of becoming “the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds” (Obama, “Introduction” 16), as he describes in the introduction of the second edition of Dreams from My Father, he thus becomes the “cultural mulatto,” who, educated by multiracial cultures, effortlessly navigates the white world (Ellis qtd. in Ashe 105).3 Elements such as a fuid racial identity and the self-assured “cultural mulatto” (which can be equated to the “cosmopolitan mulatto” of the reviews) appeal to Brazilian sensibilities. Since the nineteenth century, Brazilian social scientists have promoted the idea of interracial breed- ing as a solution to the surplus of blacks. Racial mixing provided Brazil with a more malleable and pluralistic scale of social classifcation and established the mulatto as the cornerstone of Brazilian national identity; nonetheless, it is also important to note that racial mixing promoted a whitening ideology: as Thomas Skidmore notes, the general idea that “whiter is better” is prevalent in Brazil (44). Yet what remains in the Brazilian collective unconscious is the positive stock value of mestiçagem [miscegenation], the conception that a fuid racial system allowed for the construction of a more inclusive society. At the height of the discussion on the implementation of affrmative action policies in the frst decade of the twentieth-frst century, journalist Ali Kamel’s controversial best-seller Nós Não Somos Racistas was released in 2006. In the book, the author—described as one who seeks to defend Brazil from undesirable racially imported ideas—lectures readers about the implementation of social policies targeting the black population: these alien concepts would transform Brazilian society into a biracial nation, where harmony among races would no longer exist. Embraced by some intellectuals and rejected by others, including leaders of the black movement, Nós Não Somos Racistas has remained at the heart of the heated racial debates in Brazil.4 In his article “Barack Obama,” Kamel writes about the 2008 U.S. election a few days prior to the popular vote. The journalist celebrates Obama’s candidacy and possible victory as proof that the world is becoming post-racial and forging a path beyond racial differences. He thus praises the mestiçagem as the nation’s foundational myth and condemns the “racists” who want to transform Brazil into a biracial, racially divided 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 21 country. Kamel affrms that Obama goes beyond the dichotomy of black and white to embrace all people because, after all, “races do not exist” (“Barack Obama”). Anthropologist Yvone Maggie, a vehement opponent of racially based affrmative action policies, follows the same arguments as Kamel: right after Obama’s victory, Maggie laments that Brazil “is following a backwards path” by institutionalizing “race” in Brazil. To Maggie, the supporters of “identity politics” are prompting a racialization of public policies and national traditions (897) and creating “uma inter- pretação [do Brasil] diversa da nossa mistura e do nosso ideal” [an interpretation (of Brazil) that differs from our mixture and our ideals] (899). They are also currently forging the myth that racism has been active and widespread in the country. The anthropologist, therefore, quotes isolated cases of racism that captured society’s attention to affrm Brazil’s true vocation: being an “ethnic and social democracy” (899). Maggie opposes a bipolar racial system, observing that when the United States lived under Jim Crow laws and race hatred, Brazilians “estavámos irmanados contra o racismo” [were united against racism] (399). Nevertheless, with Barack Obama, the United States seems to have overcome its racial problems. Maggie salutes the president because he distanced himself from a racial discourse, choosing to represent a universal way of being American and representing all Americans (897); he thus “fala para as comunidades das nações e não para a comunidade [de negros]” [speaks to the communities of nations and not to the community (of blacks)] (902). Kamel and Maggie conveniently “misread” Obama—an operation that the Brazilian media frequently perform—to ratify their own idealized construction of race relations in Brazil (a notion that continues to sustain racism as an exception, and not as structurally embedded in society). Although Obama constructs himself as a multicultural and multiracial candidate, he does not reject race, as the refections in Dreams from My Father and his speeches demonstrate. Furthermore, by reading Obama’s candidacy as a sign of a post-racial—more “civilized”—world, they blatantly disregard the rising racism during the U.S. presidential campaign, which trigged personal attacks against Obama (e.g. criticism of his friendship with Reverend Wright and the allegations of the Birther movement). Muniz Sodré, sociologist and activist of the black movement, also deconstructs Kamel’s and Maggie’s idyllic readings of Obama’s accomplishments and beliefs. In “Um particular sobre Obama,” he notes that the president’s personal history—his biracial origin and multiethnic 22 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE upbringing—did not blind him to racist violence; on the contrary, to Obama the word “mestizo” did not evoke a “candura conciliatória” [untainted conciliation], but described a repressive and violent world. Muniz also reminds readers that without a history of black struggles and further achievements, Obama would not have been possible: “Obama … é o resultado de uma luta civil empreendida pela comunidade negra norte-americana, na qual o estabelecimento de quota foi uma importante conquista política” [Obama is the result of a civil struggle promoted by the North American black community, of which the establishment of racial quotas was an important political achievement]. Obama is certainly well aware of the abovementioned issues. Still, the idea that Brazil has constructed a society devoid of racism has proved to have tremendous endurance: the myth of racial democracy is so strongly rooted in the nation’s collective unconscious that many Brazilians continue to believe in the affable idea of racial equality. Thus, it is not surprising that the Brazilian Portuguese translation of Dreams from My Father helped to highlight what readers might have perceived as positive elements in the narrative on the one hand, while deempha- sizing the effects of Obama’s critical racial assessments on the other. In fact, one fnds minor but signifcant differences between the U.S. and Brazilian editions. Broadway Books’ cover (Fig. 2.1) features three pictures, presenting a triad that encapsulates the idea of African Diaspora: on the left side, Habiba Akumu Hussein, Obama’s maternal grandmother, holds the young Barack Obama Sr.; on the right side, Stanley Dunham, Obama’s maternal grandfather, smiles next to the young Ann Dunham; and in the middle, Obama displays a serious and refex- ive expression, looking pensively to a distant point ahead, as if he was searching for something impenetrable, longing for the past, or yearning for the future. The pictorial representation evokes an interesting dialectic: two different worlds that unite and produce a third, novel component, Obama, originally informed by two cultures, and yet himself a signif- icantly new and altered element. As the biography illustrates, Obama (the synthesis) would not erase the thesis (West) and antithesis (East), but would transform them by his personal multicultural experiences and quest for social and political knowledge. In this sense, Obama’s search for an identity is a dynamic process, in which historical roots are as important as the collection of experiences he acquires throughout his youth and adulthood. 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 23

Fig. 2.1 Cover of Dreams from My Father. Source Broadway Books, a division of Random House

The title, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, centers on the paternal fgure, mostly absent and yet all encompassing, throughout Obama’s story. Claire Joly indicates that the “dream” was not used as “a pleasant fantasy (as opposed to a nightmare), but more in the sense of what which is imagined (the father) because it has no tangi- ble reality” (77). Obama, therefore, constructs his father using fragments 24 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE of family stories, a few pictures, and personal speculation.5 Moreover, the “inheritance” reinstalls the paternal presence into the identitary subject construction,6 unwillingly or not, and the category “race” gains new life and importance in the light of the protagonist’s upbringing in a racially divided country (even though the book depicts Hawaii as a site of relative racial and ethnic diversity and tolerance). Analyzing the autobiography’s epigraph, Joly notes that the “we” of the quote represents all humanity, but the words “strangers” and “sojourners” highlight “the physical and emotional displacement of the African diaspora” (76).7 The Brazilian translation of Obama’s autobiography, however, down- plays the construction of the imagined father and mythical Africa. The title Dreams from My Father becomes “The origin of my dreams” [A origem dos meus sonhos] in Portuguese, and the subtitle “A Story of Race and Inheritance” is completely erased. This section of this chapter underlines, therefore, that the title’s translation fabricates the annihila- tion of the father fgure related to Africa in order to focus on the personal achievements of the individual mulatto. In this sense, the use of “my dreams” conveys an idea more attuned to the celebrated Brazilian notion of mestiçagem; “the origin of my dreams” connects to the materi- alization of “my dreams,” although it is not clear by the title’s translation how “my dreams” originated or what they truly are. The “inheritance” (Africa) and “race” (blackness) are conveniently deleted, giving place to the mestizo subject, one who is an opportune product of a whitening process. In this sense, the Obama of the Brazilian publisher stands alone and victorious on the cover; his face and trademark smile take center stage, evoking more the optimism of an existing presence than the struggles of a historical past (Fig. 2.2). Although Obama’s personal story highlights crucial issues of race and class in the United States, in the comparison of the English original and the Brazilian Portuguese translation, this study concentrates on a short passage in the book: the episode in which Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, watches Marcel Camus’ flm Black Orpheus (1959). The movie was based on the Brazilian poet and composer Vinicius de Moraes’ play Orfeu da Conceição. Moraes transposes the Greek myth to a favela [slum] in Rio de Janeiro, where Orpheus is a poor Afro- Brazilian samba composer, who hopes to achieve fame and fortune with his music, and attracts Eurydice, a naïve and pretty black woman from the countryside, who recently migrated to the city. Their romance develops against the background of Brazilian carnaval and, despite the joyous 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 25

Fig. 2.2 Cover of A origem dos meus sonhos. Source Editora Gente celebration, Moraes retains the myth’s tragic ending: in trying to escape an inexorable fate, the two lovers meet Death (a character in the play) and perish. Brazilians were very critical of Camus’ flm. Film critics were reluctant to embrace a movie by a French director with a French production, in which one of the protagonists, Eurydice, was the American-born French actress Marpessa Dawn. Moreover, they also lashed out at the movie’s romanticized version of poverty, the sensualization of black people, and 26 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE the overexposure of celebratory images, where carnaval festivities per- meated the society’s entire structure (M. Santos, “The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend” 50). Nevertheless, Black Orpheus received many international accolades: in 1959, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film; received the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; was considered the Best Foreign Film and the Best Film by the New York Film Critics’ Circle and the British Academy respectively; and was awarded the Golden Globe Award in 1960 (M. Santos, “Black Orpheus and the Merging of Two Brazilian Nations” 108). Foreign audiences were clearly fascinated by the idyllic version of poverty in the Brazilian favelas, the dazzling images of carnaval, and the exoticized Afro-Brazilian subjects. This strange yet exu- berant and colorful universe captured the imagination of Obama’s mother, as described in Dreams from My Father. Ann Dunham watched the movie when she was young, and she loved Black Orpheus so much she insisted her son see the movie with her when Obama was attending Columbia University in New York. Below I trans- pose this passage from the original book, followed by the Portuguese translation:

One evening, while thumbing through The Village Voice, my mother’s eyes lit on an advertisement for a movie, Black Orpheus, that was showing downtown. My mother insisted that we go see it that night; she said it was the frst foreign flm she had ever seen. “I was only sixteen then,” she told us as we entered the elevator. “I’d just been accepted to the University of Chicago—Gramps hadn’t told me yet that he wouldn’t let me go—and I was there for the summer, working as an au pair. It was the frst time that I’d ever been really on my own. Gosh, I felt like such an adult. And when I saw this flm, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.” We took a cab to the revival theater where the movie was playing. The flm, a groundbreaker of sorts due to its mostly black, Brazilian cast, had been made in the ffties. The story line was simple: the myth of the ill-fated lovers Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio during Carnival. In Technicolor splendor, set against scenic hills, the black and brown Brazilians sang and danced and strung guitars like carefree birds in colorful plumage. About halfway through the movie, I decided that I’d seen enough, and turned to my mother to see if she might be ready to go. But her face, lit by the blue glow of the screen, was set in a wistful gaze. At that 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 27 moment, I felt as if I were being given a window into her heart, the unre- fective heart of her youth. I suddenly realized that the depiction of childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad’s dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a refection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life, warm, sensual, exotic, different. I turned away, embarrassed for her, irritated with the people around me. … I left the movie theater with my mother and sister. The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to fnd in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart. (127–128, emphasis mine) [Uma noite enquanto folheava o jornal The Village Voice, os olhos de minha mãe se iluminaram com o anúncio de um flme, Orfeu Negro, que estava em cartaz no centro da cidade. Minha mãe insistiu para que fôsse- mos vê-lo naquela noite: ela disse que esse foi o primeiro flme estrangeiro que ela já tinha visto na vida. — Eu só tinha 16 anos na ocasião – ela nos contou ao entrarmos no eleva- dor—Havia acabado de ser aceita para a Universidade de Chicago (vovô não tinha me falado ainda que não me deixaria ir) e estava lá durante o verão, trabalhando na casa de uma família. Foi a primeira vez que estive realmente sozinha, por minha conta. Nossa, eu me senti adulta. E quando assisti a esse flme, pensei que era a coisa mais bonita que eu já tinha visto. Tomamos um táxi para o cinema. O flme, inovador com seu elenco principalmente de negros brasileiros, havia sido produzido na década de 1950. O enredo era simples: o mito grego dos amantes desventurados, Orfeu e Eurídice, ambientado nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro durante o Carnaval. Em tecnicolor esplendoroso, e tendo como fundo morros cênicos verdes, os brasileiros negros e mulatos cantavam, dançavam e tocavam violão, como pássaros despreocupados de plumagem colorida. No meio do flme, resolvi que já tinha visto o bastante e virei para a minha mãe para saber se ela gostaria de ir embora. Mas seu rosto, iluminado pelo brilho azul da tela, estava tomado por um ar nostálgico. Naquele momento, senti como se uma janela tivesse sido aberta para o seu coração, o coração irrefetido da sua juventude. Subitamente percebi que a representação dos jovens negros, que eu via agora na tela, a imagem inversa dos sombrios selvagens de Joseph Conrad, era o que minha mãe havia levado com ela para o Havaí muitos anos antes, uma refexão das fantasias simples que haviam sido 28 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

proibidas a uma garota de classe média branca do Kansas, a promessa de uma outra vida: quente, sensual, exótica, diferente. Eu me virei, envergonhado por ela, irritado com as pessoas ao meu redor. … Ao deixar o cinema com a minha mãe e irmã (eu carregava um pen- samento): as emoções entre as raças nunca poderiam ser puras; mesmo o amor era maculado pelo desejo de encontrar no outro algum elemento que estava perdido em nós mesmos. Não importa se procuramos nossos demônios ou nossa salvação, a outra raça sempre será apenas isso: ameaçadora, estra- nha e distante.] (141–142, emphasis mine)

Obama has an epiphany when observing his mother, who seemed to be hypnotized by the cheerful and colorful images: the heart of her youth, naïve and yet full of stereotypes, equates to the heart of darkness of Joseph Conrad’s novel. The negative vision of the primitive and savage is replaced by a more affable, but still stereotyped, portrayal of blacks as infantile and untroubled. Conrad is mentioned three times in the autobiography. The frst time is when Obama’s grandfather says he has read the famous author, becoming fascinated by the descriptions of lands of great mystery and enchantment (curiously, emulating the same sentiment that Ann Dunham displays when watching the movie) (Dreams from My Father 45). The second mention is by Obama himself, when he tells a female colleague at Occidental College that Heart of Darkness is “a racist book,” but he reads the novel because it is a course assignment and it teaches him “about white people” and “their demons” (109), which parallels the refection on Camus’s movie and his mother’s reaction. The third time concludes Obama’s thoughts, as the abovementioned passage demonstrates: “Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart” (128, emphasis mine).8 Therefore, a circularity underlines Obama’s refections on Joseph Conrad, his familial experiences, and white people’s perceptions of the “other.” This episode, although brief, is also crucial to understanding that Obama’s critical perspective of a vision that celebrates an exotic and tropical nation, where race relations are purportedly harmonized by Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions: his critical assessment sharply opposes the notion of racial democracy. Paradoxically, some Brazilian readers used the same passage as an example of Brazil’s harmonious race relations. Clearly, Obama was not impressed with Black Orpheus, and he even felt uncomfortable with the manner in which blacks were portrayed: he 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 29 thought the movie was boring and presented a series of racial stereotypes. Nonetheless, the Brazilian Portuguese translation seeks to mini- mize Obama’s critical perception of the movie and, consequently, to preserve Brazil as a positive site of race relations. The focus here is mainly on the phrases “wistful gaze” and “depiction of childlike blacks,” which were (mis)translated as “ar nostálgico” [nostalgic air] and “representação dos jovens negros” [representation of young blacks]. The word “gaze” has strong social and political implications, as it suggests the unidirectional and “exoticized” manner in which the Western spectator looks at the cultural “others.” In his classic article “The Other Question,” Homi Bhabha examines the matrixes of colonial discourse and its ideological construction of “otherness.” To Bhabha, understanding “the productivity of colonial power” is crucial to recognizing that “otherness” entails, at the same time, “an object of desire and derision, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity,” because “the body is always simultaneously inscribed in both the economy of pleasure and desire and the economy of discourse, domination and power” (19). Placing the stereotype at the core of colonial discourse construction, the philosopher sets out not to solely focus on ideological misrepresenta- tions, but to emphasize the “stereotype as an ambivalent mode of knowledge and power,” of which the convergence of discourse and politics sets “the meaning of oppression and discrimination” (18). To Bhabha, the stereotype is, at the same time, a fxity and repeatability, constructing a regimen of “truth” that naturalizes the subject “other.” Repetition helps to affx the unfamiliar to normative categories, in a process that concomitantly provokes delight and fear. In this sense, the stereotype is also fetish and phobia; in other words, a desire for the original moment of “wholeness”/similarity—“All humans have the same skin/race/culture”—(fetish), and the horror caused by “the return of the oppressed,” which contains “stereotypes of savagery, cannibalism, lust, and anarchy,” (phobia) (25–27). In establishing a link between the stereotype and the fetish, Bhabha is drawing from Freud’s theory of castration—fetish is the desire for the original moment prior to the penis loss, and phobia is the fear of castration: “For the scene of fetishism is also the scene of the reac- tivation and repetition of primal fantasy—the subject’s desire for a pure origin that is always threatened by its division, for the subject must be gendered to be engendered, to be spoken” (Bhabha 27). The racial stereotype of colonial discourse longs for an original moment of wholeness 30 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

(“All humans have the same skin/race/culture”), while, at the same time, reproducing lack and difference (“Some humans do not have the same skin/race/culture”). Bhabha also notes that the stereotype entails a fantasy; that is, a fantasy of the original wholesome moment that becomes threatened by difference. By disavowal and fxation, the colonial subject seeks to return “to the narcissism of the Imaginary and its identifcation of an ideal ego that is white and whole” (28). Here Bhabha is drawing from Lacan’s “imaginary order”; that is, the mirror stage when the child has a coherent image of him/herself through a specular image in the mirror and recognizes the self as “I,” but is still the same unity as the world and the mother. The child misrecognizes the image as a whole self, as the image does not correspond to the real child; it is thus a mere fantasy. As the child acquires language, he/she starts to develop the ego, dissociat- ing from the mother and the world and losing the sense of unity, which causes lack and anxiety, a sense of a primary unity forever lost. Seeking to restore his/her totality, the individual searches for that fantasy of a complete image, which entails a narcissistic impulse.9 Furthermore, to Bhabha, when examining the processes of the production of colonial discourses and the ideological construction of otherness, it is of utmost importance to consider the act of seeing/being seen, as the colonial power’s regime entails a scopic drive, the pleasure of seeing the object of desire (28), which in turn is also an abject. In this sense, regimes of visibility and discursivity (visual and textual narratives)—which are fetishistic, scopic, imaginary—emerge as essential to the exercise of colonial power (and, consequently, the production of “otherness”). No other narrative economy, however, promotes more voyeurism and fetishism than classic cinema, as in the dark space of the theater the “act of seeing” cannot be answered with the “act of looking back.” In her famous essay on cinema, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey observes that the act of seeing is also an act of subjuga- tion, as cinema remains marked by visual pleasures and projections of one’s repressed desires (59). The screen promotes an extreme scopophilia (pleasure in looking) that transforms people into objects, subject- ing them to a controlling and curious gaze (60). Mulvey also emphasizes that cinema develops the scopophilia into a narcissistic impulse, as the spectator’s fascination with image includes “a love affair between image and self-image” and “a recognition of his like” (61). This powerful gaze 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 31 has no possible answer, encapsulating the images/objects into the realm of the spectator’s wishes and anxieties. Taking into consideration Bhabha’s and Mulvey’s refections, the episode of Black Orpheus as retold by Obama exposes an interesting dynamic: Obama “looks at” his mother, who in turn “looks at” the screen. His critical gaze exposes Ann Dunham’s fascinated, exoticized, and unilateral gaze, a white, civilized woman’s stare at the “infantile” and “primitive” (and yet “colorful” and “cheery”) blacks. Obama is well aware of the power relations embedded in the reproduction of stereotypes and the act of looking, being also conscious that his mother’s gaze reinforces dominant Western structures of seeing. Nevertheless, by translating “wistful gaze” as “nostalgic air,” the Brazilian Portuguese translation of Dreams from My Father undermines the power relations embedded in colonial visual discourses. Furthermore, when Obama refers to “wistful” and fnding “in the other some element that was missing in ourselves,” one can recall a lost, imaginary past, a moment when the individual was immersed in totality and not divided by Western discursive dualities (e.g. black/white; civilized/barbarian; cultured/primitive), as Bhabha describes. Obama also has a critical perception of Black Orpheus’s stereotyped black characters, condemning the movie’s “depiction of childlike blacks.” Still, A origem dos meus sonhos underplays Obama’s critique by translating the phrase as “representation of young blacks.” In this sense, the Brazilian translation tones down Obama’s assessment of Camus’ celebratory and racially harmonic image of Brazil. By erasing the father fgure related to Africa and seeking to preserve Brazil as a privileged site of race relations, the Brazilian edition of Dreams from My Father focuses on the personal achievements of the individual mulatto and keeps the notion of racial democracy unchallenged. Thus, it is not a mere coincidence that the autobiography’s short passage on Black Orpheus captured the hearts and minds of Brazilians. In this sense, this episode was of utmost importance to creating an ideal Obama, an Obama who is more a “superlative” Brazilian than a “relative” American. The episode of Ann Dunham’s fascination with Black Orpheus would be exhaustively retold by the Brazilian media. The next section, “Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack Obama,” explores how this idea would take shape in a peculiar book, Fernando Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido [If it were not for Brazil, Barack Obama would have never been born]. As the title indicates, Jorge intriguingly argues that Barack Obama 32 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE would not have existed if not for Brazil, a proposition that reveals more about how Brazilians think of themselves than about how Obama has constructed his biography.

Marcel Camus, the Creator of Barack Obama In 2009, journalist Fernando Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido [If it were not for Brazil, Barack Obama would have never been born] was released in Brazil. The book’s proposition, as the title indicates, is as original as it is bizarre: Brazil—and not the United States or Nigeria—was the real reason Obama ever existed. Jorge’s starting point is the opposition between the pervasive and virulent American racism, which had created offcial segregation and the Ku Klux Klan, and the “Brazilian spirit,” the essence of a racially and socially inclusive nation forged by an African matrix. Fernando Jorge postulates that Ann Dunham had perfectly apprehended this Afro-Brazilian essence when she watched Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus and, consequently, felt “compelled” to reenact the flm’s multiracial perspective in her own life story. Divided into eight chapters, Jorge’s book emphasizes two main arguments: Brazilian society as an all-embracing nation, and the United States—a racially and exclusionary country—as a nemesis of Brazil. In this sense, because of his unique multiracial origin and multicultural upbringing, Obama would be more attuned with Brazilian ideals. Se não fosse o Brazil’s cover (Fig. 2.3) perfectly places the U.S. president in this picturesque universe: a smiling Obama appears driving a yellow Brasília, a popular Volkswagen car named after Brazil’s capital, and happily waving to the (imagined) population. In the background, symbols of national identity emerge: the Sugarloaf; Christ the Redeemer; and the famous Copacabana promenade’s pavement, designed by renowned architect Robert Burle Marx, encompass the lively landscape. The title appears in large white, bold letters, surrounded by the colors of the Brazilian fag: yellow, green, and blue. Obama appears very comfortable and cheery surrounded by this Brazilian-themed scenario. In fact, Jorge’s book reframes Obama’s personal story according to an imaginary connection with Brazil and its culture. Five out of the eight chapters directly associate the president’s birth with Brazil’s history, art, music, and literature; (1) “Orfeu negro, o flme que maravilhou a mãe de Obama e o fez nascer” [Black Orpheus, the movie that amazed Obama’s mother and made him be born]; (2) 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 33

Fig. 2.3 Cover of Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido. Source: Novo Século

“Barack Obama compreende porque sua mãe fcou deslumbrada com o flme Orfeu negro” [Barack Obama understands why his mother was dazzled by the movie Black Orpheus]; (3) “Vinicius de Moraes, o poeta brasileiro que também fez Obama nascer” [Vinicius de Moraes, the Brazilian poet who also made Obama be born]; (4) “A peça Orfeu da Conceição, outra causa do nascimento de Obama” [The play Orfeu da Conceição, another reason for Obama’s birth]; and (5) “O relacionamento dos Estados Unidos com o Brasil, país que fez Obama nascer” [The United States’ relationship with Brazil, the country that made Obama be born]. In the chapter “Black Orpheus, the movie that amazed Obama’s mother and made him be born,” the author delineates his thesis that “se não fosse o Brasil, se não fosse o poeta brasileiro Vinicius de Moraes, 34 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE se não fosse a sua peça Orfeu da Conceição, se não fosse o flme Orfeu Negro, baseado na referida peça, o presidente Barack Hussein Obama, dos Estados Unidos, jamais teria nascido no dia 4 de agosto de 1961 em Honolulu, no Havaí” [if it were not for Brazil, if it were not for the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes, if it were not for his play Orfeu da Conceição, if it were not for the movie Black Orpheus, based on the abovementioned play, the president Barack Hussein Obama, of the United States, would have never been born on July 4, 1961, in Honolulu in Hawaii] (40). To ratify his thesis, Jorge, therefore, describes a chain of non-accidental events related to Brazil’s national identity that, in turn, determined Obama’s birth in the United States. This chapter of Se não fosse o Brasil centers on the previously examined episode of Ann Dunham’s novel experience of watching her frst foreign movie in Chicago, as Jorge retells: “Ann saiu deslumbrada do cinema e confessou que esse havia sido a coisa mais bonita que ela tinha visto na sua vida, conforme Obama narra no capítulo seis do livro Dreams from my father” [Dazzled, Ann got out of the movie theater and confessed that this movie had been the most beautiful thing that she had ever seen in her life, according to Obama’s account in Chapter Six of Dreams from My Father] (38). In his bibliography, Jorge lists Obama’s English autobiography, and not its Brazilian translation. In this sense, it is interesting to note that the author preferred to highlight Ann’s positive view of the movie’s representation of a multiracial Brazil, rather than Obama’s critical comments on Camus’ problematic depiction of Afro-Brazilians. In an operation that is similar to the Brazilian Portuguese translation, the author chooses to disregard what he deems undesirable, while emphasizing what he considers crucial to the core of Brazil’s national identity: a racially harmonic society. Fernando Jorge follows Ann’s story, creating his own mythology about the interracial relationship between “a moça branca vinda de Wichita” [the white young lady from Wichita] (40) and “o rapaz africano Barack Hussein Obama, de vinte e três anos, completamente preto, nascido no Quênia e criado no vilarejo Alego, cheio de rebanho de cabras” [the young African man Barack Hussein Obama, twenty-three years old, completely black, born in Kenya and raised in the Alego village, surrounded by herds of goats] (38, emphasis mine). Jorge tells that soon after having watched Black Orpheus, the young and idealistic Ann went to study at the University of Hawaii, where she met Barack Hussein 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 35

Obama Sr. in a Russian class. However, according to Fernando, she was truly infatuated with the Brazilian actor Breno Mello:

[Ann] apaixonou-se pelo moço africano que exibia a cara, o físico, o aspecto, uma semelhança impressionante com o ator brasileiro Breno Mello, também completamente preto e que foi o Orfeu do flme de Marcel Camus. Os dois se casaram em 1960, a despeito da preocupação das famí lias de Ann e Barack, por ser um matrimônio inter-racial. Entregando-se ao rapaz quêniano, ela, moça bem romântica, estava se entregando ao seu Orfeu, a uma transposição do ator Breno Mello, o Orfeu brasileiro que a encantou… (40, emphasis mine) [Ann fell in love with the young African male who presented the same face, physical attributes, appearance, and an amazing similarity with the Brazilian actor Breno Mello, who was also totally black and who was the Orpheus of Marcel Camus’ flm. They married in 1960, despite the concerns of Ann’s and Barack’s families, because it was a biracial marriage. Surrendering to the Kenyan youngster, she, a young romantic lady, was surrendering to her Orpheus, a transposition of the actor Breno Mello, the Brazilian Orpheus who captivated her…]

The repetition of the words “completamente preto” [completely black] engulfs the subject, fully determining his existence; in other words, Obama Sr. and Breno Mello are the same because they are black (see Figs. 2.4 and 2.5). However, their skin color is not the only characteristic that supposedly unites the Kenyan economist and the Brazilian actor; Jorge also lists a set of physical features that have been historically associated with blacks: (kinky) hair, fat root of the nose, projection of the jaw area, and white shiny teeth. “A semelhança física entre Breno e Barack Hussein Obama senior, o pai do presidente dos Estados Unidos, era de fato impressionate. Os dois tinham a mesma cor escura, a mesma cara redonda, os mesmos olhos ovais, o mesmo tipo de cabelo, o mesmo nariz chato, o mesmo queixo, os mesmos dentes brancos e até o mesmo sorriso” [The physical resemblance between Breno and Barack Hussein Obama Sr., the father of the President of the United States, was, in fact, impressive. Both had the same dark color, the same round face, the same oval eyes, the same type of hair, the same fat nose, the same chin, the same white teeth and even the same smile] (49, emphasis mine). 36 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 2.4 Barack Obama Sr. Source Pinterest, “Barack Obama Sr.” (from barack- obama-pictures.com)

Racist descriptions based on skin pigmentation and exaggerated physical features have historically shaped whites’ perception of blacks. In White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture, Jan Nederveen Pieterse analyzes how colonialism connected to the nineteenth-century European evolutionist discourses to construct images of Africa and blacks, noting that these stereotyped representations are still in circulation today. Moreover, Nederveen Pieterse observes that the 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 37

Fig. 2.5 Breno Mello. Source Pinterest, “Breno Mello” (from criterion.com) representation of “otherness” requires a process of mental “oversimpli- fcation” and “typifcation,” in which one disregards what is unique in an individual or group and sets to categorize them in a single class that shares similar traits or qualities, homogenizing the subject (225). In this sense, Mello’s and Obama Sr.’s blackness and physical features render them interchangeable: they are basically the same (no matter what their individual stories may be). To Fernando Jorge, there is an unequivocal physical similarity between the Kenyan Obama Sr. and the Brazilian Breno Mello, so much so that Jorge declares Obama Sr. a doppelganger of Mello.10 Hence, Ann Dunham was only swapping her love fetish: the platonic Brazilian black romantic interest with a real Kenyan lover.

Não duvide, amigo leitor, Barack Hussein Obama nasceu por causa desse flme. Insisto, o pai dele, reluzente negro do Quênia, país da África Oriental, foi para a sua mãe branca a transposição do ator Breno Mello, o Orfeu do flme, reluzente negro brasileiro do Rio Grande do Sul. (49, emphasis mine) [Do not doubt, my friend the reader, that Barack Hussein Obama was born because of this movie. I insist, his father, the shiny black from Kenya, country of Oriental Africa, was to his white mother a transposition of the actor Breno Mello, the Orpheus of the movie, the shiny Brazilian black of Rio Grande do Sul.] 38 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

From the union of the white American Ann Dunham and the black Kenyan Barack Obama Sr., Obama was then born, a mulatto in a land of biracial polarity. According to Jorge, Obama owes his own existence to Brazilian art and poetry, cultural elements that, in turn, were strongly infuenced by Brazil’s black ancestry. Obama would be, therefore, the “true expression of Brazil,” if not by his nationality, then by his essence. This “essence” carries the effgy of mestiçagem, coupled with the idea of racial democracy. Obama, in turn, had “Brazilianized” American political institutions, as Fernando Jorge tries to demonstrate with his wordplay: “Esta [a Casa Branca] agora já não é tão branca, virou mestiça…” [This (the White House) now is not so white anymore, it became mestizo…] (330). In Jorge’s interesting operation, the “other,” an American Obama, transforms into the “we,” the Brazilian Obama, incorporated into Brazilian nationality through the spirit of carnaval (the movie Black Orpheus) and mestiçagem (the love story between Ann Dunham/ Eurydice and Obama Sr./Orpheus). Obama becomes, therefore, a true Brazilian, because he so perfectly expresses the real ideals of Brazil’s culture and society. In the chapter “Barack Obama understands why your mother was dazzled by the movie Black Orpheus,” Jorge summarizes the president’s life story, from his birth to his political ascension, quoting from both of Obama’s autobiographies, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Still at the core of the chapter is Ann Dunham’s fascination with Black Orpheus. The Brazilian journalist returns to this episode and includes Obama’s refection on the experience: “My mother was that girl with the movie of beautiful black people in her head, fattered by my father’s attention, confused and alone, trying to break out of the grip of her own parents’ lives” (Dreams from My Father 132). In Dreams from My Father, Obama’s thoughts emerge after a conversation with his mother about the absent (and thus mysterious) father; he unites Ann Dunham’s fascination with an exotic universe of blacks in Brazilian carnaval with her naïve fascination with the equally intriguing Obama Sr. The president complicates his parents’ relationship by focusing on the power of exoticism created by the same white people who are, at the same time, fascinated and repulsed by the “other.” Jorge then simplifes the equation, emphasizing the exotic as a positive element of aggregation: 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 39

Minha mãe era aquela menina com o flme cheio de belas pessoas negras na cabeça, seduzida pela atenção de meu pai, confusa e sozinha, procurando fugir da clausura … Quem lê estas palavras tem a impressão de que, conscientemente ou instin- tivamente, Obama logo se convenceu disto: se não fosse o Orfeu Negro e o astro deste flme, Breno Mello, quase sósia de seu pai, ele jamais teria nascido na exótica e paradisíaca Honolulu … (111, emphasis mine) [My mother was that child with the movie full of beautiful black people in her head, seduced by my father’s attention, confused and alone, seeking to escape a prison … Anyone who reads these words has the impression that, consciously or instinctively, Obama was soon convinced of this: if it would have not been for Black Orpheus and the star of the flm, Breno Mello, an almost double of his father, he would have never been born in the exotic and paradisiac Honolulu …]

It is interesting to note that there is a direct equivalence between Hawaii and Brazil in Jorge’s reasoning: both emerge as exotic and paradisiac sites, where the different races have more freedom to mix and min- gle. Thus, Obama was born in Hawaii, but he could equally have been born in Brazil: the same interchangeable operation of Ann’s love objects (Obama Sr./Breno Mello) now can be applied to Obama’s birth site (Hawaii/Brazil). Hawaii emerges as a unique space in the United States, where races would coexist harmoniously. Obama himself notes that his grandparents’ decision to move to Hawaii was connected to the idea that ethnic and racial relationships had much less social friction in that U.S. state:11

There were too many races, with power among them too diffuse, to impose the mainland’s rigid caste system; and so few blacks that the most ardent segregationist could enjoy a vacation secure in the knowledge that race mixing in Hawaii had little to do with the established order back home. Thus the legend was made of Hawaii as the one true melting pot, an experiment in racial harmony. My grandparents—especially Gramps, who came into contact with a range of people through his furniture business— threw themselves into the cause of mutual understanding. (Dreams from My Father 38) 40 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Hence, if Breno Mello is the double of Obama Sr., Brazil is a—better— double of Hawaii: not an archipelago, but an entire country devoted to embracing and celebrating all races, ethnicities, and cultures. Jorge constantly reminds readers of Brazil’s accepting nature, a country thus more attuned to Obama’s aspirations and sensibilities. If Brazil emerges as a positive sign, the United States has to function as its negative pole; throughout the book, Jorge carefully constructs the United States as Brazil’s nemesis, a place where pervasive racial prejudice and violence were not only overlooked, but also sanctioned. Therefore, in the chapters “A mãe de Obama e o preconceito contra os negros, nos Estados Unidos” [Obama’s mother and the prejudice against blacks in the United States] and “Racismo, o perigo que ameaça Barack Obama” [Racism, the danger that threatens Barack Obama], Jorge describes the “long history of North American blacks against racial discrimination” (12). He starts with Ann Dunham’s childhood experience with racism depicted in Dreams from My Father—she and a black girlfriend were attacked for playing together—to preface the history of racism in the United States: the formation of the Ku Klux Klan after emancipa- tion; lynchings; and the implementation of the Jim Crow laws. The Brazilian journalist also chronicles African-Americans’ struggle to end racial discrimination: the foundation of the NAACP; the creation of Pan-Africanism; and the emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Federal laws and policies aimed at the eradication of racial discrimination, as well as the social and economic advancement of African- Americans, helped to forge a strong black middle-upper class and to elevate blacks to higher positions in society. However, as Jorge concludes, “a progressiva ascensão social do negro norte-americano … não signifca que o ódio e o preconceito contra ele, bem antigos, tenham desaparecido completamente. Ambos estão ainda bem vivos, atuantes” [the progressive social ascension of the North American black … does not mean that the hatred and prejudice against them (the blacks), so old, have disappeared completely. Both are still well alive, active] (332). In the chapter “Racism, the danger that threatens Obama,” Jorge notes that, even after Obama’s election, racial prejudice in the United States remains a critical problem, and he concludes that hatred against blacks could lead to the president’s assassination. Still, Jorge observes that Brazil is also plagued by racism, which is more subtle and hidden. Nevertheless, the journalist presents as examples isolated cases of racial prejudice in Brazilian society (371–374), 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 41 which certainly contrast with the more systematic nature of U.S. racism. In this sense, although Jorge acknowledges the “presence of this evil” among Brazilians, he certainly celebrates the nation’s ideals of miscegenation and racial unity. Actually, Brazil sets an example in the realm of race relations that needs to be emulated. In the chapter “O relacionamento de Obama com Lula e o Brasil” [Obama’s relationship with Lula and Brazil], the journalist reminds the reader that prior to Obama’s election in the United States, Brazil had a mulatto president as early as 1909: Nilo Peçanha (whom Jorge nicknames “the Brazilian Obama”), the vice president, took over power when President Afonso Pena suddenly passed away during his term in offce (380).12 Most recently, the two largest countries in the Americas have elected rulers who have similar personal histories. Jorge compares Barack Obama and Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva,13 fnding parallels between the biracial U.S. leader and the northeastern Brazilian head of state: both like ani- mals, are very emotive, and were born under a lucky star. Yet the most important characteristic they share is their humble origins: “a origem modesta dos dois presidentes parece ligar um ao outro” [the modest origins of these two presidents seem to connect them to each other] (Jorge 374). The journalist also notes that soon after being elected, Obama called Lula, and they talked for over twenty-fve minutes. In an infor- mal tone, both presidents asked the other to be addressed by their frst names and agreed to visit each other’s countries (397–399).14 In fact, Lula met Obama on March 14, 2009, in Washington, whereas the U.S. president came to Brazil for a two-day visit on March 19, 2011, when Lula had already left offce and his successor from the Workers’ Party, Dilma Rousseff, had taken over the presidency. (Obama’s visit to Brazil and his relationship with the frst female Brazilian ruler will be analyzed later in Chaps. 3 and 4 respectively.) The next section, “Lula and Obama: How Hope (Momentarily) Trumped Classism and Racism,” investigates how the Brazilian media and political cartoons portrayed Lula’s and Obama’s relationship. The Brazilian media drew comparisons between the two presidents, highlighting similarities between their biographies. In turn, political cartoons emphasized Lula’s role as the president of an economically emerging nation. Obama and Lula were two political phenomena that symbolized a new optimistic perspective about the United States and Brazil; in other words, both leaders represented how race and class prejudice could be surpassed in Brazil and the United States. 42 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Lula and Obama: How Hope (Momentarily) Trumped Classism and Racism Presidents Obama and Lula seemed to be legitimately fond of each other. In fact, Obama’s and Lula’s mutual admiration was amply publicized in the worldwide media. During the Group of 20 (G20) summit in London in May 2009, Obama, a widely esteemed leader globally, affrmed that he was not the most popular politician on Earth; instead, this title belonged to the Brazilian president. During a lunch at the meeting, he shook hands with Lula and declared with a smile, “This is my man right here, I love this guy.” The former lathe operator, who does not speak English but was helped by an interpreter, enjoyed the attention, enthusiastically grasping Obama’s hand with both of his (“Obama: Lula ‘Is the Most Popular Politician’”). Extensively broadcast on Brazilian television and Internet sites, this episode was also described in “Obama’s relationship with Lula and Brazil,” the last chapter of Jorge’s Se não fosse o Brasil. The warm relationship between the two leaders, then, closes a circle: Obama is not Brazilian, but could well have been a native of the country. As Jorge underlines in the chapter, Obama himself affrms several times that he looks like a Brazilian and could certainly “pass” for one. In reply to Obama’s “This is my man,” Lula told the international media, “se você encontra [o Obama] na Bahia, acha que é baiano. O Obama tem a cara da gente” [if one fnds (Obama) in Bahia, one will think that he is from Bahia. Obama has our traits] (“Eu adoro esse cara,” emphasis mine).15 Jorge ends his book by returning to the syllogistic reasoning delineated in the frst chapter of Se não fosse o Brasil: because of Camus’ Black Orpheus, Ann Dunham fell in love with Obama Sr., a double of the actor Breno Mello, so Barack Obama could be born, thanks to Brazil, in a culmination of a “lógica perfeita” (444). In fact, Jorge’s “perfect logic” aligns with the idea that Obama’s multiracial and multicultural roots are, in fact, Brazilian par excellence. Obama’s birth outside the realm of racially integrated Brazil was seen as an unfortunate and random accident, which had to be unequivocally corrected. In this sense, the Brazilian media have sought to recreate Obama as “one of us.” Undeniably, the Brazilian press took pride in having captured Obama’s positive attention at the G20, perceiving it as a sign of the country’s rise as a global economic power. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Brazil had grown to be the seventh largest economy in the world 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 43 and the second largest emerging market behind China. The frst decade of the twenty-frst century saw the Brazilian economy expand, with an average GDP growth of 4.2% between 2003 and 2012, peaking in 2010 at 7.5%, and an unemployment rate that reached a historical low of 5.4% (Casanova and Kassum 45).16 Brazil’s greatest achievement was its international recognition as an economic powerhouse when its national debt became investment grade, a rating granted by the global rating agency Standard and Poor’s in 2008 and later by Moody’s (Casanova and Kassum 66). Focusing on Obama’s relationship with Lula, political cartoons emphasized the U.S. economic crisis and Brazil’s role as its potential fnancial rescuer, as seen in Figs. 2.6 and 2.7. In the frst cartoon, Obama puts his arm on Lula’s shoulder in close proximity to the Brazilian head of state. He amiably declares to a smiling Lula: “This is the man!” However, in the sequence, the U.S. president reveals in thought his real intentions: “[The man] who will help [me] to pay the bill for this crisis.” In the second cartoon, a destitute FMI—Fundo Monetário Internacional [International Monetary Fund, IMF]—approaches Obama asking for money. He replies: “Ask the bearded (man), he is the man!” Here Lula emerges very comfortably, smoking a cigar, drinking wine, and chatting with two prominent world leaders: Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France (May 2007–May 2012), and Tarō Asō, prime minister of Japan (September 24, 2008–September 16, 2009). As shown in Figs. 2.6 and 2.7 respectively, Brazil had proved its power by becoming the ffth biggest holder of U.S. debt (at that time, only after China, Japan, and the Caribbean banks) and turning from being one of the main recipients of the IMF’s loans to an active lender to the organization (Casanova and Kassum 66). In these satirical drawings, cartoonists Lute and Samuca17 seek to emphasize Brazil’s growing economic and political role in the global scenario. Lula, who takes center stage, displaces the leader of the most powerful nation in the world as “the” key economic player, in the midst of one of the most signifcant economic crises since the 1929 collapse of the stock market. Lula proved to be a very apt politician, taking advantage of the dire situation to enhance his position in national and international scenes, boldly declaring in April 2008 that the economic crisis would only minimally affect Brazil (which later proved to be true): “Lá, nos EUA, ela [a crise] é uma tsunami; aqui, se ela chegar, vai chegar uma marolinha” [There, in the USA, (the crisis) is a tsunami; here, if (the crisis) comes, it will come as a small wave] (Galhardo). 44 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE Source: Jornal Hoje em Dia “Esse é o Cara” by Lute. Source: Fig. 2.6 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 45 Source: Diário de Pernambuco “G20: Peça ao barbudo, ele é o cara” by Samuca. Source: Fig. 2.7 46 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Undoubtedly, the country’s increasing economic importance fuelled Obama’s interest in Brazil, but it also seems that he legitimately identifed with Lula (and vice versa). Both presidents’ humble beginnings created a common ground between them, helping to unite the leaders at a more personal level. The U.S. and Brazilian media also repeatedly focused on these presidents’ modest roots, trying “to represent the election of an outsider (because of the ethnic or social class background) to the presidential offce as a historical circumstance and an assertion of the democracy in their respective countries” (Pereira 389). In Brazil, where the notion of racial democracy paradoxically coexists with great social and economic marginalization, Lula’s ascension to the presidency was attributed to the fulfllment of the notion of the self- made man, made possible by consolidation of the country’s democratic structures. Yet in the United States, Obama’s election was a ratifcation of this same myth of the self-made man, as well as a reaffrmation of the nation’s democratic strength, which brought to power an individual from an ethnic background different from that of many mainstream politicians (389).18 Lula had shown a clear preference for the candidate Obama, even prior to Obama’s election to the presidency in November 2008. On October 20, 2008, he declared that one of the benefts of the crisis would be to elect Obama: “Essa crise, entre os benefícios que vai causar, vai eleger Obama presidente dos Estados Unidos, vai ajudar a eleger um negro, o que não é pouca coisa” [This crisis, among the many benefts that it could bring, will help to elect a black president, which is not a little thing]. He also compared himself to Obama, noting that “do ponto de vista simbólico … eleger um torneiro mecânico pela segunda vez no Brasil, eleger um índio na Bolívia, um negro nos Estados Unidos … é bastante relevante” [from a symbolic point of view … to elect a lathe operator for a second mandate in Brazil, to elect an Indian in Bolivia, a black man in the United States … (this all) is very relevant] (Freire and Rodrigues).19 In another speech on November 12, 2008, Lula vig- orously defended the already elected Obama, comparing his election to Nelson Mandela’s rise to power in South Africa (Berlinck and Gois). On November 15, 2008, the newspaper O Globo remarked that at the end of the U.S. presidential campaign, Lula openly sided with Obama, to whom the Brazilian president considered himself closely related because of their humble origins (“O fator Clinton”). In an interview with the Folha de São Paulo, Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim, the then Brazilian minister of 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 47 foreign relations, also compared the two presidents, asserting that both had an inclusive perspective; Lula fought for the poor without exclud- ing other segments of the population, whereas Obama did not reject his black roots, but did not disregard whites either: “Há um paralelo claro. Aqui, a ‘esperança venceu o medo’, e lá a esperança venceu o medo gerado pelo preconceito” [There is a clear parallel (between the two). Here, “hope triumphed over fear”, and there hope triumphed over the fear generated by prejudice] (Cantanhêde, “A visão de Brasília”).20 Both Lula and Obama were popular and charismatic leaders nationally and internationally, and they were well aware of their similar personal trajectories and privileged positions as public fgures. They also enjoyed a tremendous amount of media attention worldwide. In 2010, the magazine Time nominated Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva as the most infuential leader on the globe; Obama lagged behind, occupying fourth place (“The 2010 Time 100: Leaders”).21 Yet, even prior to his election, Obama captured the hearts and minds of Brazilians, as magazines and newspapers featured the candidate on an unprecedented scale, opening more space to him than any prior U.S. presidential nominee. In 2008, twenty-eight articles from O Globo and ninety-seven from Folha de São Paulo mentioned Obama, and the popular magazine Veja featured Obama twice on the cover, as a candidate and then as president-elect. In June 2008, the magazine headline announced “Ele pode ser o homem mais poderoso do mundo” [He could be the most powerful man in the world], depicting a close-up of a smiling Obama. The cover article “Obama entra para a história” [Obama enters history] is a lesson in optimism, as the subheadline indicates: “A escolha do primeiro negro para concorrer a presidência dos Estados Unidos por um dos dois grandes partidos quebra um tabu de séculos e manda ao mundo uma mensagem de tolerância. Em cinco meses se saberá se o país lhe dará a chave da Casa Branca” [The nomination of the frst black president to run for the U.S. presidency as a candidate of one of the main two parties breaks a taboo of centuries and sends to the world a message of tolerance. In fve months we will know whether the country will give him the White House’s key] (Petry, “Obama entra para a história” 93). Recounting Obama’s biography, the piece emphasizes that he was the frst candidate to overcome racism in a country historically tarnished by centuries of slavery and racial segregation. However, according to Veja, Obama’s strategy proved to be effective because he presented himself as a universal candidate who was beyond racial issues (99); moreover, his multicultural 48 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE and multiracial status allowed him to have widespread appeal and carry a message of tolerance (97). It is interesting to note that “Obama enters history” begins with the story of Ann Dunham’s fascination with Black Orpheus, an episode that the Brazilian media have quoted to exhaustion, as observed in this chapter. The article offers a Brazilian perspective on Obama’s racial standing, underlining that “na verdade, metade branco e metade negro, mas, para os padrões americanos, inteiramente negro. Um negro parido do sonho da jovem Ann, mulher de personalidade tão fascinante, misto de ingênua e libertária, quanto a do seu flho. No Brasil … Obama se consideraria e seria considerado mulato” [in reality, half white and half black, but for the American standards, totally black. A black man born from the young Ann’s dream, a woman whose personality—a mix of naïve and libertar- ian—is as fascinating as her son. In Brazil … Obama would have considered himself and would have been considered a mulatto] (98, emphasis mine). This passage focuses on the U.S. biracial (exclusive) racial system in opposition to the Brazilian multifaceted scale of racial classifcation (more inclusive). In this sense, the Brazilian press paradoxically oscillates between celebrating the United States as the country of all possibilities— no matter how improbable they might seem—and confrming the nation as a place of persistent racial intolerance. Obama himself addressed this contradictory issue in his campaign speech “A More Perfect Union,” delivered in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008: the unique U.S. “experiment in democracy” could not escape “the sin of slavery” and subsequent racial conficts generated by discrimination and offcial segregation, provoking a “gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.” To close this gap, he decided to run for president, inviting Americans to change the course of history, to “perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction— towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.” This utopia is only possible, though, because Obama’s story is as unique as the nation’s history, as he describes: he is “the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas,” raised by white grandparents who survived the Depression and contributed to the U.S. victory in the Second World War, and married to a black woman who carries the blood of slaves and slave-owners. As Obama notes, his background makes him an unconventional candidate, but it is this same uncommon, fragmented, 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 49 and pluralistic story that, in turn, actually represents America—“out of many, we are truly one.” Furthermore, he rejects “race as a divisive turn” and embraces the “American dream,” the faith “that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.” This speech was written in response to growing racial tensions during the presidential campaign. Obama especially addressed the criticism regarding his past relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose controversial sermons fercely exposed America’s racist and impe- rialist legacy (Turner Jr. 4).22 With “A More Perfect Union,” Obama invites all Americans to overcome racial divisions, a prospect made feasible only by the strength and renewal of U.S. democracy, a social and political system in which everything is deemed conceivable. Therefore, this dichotomy of a “country of all possibilities” and the “nation as site of racial intolerance” would provoke a discursive short circuit that challenged a set of Brazilian representations about U.S. racial attitudes and its own racial practices—a short circuit that could be resolved by emphasizing Obama’s multifaceted persona. On November 12, 2008, Veja released a special edition on the president’s victory. The cover again depicts a smiling Obama, the historical date of November 4, 2008, and a quote from his victory speech in white letters on a black background: “Se existe alguém que ainda duvide que os Estados Unidos sejam o lugar onde todas as coisas são possíveis, que ainda questione a força de nossa democracia, a resposta está aqui esta noite” [If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer] (“Cover”).23 The editorial pages dedicate the issue to the “Obama phenomenon” and unabashedly praise the vitality of U.S. democracy:

Agora, no alvorecer do século XXI, com a eleição de Obama os Estados Unidos oferecem o espetáculo de sua própria superação. No espaço de pouco mais de uma geração, o país foi superando o racismo surdo e a segregação racial legalizada em alguns estados, processo que culminou com a aceitação eufórica de um negro no comando supremo da nação. … Aos olhos do mundo, esse triunfo sinaliza a reconquista pelos Estados Unidos da autoridade moral baseada na igualdade de oportunidades para todos. (“O fenômeno Obama” 13) 50 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

[Now at the dawn of the twenty-frst century, with Obama’s election, the United States offers the spectacle of its own realization. In the space of a little more than a generation, the country gradually overcame blind racism and legalized racial segregation in some states, in a process that culminated with the euphoric acceptance of a black man in the supreme command of the nation. … To the eyes of the world, this triumph signals the United States’ recovery of its moral authority, which was based in equal opportunity for all.]

The main article, “Obama: a resposta” [Obama: the answer], underlines U.S. social progress in the arena of civil rights, reminding readers that, when the newly elected president was born, blacks could not vote or run for offce (Petry, “Obama: a resposta” 77). The article retains an optimistic tone, noting that the world has also changed to overcome the after effects of the Second World War, colonialism, and the Cold War. To Veja, Obama is, therefore, a “candidate of our times,” whose plural- ity of identities—his Arab name, African origin, an Asian connection— made him a “Ph.D. in diversity,” broadening his appeal in the United States and abroad (78). If Obama might ft everywhere, he is not “completely” American, or he could be American and still contain any other nationality. Unsurprisingly, the Brazilian media were quick to claim Obama as “ours,” embracing the idea of a local Obama and refashioning his persona with elements of national identity, as investigated in the present study. Obama himself seemed to be very comfortable in his role as native. In his frst encounter with President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva in Washington on March 15, 2009, he joked with journalists when he affrmed that he looked like a Brazilian (D’Ávila). Obama’s biracial heritage and multicultural personal history allow him to reinvent himself as a “brother,” instead of posing as a foreigner. By articulating his “Brazilianness,” Obama hopes to be accepted as an equal, consequently enjoying all the privileges that would pertain to this group. Yet the ability to perform manifold nationalities holds perils as much as perks. Questions about Obama’s U.S. nationality emerged during his frst and second campaigns for the presidency, prompting the candidate to release his birth certifcate as proof of citizenship. This episode was racially motivated; as Matthew W. Hughey highlights, dominant racial and civic representations produced an “othering” of Obama, condemning him to “an intangible yet potent ethos that betrays authentic 2 OBAMA DREAMS OF BRAZIL: A MULATTO IN THE LAND … 51 citizenship” (171). Hughey studies the phenomenon of “Birtherism”; that is, the idea that Obama is constitutionally disqualifed from holding presidential offce by jus soli [birth by soil] or jus sanguinis [birth by parents’ nationality] (164). To Hughes, “narratives of belonging” reveal a continued relation between the idea of citizenship and a “hegem- onic” form of white racial identity, which creates an “unhappy marriage between race and citizenship” (164). In this sense, constructions of whiteness inform citizenship, and citizens who do not correspond to dominant expectations by phenotype and performance are summarily disqualifed from the political process (164). These narratives sanction white entitlement, while arbitrating on the appropriateness of black civic ontology; therefore, the individual would never be able to effectively “belong,” no matter what he or she does: “While Birtherism frst concentrated on demands that Obama release his birth certifcate, the claims slowly expanded to different types of birth documentation, affdavits, and private information such as health records, educational transcripts, and international travel schedules from his childhood” (170–171). In summary, Obama is, at the same time, an American insider and an American outsider. Post-racial, plurinational, multicultural: the African- American president emerges as a polymorphous sign in constant transformation. This “Obama-sign” has been reworked and reshaped to carry specifc anxieties, desires, and aspirations, which seek to correspond to diverse groups, each of them carrying different demands. To the Brazilian media, the “Obama-sign” exposes the country’s racial affictions at a concrete level (the United States elects a black president, and yet Afro-Brazilians still have little actual power and representation in Brazil’s political arena), while paradoxically confrming its ideology of racial concord in an imaginary domain (Obama, the “cosmopolitan mulatto,” would be better understood through the lenses of Brazilian culture, history, and society). As a possible solution to this contradictory proposition, Obama is reconfgured and reaffrmed as a “true” Brazilian, reestablishing the “normal order of things.” The next chapter, “Obama as One of Us,” examines how political cartoons and other visual representations portrayed Obama, especially focusing on the 2008 election and the president’s 2011 visit to Brazil. CHAPTER 3

Barack Obama Is Brazilian

Obama, President of Brazil The 2008 U.S. presidential election captured worldwide attention, in part because of its interesting mix of candidates: Senator John McCain, an older war hero who was tortured while a prisoner during the Vietnam confict; Alaska governor Sarah Palin, McCain’s controversial vice-presidential choice, a woman who drew right-wing conserva- tives to the Republican ticket and grabbed the attention of the media for her lively but politically and socially raw comments; and frst-term senator Barack Obama, a black former social activist and progressive Democrat. As Obama started rising in the polls, the possibility of a black man as president of the most powerful nation in the world helped to fuel even more the curiosity about these unique candidates. In “Obama’s Autobiographical Writing, Critical Race Theory, and the Racializing Gaze,” Ignacio López-Calvo describes Obama’s international appeal; his visit to Germany, which drew a crowd of 200,000 admirers for his speech at Berlin’s Victory Column on July 24, 2008; and several articles on the candidate in the media of Germany, Italy, Spain, and Poland (72–77). Obama’s Berlin address makes clear why he fascinated so many people around the globe. “Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen—a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world,” he stated, playing with the dichotomy of “citizen of the United States” and “citizen of the world,” and yet visibly highlighting the latter. His focus was a globalized planet, where global

© The Author(s) 2018 53 E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_3 54 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE warming, the struggles for social justice and economic equality, the search for peace and democracy, as well as the defense of human rights, were all included in a “noble struggle to bring justice and peace to the world” (“Full Script of Obama’s Speech”).1 Nevertheless, Georgiana Banita indicates that Obama’s global appeal and transnational heritage have an interesting twist: his “transnational consciousness … fold[s] back into his identity as an American with a remarkably stable sense of self, despite the global tensions threatening to destabilize it” (24). Also, one could note that Obama’s rhetoric of hope constitutes an alluring trope for various peoples in several nations. (Chap. 5 will discuss the use of this trope in the Brazilian elections.) However, Deborah F. Atwater demonstrates how Obama’s “rhetoric of hope” is undeniably attached to the so-called American dream and the core values of U.S. democracy: “He expresses the need for all of us to share in the American Dream. For Senator Obama, this means good jobs, education, health care, safety, and affordable housing” (124). Atwater also highlights that the U.S. Constitution provides Obama with a road map that connects individual freedom and community needs (127). Despite his undeniable faith in the American dream, Obama acknowledges the grave problem of racism in the United States. Yet, Atwater notes that as an “eternal optimist” about his country, candidate Obama believed things could be changed and improved with regard to race relations (127). Being informed by transnational roots and still returning to a U.S. identity (which clearly recognizes that the American dream is hampered by racial tensions), Obama attracted diverse segments of U.S. society to his candidacy. This study seeks to ask why Obama presents such a tremendous appeal to Brazilians, a people whose “rhetoric of hope” resides more in praising miscegenation than celebrating the structures of a democratic (supposedly egalitarian) state.2 To ponder this important question, Stephanie Li’s central notion of “race-specifc, race-free language” in the construction of Obama as a sign is particularly useful. Li postulates that “race-specifc, race-free language” mirrors the current legacy of multiculturalism in America, where the expectation of diversity converges with continual anxieties about how to confront difference (10). In this new positive and yet paradoxical nation, “Americans like their diversity displayed, not discussed” (17). Characterizing Obama as “our frst signifying president,” Li observes that he was the frst candidate to utilize racial identity to appeal to 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 55 different demographics; he managed to employ the several signifcations of his racial status to his own advantage (5), reinforcing the concept of a novel and “ideal” America, more attuned to the aspirations of a multicultural nation:

“Race-specifc, race-free language” signals an important evolution in our nation’s long record of representing race. It demonstrates both a refresh- ing comfort with racial diversity as well as new anxieties about how to speak about race. Such prose embodies the very paradox of the ways in which race operates in American society. It is both a fction with no logical basis as well as a fundamental structure of social life. “Race-specifc, race-free language” captures the tensions and deceptions of America’s aspirations. Through language, we tell the story of who we want to be, a country where opportunities are open to all and yet where difference is celebrated. This dream, both noble and seemingly impossible, generates language that is fraught with contradictions as it aspires to lay the founda- tions of a new racial home. (23)

Obama, therefore, constructs a discourse of “race-specifc, race-free” language in which race is, at the same time, acknowledged and occluded (136), present and absent (138). To Li, Obama emerges as race-specifc because his racial identity is widely known (and clearly visual); still, he reinvents himself as race-free because he ignores (19)—or at least down- plays—racial matters. In this sense, instead of taking center stage, race “has moved underground, a signifer not legible to everyone” (141), ultimately fading into invisibility (146). Interestingly, the notion of a “race-specifc, race-free” language seems to parallel Brazil’s construction and understanding of race. Fluid Brazilian racial markers helped to create an array of multiple denomina- tions between the “black” and the “white.” As Reginald Daniels notes, “blackness and whiteness are merely extremes on a continuum where physical appearance, in conjunction with class and cultural (rather than exclusively racial) signifers, has come to determine one’s identity and status in the social hierarchy” (27). According to Daniels, this racial formation forged a “ternary racial project,” which has been characterized by “a more attenuated dichotomization of blackness and whiteness” and the emergence of the “law of the excluded middle” (27). The middle ground was the mulatto, a type that indeed emerged as the cornerstone of Brazilian national identity. Sociologist Gilberto Freyre popularized this ternary racial project, celebrating the Portuguese colonizer for 56 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE widespread miscegenation and, supposedly, racial tolerance.3 In contrast to the Brazilian (and Latin American in general) racial system, the racial formation in Anglo North America branded a “binary racial project,” in which the “one drop rule” gave the white dominant elites the illusion of racial purity (Daniels 85–96). In this sense, the historically fuid Brazilian racial system parallels the current idea of the United States’ “race-specifc, race-free language.” That is, Brazil is a country where racial diversity has always been celebrated, and yet race has not been widely debated; on the contrary, racial issues have always been conveniently hindered in Brazilian society. The Brazilian racial discourse can be compared to “race-specifc language” because it values the mulatto and black culture in general, and yet it can also be compared to “race-free language” because it embraces the notion of racial democracy, paradoxically creating a nation where race is celebrated, but seldom truly discussed and problematized. Hence, it is not a coincidence that Brazilians would be prone to capturing the “Obama-sign” as their own. While Stephanie Li addresses textual narratives in her analysis, the subsequent chapters of this study specifcally center on the visual representations of Obama. Visuality is essential to this examination because in a so-called “color-blind” post- racial era, not only race as a text, but also—and most importantly—race as a visual sign, remains crucial to our coding of social reality. As W.J.T. Mitchell underlines, the feld of visual culture has placed race, its visibility, and the invisibility of the “racial contract” (which guarantees non- whites’ subordination and domination)4 at the core of society’s debates (Seeing Through Race 12). Nevertheless, Mitchell goes beyond the dis- cernible idea of race as an object to be represented visually or verbally to propose race as a medium; that is, “a transparent medium of deceptive self-evident perceptions” (13), a mediated framework in which one “sees through” to apprehend and formulate otherness:

Race, in other words, is something we see through, like a frame, a window, a screen, or a lens, rather than something we look at. It is a repertoire of cognitive and conceptual flters through which forms of human otherness are mediated. It is also a costume, a mask, or a masquerade that can be put on, played upon, and disavowed. As such, it is, of course, not exclusively a visual medium, but engages all the senses and signs that make human cog- nition, and especially recognition possible. (Seeing Through Race xii–xiii, author’s emphasis) 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 57

Therefore, going against the grain of the “post-racial” wave, rather than eliminating race, Mitchell suggests reframing it in order to oppose racism (Seeing Through Race 14–15).5 He notes that, rather than exemplifying a new celebratory post-racial order, Obama’s campaign and subsequent election were examples of the persistence of the “racial medium” in American culture and politics, as they revolved around the power of the concept of race and the endurance of racism within the national political realm (49). The outpouring of racist imagery systematically equated blacks and Arabs, Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden, as well as constantly evoked portrayals of Obama as a terrorist, as Hitler or Stalin, as the foreign other, and as a chimpanzee (Seeing Through Race 50–51). Undoubtedly, candidate Obama evoked racist images (as he continued to do as president), but also evoked images of hope that had an impact not only on the United States’ political and social establishment, but also on the political imaginary of other nations. In Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology, several designers from various countries present their posters in support of Obama’s campaign. The Internet had already been crucial in terms of galvanizing a huge amount of grassroots support for the Illinois senator, so artists Aaron Perry Tucker and Adam Meyer decided to use this tool as a platform for the creative community to circulate creative posters made for his campaign for the presidency (Perry-Zucker 9). The book is thus born of this project that captured “the energy, excitement, and hope we experienced as we all worked to elect Barack Obama” (9). In this “unique collection of political art” (S. Lee 15), artists from the United States and many other countries—Mexico, Canada, Panama, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Brazil—pay homage to Obama’s campaign by creating images that associate the candidate with his main motto of hope and change, highlighting the great international appeal of his persona. In a globalized world where dissatisfed individuals clamor for change from the ill effects of neoliberalism, the “Obama-sign” visually translated to other cultures, because of a rising global demand for social and political transformation. This transcultural transposition could easily occur because images are born out of universal desires (Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? 66) and acquire independent quasi-life forms, “reproducing themselves over time, migrating from one culture to another” (93).6 In this sense, images 58 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE acquire a novel vitality and independence, creating, in turn, new signifcations, new desires: “They [images] change the way we think and see and dream. They refunction our memories and imaginations, bringing new criteria and new desires into the world” (What Do Pictures Want? 92). It is no surprise, then, that artists from so many different nationalities have refashioned Obama. In the anthology, Panamanian designer Maristella Gonzalez plays with the “O” of Obama—which in his campaign represented the sunrise, a new era of promise and hope—replacing the letter with a heart featuring the phrase “Obama Te Ama” [Obama Loves You] (95). Gonzalez uses the sonority of the third person of the verb amar [love] in Spanish to invoke the idea of a multicultural Obama who embraces people of Hispanic heritage. Other artists also employ the iconic sun image in their posters. Switzerland’s Amadé Fries places a small “O” at the center bottom of his poster, with the white cross of the nation’s fag at the upper center, followed by the slogan “Four lan- guages, one people, one hope. Switzerland supporting Obama” (111). The sun also occupies the upper center of Canadian Lisa Kiss’ poster, followed by the words “Canada. We’ve got hope too, eh” (110). In this sense, the “Obama-sign” goes beyond the framework of U.S. national politics to convey symbols of international peace, hope, and unity. This message was so powerful that less than a year into his presidency, Obama was granted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. After many controversial foreign policy decisions—such as missile strikes in Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013—many foreign leaders suggested Obama return the prize (M. Lee). The bombing of Libya was ordered during Obama’s visit to Brazil and caused popular and political dissatisfaction among Brazilians, as demonstrated later in this chapter.7 In 2008, however, Obama’s campaign was a dynamic force, the candidate’s images refashioning old desires and forging new promises. Among the designers who participated in the “Design for Obama” project, Brazilian artist Roberlan Borges not only celebrated the former Illinois senator, but also—and most importantly—recreated him as a “Brazilian Obama.”8 “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” (Fig. 3.1) shows an Obama inside a sun of green and yellow, the colors of the Brazilian fag. The number 10 appears next to him, which indicates he is a major player in international politics. The number 10 also connects Obama with Brazilian soccer, as it is the number of the most important soccer player on the national team (Roberlan, personal interview). 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 59

Fig. 3.1 “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” by Roberlan. Source roberlan.devian- tart.com

In Roberlan’s poster, Obama appears as a savior, a messiah, with a golden sun emanating from his head and a starry halo over his head. It is important to note that the Brazilian fag has at its center a blue circle with white stars, which represent the nation’s several states, and a white curved band with the motto “Ordem e Progresso” [Order and Progress]. In Roberlan’s design, Obama emerges at the center of the circle and, in the background, letters delineate the words esperança [hope], progresso [progress], and mudança [change]. At the bottom, the phrase “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” in blue, green, and yellow reveals a desire 60 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE for political and social transformation. According to Roberlan, Obama was breaking all paradigms and bringing a new proposal, a new hope: “Ele foi um sopro de ar fresco. Aqui também precisava ter um Obama. … [ele] me infuenciou muito. … Obama [foi] um cara novo que revo lucionou tudo” [He was a breath of fresh air. Here (in Brazil, we) also needed to have an Obama. … he infuenced me a lot. … Obama was a new guy who revolutionized everything] (personal interview). The image, however, seems to beg the question: could Obama (that is, a black candidate) be president of Brazil? If this could not be achieved in reality, it could appear in the Brazilian collective imaginary, as this manuscript proposes. Indeed, the question of race in the U.S. election drew attention not only from the Brazilian mainstream media, but also from social media. With Obama rising in popularity, Brazilian bloggers fercely debated the subject in the social media sphere (Góes). Blogger Gordo Nerd created the following banner for his blog (Fig. 3.2).9 A smiling Obama (a smile that rapidly became his trademark and that cartoonists accentuated) appears on a blue background with the title: “Não vote em branco.” The double meaning of this sentence is “check a name in your voting card” (in this case, Obama) or “do not cast a blank vote,” as well as “do not vote for white people.” In the banner, the rising sun of hope and change—the “O” symbol—now reappears, in the colors of the Brazilian fag. After Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, Afro-Brazilian actress, poet, and political activist Elisa Lucinda wrote the poem “Obama nas Alturas” [Obama in the Highness].10 Indeed, the title remits to the idea of Obama as a messiah, a royal person—“in the Highness”—as well as the ultimate political, social, and racial winner, who overcame obstacles to become the leader of the most economically developed nation in the world. The poet celebrates his victory and stresses his importance to underprivileged people worldwide, thus affrming the universal character of Obama’s appeal, while emphasizing the signifcance to black Brazilians of his achievements:

Em estado de Obama perambulo, não sei por quê, livre pela casa. Deu Obama na cabeça dona Elisa, 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 61

Fig. 3.2 “Não vote em branco” by Gordonerd. Source gordonerd.com.br

explodirá eufórico seu Itamar que é branco mas é nordestino e porteiro, portanto, uma espécie de preto neste Brasil. Você viu, Itamar (que arrepio), que lavada! Ninguém esperava o voto dos excluídos: Chineses, africanos, indianos, árabes, japoneses, mexicanos, brancos envergonhados com a situação indecente, brasileiros e todos os latinos e seus descendentes. Na família da urna todo mundo virou parente. Não sei por que, meu coração descansa em paz. Parece que o futuro chegou, parece que o superman mudou de cor, 62 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

parece recomeço, parece, agora, que é possível até papa preto, parece que o tempo de guerra morreu, parece que Obama é presidente meu. (© Elisa Lucinda, “Obama nas Alturas”) [In a state of Obama I wander, I don’t know why, Free throughout the house. Obama won, Mrs. Elisa, Euphoric will explode Itamar Who is white, but a doorman from the Northeast; Therefore, kind of black in Brazil. Did you hear, Itamar (what a thrill), what a landslide! Nobody expected the sidelined to vote: Chinese, Africans, Indians, Arabs, Japanese, Mexicans, White people ashamed of an indignant situation, Brazilians and all the Latinos and their descendants. In the family of the electoral polling, everyone became kin. I don’t know why, my heart rests in peace. It seems that the future arrived, It seems that Superman changed his color, It seems like a rebirth, It seems that now it is even possible to have a black pope, It seems that the wartime is over, It seems that Obama is my president.]

In the frst verse of the poem, the poetic voice is “in a state of Obama,” representing a play of words between state, the political entity, and state of mind, a feeling. Moreover, Obama’s win is a wide-reaching victory for all marginalized people—the individual doorman from Brazil’s Northeast or U.S. blacks and Latinos. White people who were moved by the injustices of inequality and racism also embraced Obama unre- servedly. Therefore, the polling station becomes a place of gathering, a community that is linked by the anticipation of a future that is now, surprisingly, the present. As President Obama himself stated, and the poet underscores, everything is then possible: the pope could also be black or war could be fnally eradicated. Obama is iconically equated with a super- hero, whose superpowers enable a new beginning for the planet. In this sense, Obama is as much the U.S. president as he is Brazilian: “It seems that Obama is my president.” 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 63

This feeling pervaded the 2011 Obama trip to Brazil, at the beginning of the government of President Dilma Rousseff, the frst female president of the largest and most economically important nation in Latin America. Obama was recreated and claimed as Brazilian, his image connected to soccer, carnaval, and national icons (such as Christ the Redeemer, the statue in Rio de Janeiro that stands as a symbol of the country, as much as the Statue of Liberty is a metonym for the United States).

Obama as “One of Us”: Obama’s 2011 Visit to Brazil In February 2011, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral, enthusiastically confrmed Barack Obama’s visit to the Cidade Maravilhosa with an announcement on Twitter (Andrade). In January, during the State of the Union address, Obama himself declared that he would visit Brazil in March—more specifcally, the country’s capital, Brasília, and the city of Rio de Janeiro—as part of a trip to Latin America. During this journey, he would seek to establish better political relations and increase commercial trade with the countries in the area (“Estado da União: Obama confrma viagem”). The visit was almost cancelled, however, because of the pending confict with Libya. The absence of the U.S. president from North American soil in a time of turmoil was highly criticized by Republicans. Also, the decision to bomb Libya while in Brazil caused discomfort among Rousseff and her diplomats, and triggered a wave of protests in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. Another incident, Obama’s security measures for his speech to the U.S./Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, in which minis- ters and prominent businessmen were frisked and forced to remove their shoes, almost provoked a serious diplomatic incident between the United States and Brazil. Obama and Rousseff, together with other Brazilian authorities (such as Sérgio Cabral, the governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and Eduardo Paes, the mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro) tried to convey to the public an aura of friendship and cooperation during the event, but not everything in the garden was rosy.11 Despite all of the problems, both presidents seemed to have been content with the visit and the promise of a new political and economic relationship between the two countries. After having enjoyed a close relationship with Lula—so much so that Obama praised him at the G20 meeting, as examined in Chap. 2—U.S. and Brazilian relations cooled when Lula consistently sided with Middle Eastern countries in the 64 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

United Nations, especially criticizing U.S. sanctions on Iran and condemning U.S. military interventions in the region. Rousseff certainly felt fattered and honored that Obama decided to visit the country during the beginning of her frst term, while the U.S. president was pleased with her criticism of Iran’s human rights violations—and clearly eager to sub- stitute the United States for China as the most important Brazilian trade partner (“Obama elogia ‘pragmatismo’ de Dilma”). Hence, their rapport started on a very positive note, but it would take a hit in 2013, when the espionage scandal rocked their friendship. The next chapter will study how memes and political cartoons treated their relationship vis-à-vis this episode. Still, Obama’s offcial visit to Brazil in 2011 generated a great deal of governmental and popular excitement. The U.S. Embassy in Brasília promoted a contest to reward the best welcome messages to the president, which could be sent via email or video (the prizes were various items related to Obama). The Embassy also created a site with information about Obama’s itinerary, in which there was a space for users to view the Embassy’s messages via Twitter, and launched the offcial banner of the event, as seen below (“Embaixada dos EUA premia mensagens”) (Fig. 3.3). In the banner, a smiling Obama appears on the right facing two Brazilian postcard images: the National Congress in Brasília, and Christ the Redeemer in the city of Rio de Janeiro.12 His face exudes happiness, optimism, and warmth, a tone that he would display in all of his offcial activities in Brazil. The top features the words “President Obama” (with his name featured prominently in a bigger font), as well as the country, month, and year of his sojourn, all in white letters against a light blue background. The information appears sandwiched between the U.S. and Brazilian fags, indicating harmony and union between the two countries (which is also reinforced by the blue setting). Figure 3.4 shows a parody of the offcial banner that Afro-Brazilian humorist Hélio de la Peña, who frequently impersonated President Obama in the popular comic TV program Casseta & Planeta, Urgente! [Gazette & Planet, Urgent!], posted on his personal blog:13 De la Peña copies Obama’s physical positioning from the original banner, but emerges holding a microphone, perhaps underlining the president’s skill as a communicator. On the left side, one sees the same Brazilian landmarks, but now a fgure of a woman resembling Michelle Obama stands in a sensual pose on the convex half dome that houses the 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 65

Fig. 3.3 “Presidente Obama: Brasil—Março, 2011”. Source United States Diplomatic Mission to Brazil

Senate plenaries. De la Peña undoes the formality of the offcial event, emphasizing the fun side of the U.S. president’s visit. Indeed, the Brazilian mainstream media frequently implied that Obama seemed to be in the country for a vacation and not for state- related business (at times criticizing Obama, at others saluting his laid- back attitude). This feeling was solidifed by the whole family—Michelle and her mother, as well as daughters Sasha and Malia—accompanying the president. Internet artist and blogger Lou posted on his blog Merece 1 tirinha:

Obama veio para o Brasil, trouxe esposa, flhas e sogra, viu o Cristo Redentor, visitou a Cidade de Deus, o Teatro Municipal, assistiu a apresen- tações de capoeira e de escola de samba.

Depois de tudo isso, acho que o famoso slogan de campanha de Obama poderia mudar, o que acham? (“Obama no Brasil”) 66 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 3.4 “Presidente Obama (de la Peña): Brasil—Março 2011”. Source Blog do Hélio de la Peña—Casseta & Planeta

[Obama came to Brazil, brought his wife, daughters, mother-in-law, saw (the statue of) Christ the Redeemer, visited the Cidade de Deus, the Municipal Theater, saw presentations of capoeira and escola de samba. After all of this, I think Obama’s famous campaign slogan could change, what do you think?]

Lou14 also refashioned the offcial banner of Obama’s visit, as shown in Fig. 3.5, using the famous campaign theme “Yes, We Can” and turning it into “Yes, Weekend”:15 The seriousness of Obama’s face in the iconic political ad contrasts with the smiley Obama in Brazil. In the frst fgure, a refective Obama looks forward, as if to ascertain a near future full of uncertainties, but also—and most importantly—replete with promise. The now famous motto “Yes, We Can” encompasses all the potentialities of a nation on the brink of collapse and also (positive) change. Paradoxically, the blow of the 2008 economic crisis suddenly opened the U.S. political and social arena to seemingly unattainable possibilities: social (and racial) justice, economic equality, and political expression. As discussed in the previous 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 67

Fig. 3.5 “Yes, We Can/Yes, Weekend” by Lou. Source merece1tirinha.com.br chapter, Obama created a new rhetoric of politics, a “rhetoric of hope”; in other words, a vision of an inclusive America, forged by certain core values and beliefs, which are held together by the hope of a communal American spirit. To the American Obama, the all-inclusive American dream would ultimately surpass fssures of race, religion, region, and class, creating a more perfect union, as described in his speech: “And we need to remind ourselves, despite all of our differences, just how much we share: common hopes, common dreams, a bond that will not break” (qtd. in Atwater 126). In this sense, “Yes, We Can” summarizes the hope and affrmation of the promise of a new America, where “We”—the 68 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE diverse and yet alike body politic—would fulfll the nation’s potentialities. The gravity of the 2008 political, social, and economic moment is substituted by the humorous 2011 “Yes, Weekend,” which features a lighter Obama, one transformed by the force of the Brazilian values of cordiality, social and racial harmony, and joie de vivre. It is not surprising that Brazilian social media artists and bloggers refashioned Obama through visual representations posted on personal websites and blogs during the president’s visit to the country. Obama himself revolutionized politics by galvanizing virtual communities and networks around his candidacy. Both Barack Obama and John McCain used the Internet to bolster their campaigns, but Obama’s campaign truly mastered online tools, which proved to be essential to his presidential victory. In the article “Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency,” Sarah Lai Stirland describes:

Volunteers used Obama’s website to organize a thousand phone-banking events in the last week of the race—and 150,000 other campaign-related events over the course of the campaign. Supporters created more than 35,000 groups clumped by affnities like geographical proximity and shared pop-cultural interests. By the end of the campaign, myBarackO- bama.com chalked up some 1.5 million accounts. And Obama raised a record-breaking $600 million in contributions from more than three million people, many of whom donated through the web.

In the age of networks, Obama’s campaign of hope and change emphasized what Tony D. Sampson named an “empathic virality of love” (154); in other words, the candidate tapped into voters’ emotions, underlining the “empathic desire of a population to share in the feelings of others” (54). According to Sampson, Obama’s election was a “contagion,” a shift from “the microbial epidemics of fear and panic,” caused by September 11 and the growing violence in the Middle East, to “a short-lived joyful and emphatic encounter” (150). Sampson draws from the theory of social media that comprehends discursive devices as viral diseases, which can quickly trigger negative or positive emotions such as anger, anxiety, terror, and sadness, or joy and affect. Sampson also notes that Obama’s campaign emphasized “the love of difference” instead of “the love of the same,” creating what he names “Obama-love” (156– 157). “Obama-love” was not restricted to the U.S. political setting; on the contrary, it spread globally throughout his campaign and election, as the fascination with the U.S. president grew internationally (Sampson 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 69

155). In Brazil, candidates for public offce tried to emulate this “political concept of viral love,” as Chap. 5 will demonstrate. Brazilian mainstream media also reinvented Obama through a set of cultural and social activities, to carefully craft a performance of “Brazilianness”: in Brasília, Obama was photographed in front of Tarsila do Amaral’s Abaporu at an exhibit of Brazilian women painters;16 in Rio de Janeiro, he was seen playing soccer in a favela [slum], bathing in the waters of Ipanema, and watching a capoeira presentation. The newspaper O Globo remembered the “symbolic link” between Obama and the city of Rio de Janeiro, quoting again Stanley Ann Dunham’s fascination with the movie Orfeu negro [Black Orpheus] and reminding readers that Vinicius de Moraes’ play was frst performed in 1956 in the same theater in which Obama delivered his speech (“Cinema faz elo sim- bólico”). In fact, the Governor of Rio de Janeiro was planning to organize a visit to the Chapéu Mangueira slum in the neighborhood of Leme, where Camus’ movie was set; however, the U.S. Secret Service opted for Cidade de Deus because of security concerns.17 The slum was part of the social recovery program that implemented the Unidades de Polícia Pacifcadora [Pacifed Police Unities], which sought to reduce violence in several of Rio’s favelas (Maxwell). During his visit to Cidade de Deus, Obama played soccer with children from the Municipal School Pedro Aleixo. The Brazilian press underlined that “Obama ainda tentou fazer uma embaixadinha. Fã de basquete, o americano não demonstrou habi- lidade com a bola de futebol” [Obama still tried to do a freestyle play. A basketball fan, the American did not demonstrate (any) ability with the soccer ball] (“Obama com armário renovado”).18 Nonetheless, it did not quite matter whether Obama displayed a lack of mastery when playing the jogo bonito [beautiful game]—he was promptly connected to the national sport. In the cartoon “Obama foi ao Rio” [Obama went to Rio] (Fig. 3.6), from blogger Pedro Marques,19 Obama holds a Brazilian fag and plays soccer with a boy. He also features his trademark smile and appears with prominence, while a poor, shoeless Afro-Brazilian child emerges in perspective. The same national colors prevail: green, yellow, blue, and white. Moreover, designer Fellipe Elias da Silva,20 who has a blog about humor and soccer, Felldesign, portrayed several Obamas in his cartoon “Obama no Brasil!” [Obama in Brazil!] (Figure 3.7). Obama 1 is a smiling president looking at the Workers’ Party star and saying, “Don’t cry!” This piece seems to affrm to the party in power the United States’ 70 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 3.6 “Obama foi ao Rio” by Pedro Marques. Source Blog do Pedro Marques interference in national affairs (a recurrent theme in other political cartoons). Obama 2 holds a glove with the American colors, but wears a Vasco da Gama T-shirt. Obama himself mentioned the team during his speech in Rio, reminding the audience that Vasco was playing Botafogo at that exact time (Obama, “President Obama Speaks to the People of Brazil”). Moreover, Obama’s association with the team of the Portuguese immigrant colony is not a coincidence, as Vasco da Gama has been popularly known as the frst to integrate black and mulatto players in its rankings.21 “Victory,” declares Obama, celebrating a double 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 71

Fig. 3.7 “Obama no Brasil!” by Fellipe Elias da Silva. Source Blog Felldesign victory, both in the U.S. elections and in the Brazilian felds, hearts, and minds. Obama 3 metamorphoses into Ronaldinho, a famous soccer player and also a gifted sambista, thus uniting Brazil’s two major 72 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE passions: samba and futebol. Obama 4 visits Christ the Redeemer and declares: “Good view!” The Rastafari colors appear in the background; hence the cartoon unites the United States, Brazil, and Africa.22 Obama is, therefore, a legitimate representative of Brazilian mes- tiçagem [miscegenation], mixing with cultural elements such as futebol and samba, as well as Brazil’s famous landmarks. In most political cartoons, the association of Obama with soccer, the national sport and a crucial marker of Brazilian nationality, prompts a “Brazilianization” of the U.S. president. If the real Obama was not an apt soccer player, Brazilians had to transform him into a soccer hero in order to conceive of him as a “true Brazilian.” Unsurprisingly, futebol emerges as a major element in the visual representations of the Brazilian Obama. In Brazil, soccer is not a mere sport; on the contrary, it is a game that expresses a set of specifc values and social relations (DaMatta, “Futebol: ópio do povo” 57). As Roberto DaMatta observes, it is through soccer that Brazilian society reveals itself; in this sense, to study soccer as practiced in Brazil is to understand that Brazilian society also reveals itself through sports, as well as other cultural manifestations, such as popular festivities and elements, which include the carnaval and samba (55). Through the Brazilian national team, abstract entities such as “nation” and “people” can be empiri- cally experienced as visible and concrete beings, allowing the masses a profound connection with national symbols (58). Moreover, in a highly hierarchical society, Brazilian soccer allows the underprivileged to experience an egalitarian order based on individual merit, personal effort, and universal rules (59). In this sense, institutions central to the so-called modern social order—such as the Constitution and the laws—are not the sources of Brazilian national identity; these sources are often found in sports, music, and religion (60). Thus, “no Brasil, o futebol deve ser visto não só como um esporte, mas (e mais importante) como o jogo de todo um outro conjunto de valores e relações sociais” [in Brazil, soccer can be perceived not only as a sport but (most importantly) as a gamut of a set of values and social relations] (DaMatta, “Futebol: ópio do povo” 60). Futebol is also intimately linked to race, as the most celebrated players are blacks, such as the national hero, Pelé. According to José Miguel Wisnik, “o futebol brasileiro torna possível em campo aquilo que a socie- dade brasileira sistematicamente não realiza (democracia racial em ato, elevação dos pobres à máxima importância, competência inequívoca no 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 73 domínio de um código internacional)” [Brazilian soccer makes possible in several instances things that Brazilian society does not accomplish systematically (racial democracy de facto, higher valorization of the poor, unequivocal competence in the mastery of an international code)] (408). In fact, Wisnik compares Afro-Brazilian Machado de Assis to Pelé, as they both overcame social inequalities through their own merit, forging mastery in high-culture (literature) and low-culture (soccer) arenas (405). Against Brazil’s poverty, backwardness, and peripheral condition, the geniality of these social actors made Brazil a better country (408) and affrmed the country’s potential and greatness.23 Hence, it is emblematic that Rio de Janeiro’s soccer clubs tried to claim Obama for themselves, fercely competing for his attention and allegiance. The presidents of Flamengo, Vasco, and Fluminense, popular teams in Rio, each sought to give a team shirt to Obama as a present. In fact, Governor Sérgio Cabral, a devout Vascaíno, was given the special mission of presenting Obama with the new Vasco shirt, with Obama’s name printed on the back as if he were one of the players (Juppa). Vasco’s board of directors even wrote a letter to him declaring that the team was a pioneer in the fght against racism in the sport, as it was the frst Brazilian team to incorporate black and poor players in its ranks, an idea that sport journalist Mario Filho popularized in his classic 1947 book O negro no futebol brasileiro [Blacks in Brazilian soccer]. Roberto Dinamite, the former Vasco player and president of the club, declared: “Achamos que seria importante ele [Obama] conhecer a história do Brasil e o Vasco está inserido nela. A luta contra o racismo faz parte da história do Vasco e reforça o que o clube fez no passado. Daí a iniciativa da carta. Ele é o primeiro presidente americano negro” [We think that it was important for him (Obama) to know about Brazil’s history and Vasco is part of this (history). The struggle against racism is part of our history and reinforces what the club did in the past. So, (we had) the initiative of (writing) this letter. He is the frst black American president] (Nogueira). Flamengo’s site informed that Obama himself asked to be presented with the offcial team shirt when he briefy met the team’s president, Flávia Amorim. According to Amorim, Obama knew that she was the frst woman president of a soccer club in Brazil. Amorim, who was wearing a Flamengo shirt with Obama’s name, took it off and gave it to the president, pronouncing: “E agora você é o mais novo jogador do Flamengo” [And now you are the most recent Flamengo player] (see 74 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

“Site do Flamengo diz que Obama quebrou protocolo” and “Obama recebe camisa do Flamengo”).24 Thus, the U.S. president had to be incorporated into national identity through a process of identifcation with a popular soccer team, becoming “our most recent player” and “our Brazilian Obama.” In turn, it is impossible to ascertain how much the president really knew about Brazilian soccer, but he was certainly well aware of the importance of this sport for Brazilian culture. In his speech in the Theatro Municipal, he thanked the audience for being there because there was a Vasco–Botafogo game at the same time, and he realized “that Brazilians don’t give up their soccer very easily” (Obama, “President Obama Speaks to the People of Brazil”). Consciously and astutely playing with the open signs granted by his multifaceted identity, Obama carefully crafted himself as part of Brazilian culture. From carnaval to futebol, from popular music to Brazilian literature, he comfortably delved into several elements of Brazilian nationality, thereby seeking to become part of the Brazilian imagined community.25 In his speech to the Brazilian/U.S. Business Council/ National Confederation of Industry/American Chamber of Commerce in Brasília, he joked that he was sorry to miss carnaval by a couple of weeks, saluted Brazil for its great economic strides, and compared the two countries:

You have shown that the spirit of capitalism can thrive alongside the spirit of social justice; you have shown that democracy is still the best path to economic progress. For when governments are accountable to their people, their people are more likely to prosper. In the United States of America, we have always shared these beliefs. Like you, we threw off the yoke of colonialism and established our independence in the New World. We too are a vast nation of immigrants, from different backgrounds and cultures, who fnds strength in our diversity, strength in unity, in our national pride. (“United States-Brazil CEO Forum Discussion,” emphasis mine)

Here, the word “diversity” is key, as the multicultural Obama is a U.S. product as much as he could have been a Brazilian construct. Brazilians certainly prided themselves on their “unity in diversity,” which is believed to have culminated in a racially and ethnically harmonious society (although the reality has proved differently, as Afro-Brazilians have 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 75 occupied the bottom of the social ladder). He concluded: “As friends and neighbors who lived the same story, we are eager to be part of your future and fulfll our American dream together. Muito obrigado! Thank you!” (“United States-Brazil CEO Forum Discussion”). Obama himself is part of the American dream, a fulfllment of a promise that dates from the famous Martin Luther King speech, a dream that the president argues can be concretely realized both in the United States and Brazil. Obama also enchanted the audience in his address to the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro, so much so that many Brazilians thought the event was the highlight of his visit to Brazil (“Maioria dos leitores do Globo”). Obama displayed an impressive knowledge of Brazilian culture and history, while maintaining the positive and uplifting tone of all of his speeches. He opened his discourse by speaking a few sentences in Portuguese (with a remarkably good accent) and referring to soccer:

Hello, Rio de Janeiro! Alô, cidade maravilhosa! Boa tarde todo o povo brasileiro! Since the moment we arrived the people of this nation have gra- ciously shown my family the warmth and generosity of the Brazilian spirit! Obrigado! Thank you! And I want to give a special thanks to all of you for being here because I’ve been told that there’s a Vasco football game coming. … Botafogo? So. … I know that. … Botafogo? I realize that Brazilians don’t give up their soccer very easily. (“President Obama Speaks to the People of Brazil”)

In this way, Obama savvily established an immediate connection to the spectators in the theater, as well as to the Brazilian people. He also referred to the link between his mother and the movie Black Orpheus, already studied in Chap. 2:

Now one of my earliest impressions of Brazil was a movie I saw with my mother as a very young child, a movie called Black Orpheus that is set in the favelas of Rio during carnaval. And my mother loved that movie with its singing and dancing against the backdrop of the beautiful green hills. And it frst premiered as a play right here in Theatro Municipal. That’s my understanding. … and. … And my mother is gone now, but she would have never imagined that her son’s frst trip to Brazil would be as President of the United States. She would have never imagined that. And I had never imagined that this country would be even more beautiful than it was in the movie. You are as Jorge Ben Jor sang “a tropical country, blessed by God, and beautiful by nature.”26 76 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

When addressing the Brazilian audience, Obama changed the story of the episode as described in Dreams from My Father. He underlined that one of his frst impressions of Brazil was a movie he saw with his mother “as a very young child.” As examined in the second chapter, in fact, he saw the movie during his undergraduate years at Columbia University in New York. Yet, by redirecting the act of viewing to his childhood, Obama erased his racial and social critical reading of the flm, which certainly required the maturity of adulthood. Through the lenses of a child, the “childish blacks” of the movie could be seen in a more positive light, as more natural and uninhibited people. Moreover, Obama emphasized the natural beauties of Brazil, a country that, in concrete reality, is more beautiful than the idyllic setting of the flm. In his speech, he smartly erased his negative assessment of the movie, replacing it with elements that can be perceived as positive components of Brazil’s culture and society. Moreover, Obama repeated the same comparisons between the United States and Brazil that he had previously established in his speech in Brasília:

But today, I want to speak directly to the Brazilian people about how we can strengthen the friendship between our nations. I’ve come here to share some ideas because I want to speak of the values that we share, the hopes that we have in common, and the difference that we can make together. When you think about it, the journeys of the United States of America and Brazil began in similar ways. Our lands are rich with God’s creation, home to ancient and indigenous peoples, from overseas, the Americas were discovered by men who sought a New World, and settled by pioneers who pushed westward, across vast frontiers. We became colonies claimed by distant crowns, but soon declared our independence. We then welcomed waves of immigrants to our shores, and eventually, after a long struggle, we cleansed the stain of slavery from our land. (“President Obama Speaks to the People of Brazil”)

In this sense, because the two countries share similar histories, Obama could also have been born in Brazil, as he seems to ascertain himself (and Brazilians themselves like to believe). In the absence of an Afro-Brazilian president, Obama fulflls the country’s imaginary ideal of racial equality. Nevertheless, Obama’s charisma did not succeed in attracting everybody in Brazil. Although journalist Fernando de Barros Silva from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo noted that “a máquina retórica do 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 77 presidente americano é sempre poderosa” [the American president’s rhetorical machine is always powerful], he criticized Obama for deliver- ing a “marketing address,” in which generalities and agreeable clichés abounded. To Silva, Obama’s mention of Camus’ Black Orpheus only contributed to the ratifcation of stereotypes about Brazil. In this sense, as Silva notes, it was emblematic that Obama had quoted in his Rio de Janeiro’s speech the commercially successful and internationally famous (and yet despised by literary critics) writer Paulo Coelho. Silva perceives Coelho as a product of the dumbing-down effects of globalization and considers it unfortunate that the country would be more attuned to the light-hearted and optimistic Paulo Coelho than to the ironic and pes- simistic Machado de Assis. The mulatto author, who interestingly was not cited by the black president, would be a better choice to understand Brazil’s complex social and racial quagmires. Finally, Silva decon- structed the myth of racial democracy, observing that “podemos lembrar, com ironia, que enfm um negro subiu a rampa do Palácio do Planalto. Afnal, somos um país miscigenado” [we can note, with (certain) irony, that fnally a black (president) climbed the ramp of the Planalto Palace. After all, we are a country of miscegenation]. When a president is sworn in in Brazil, she or he symbolically begins her or his term by climbing the ramp of the Planalto Palace, which houses the executive. Ironically, despite being a miscegenated country and espousing the myth of racial democracy, the frst black president to enter the Planalto was not a Brazilian, but a North American. In any case, Obama’s reception in Brazil was generally a very positive one. The Brazilian mainstream media mirrored all of the excitement that the visit of the frst U.S. black president brought to the country. Moreover, most political cartoons were sympathetic to Obama. Both journalists and cartoonists presented him in a very favorable light, using elements of national identity to emphasize his “Brazilianness.” Nevertheless, when political cartoons were critical, Obama emerged not as a “potential” Brazilian, but as an outsider, a foreigner, and an agent of U.S. imperialism. Brazilians were usually critical of U.S. foreign policy, especially military actions in the Middle East, and some distrusted the sudden American interest in Brazil, which was seen as a strategy of economic domination and exploitation rather than a bond among equals. The next section of this chapter examines Obama as the foe, an antago- nist of Brazil’s pursuits. 78 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Obama: The “Friend” or the “Foe”? As shown in Chap. 2, Obama and Lula highly regarded each other and developed a good mutual relationship, which positively affected U.S.–Brazilian relations. However, their friendship went sour when the Brazilian government did not align with several elements of U.S. foreign policy. After a political crisis in Honduras, the United States sided with new president Porfírio Lobo in the 2009 elections; Brazil refused to recognize Porfrio’s victory (Malkin). Furthermore, that same year, Lula became close to Libyan ruler Moammar Kadaff and Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, opposing economic sanctions on that nation, and thus entering into clear confict with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.27 A better moment for U.S.–Brazilian relations was signalled when Dilma Rousseff openly criticized Iran’s human rights record (“Especialistas elogiam tom pragmático”). Moreover, as China quickly emerged as Brazil’s number one trade partner in the twenty-frst century, Obama sought to expand commercial trade with Brazil, while Dilma Rousseff strove to pursue the president’s support for the country’s candidacy for a permanent membership of the United Nations’ Security Council.28 Nevertheless, U.S.–Brazilian relations took a new hit with the 2013 espionage scandal, as the next chapter will investigate. Hence, mutual economic and political interests fuelled the visit of the frst black U.S. president to the frst female Brazilian president. Still, many Brazilians distrusted Obama’s real intentions in regard to the country, as well as condemning his interventionist policies in the Middle East. Protests were organized during the president’s stay in Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. The Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unifcado [Socialist Party of the Unifed Workers] called on Brazilians to demonstrate against Obama at the Praça dos Três Poderes [Plaza of Three Powers] in Brasília, on the day of his arrival, as the handout below shows (Fig. 3.8): “Get out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti, U.S. troops! No to free treaty agreements. Get your hands off our oil! No to the imperialistic intervention in Libya! Get out, Kadaff! All [our] support to the Arab revolution! Obama, go home! Imperialism changed its face, but keeps launching bombs,” the fyer reads. In fact, Obama almost had to cancel his trip to Brazil because of the tense political situation in Libya (“Obama diz que vaga na ONU pode 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 79

Fig. 3.8 “Obama Go Home!”. Source Blog do Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unifcado (pstu.org.br) demorar”). He gave the authorization to bomb Libya from Brasília, which caused great discomfort to Dilma Rousseff and Brazilian diplomats.29 To some Brazilians, the attack on Libya represented another action of an imperialistic nation that aims to politically and economically control peripheral economies. Many distrusted agreements between the United States and Brazil, asserting that Obama’s “real” intentions were to exploit Brazil’s natural riches, especially its oil reserves. PSTU’s blog asked, “Why [should we] protest against Obama?”: 80 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Por que protestar contra Obama?

As manifestações vão denunciar os interesses do imperialismo norte-ameri cano sobre o petróleo do Pré-Sal, e os acordos que serão assinados com o governo Dilma para entregar o recurso aos EUA. Também serão denun- ciados os planos de livre comércio entre Brasil e os EUA, que pretendem retomar à ideia da Alca.

[The manifestations will denounce North American imperialism’s interests in our oil from the Pre-Salt, and the agreements that will be signed with Dilma to grant (our) resources to the USA. Agreements of free trade between Brazil and the USA, which want to reedit the Free Trade Area of the Americas, will also be denounced.]

Indeed, grassroots movements such as the União Nacional dos Estudantes [National Students’ Union] and the Sindicato dos Petrolheiros [Oil Workers’ Union] released a manifesto declaring Obama “persona non grata” (“Manifestos de movimentos sociais”). Moreover, even some sectors of Rousseff’s party, the Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party], came out against his visit, which clearly upset Brazil’s government (“Protesto de petistas contra Obama”). At the heart of the discon- tent with U.S. economic interests was the Pré-Sal [Pre-Salt]. The Pré-Sal is an aggregation of rocks located offshore in a large portion of the Brazilian coast, with the potential to generate oil. Major vol- umes of light, high-quality oil had been recently located between the states of Santa Catarina and Espírito Santo (“Pre-salt”). Therefore, much attention was given to Obama’s interest in Brazil’s new oil reserves. Another fyer (Fig. 3.9) summoned people to protest in Rio de Janeiro, as a kneeling Brazil handed a barrel of the Pre-Salt’s oil on a silver tray to a hungry Obama. “Obama, go home!” ordered the handout, admonish- ing, “Obama, get your claws out of the Pre-Salt!”30 Indeed, Rousseff and Obama signed agreements that allowed the United States to pre-purchase oil from the Pre-Salt (“Acordo no Pré- Sal”), as well as to share technology for the production of biofuels (“Íntegra do comunicado conjunto”). Hence, unsurprisingly, many cartoonists dedicated their drawings to the important issue of the Pre-Salt, as Figs. 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12 demonstrate: In “Jantar com Obama” [Dinner with Obama] (Fig. 3.10), Pelicano31 portrays a smiling Obama at a dinner with Rousseff, which might have 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 81

Fig. 3.9 “Obama, volte para casa!”. Source web page of MST (mst.org.br)

Fig. 3.10 “Jantar com Obama” by Pelicano. Source Jornal Bom Dia 82 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 3.11 “I love Pré-Sal!” by Marcos Borges. Source Jornal O Estado

Fig. 3.12 “Obama chega ao Rio…” by Carlos Latuff. Source Contraponto (SISEJUFE-RJ) 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 83 been an offcial dinner that acquired a more intimate tone in the cartoon, as they dine without any other authorities and are seated very close to each other. The U.S. president betrays himself with a Freudian slip: he asks her to pass him the Pre-Salt, instead of “passing the salt.” Rousseff is visibly surprised and distraught. The same humorous tone emerges in Marcos Borges’ “I Love Pré-Sal!” (Fig. 3.11).32 As he arrives in Brazil, Obama opens his arms to Rousseff, to what the reader thinks will be a friendly embrace, but he bypasses the Brazilian president, ignoring her to get hold of a tower from the Pre-Salt. “I love Pré-Sal!” he declares. Obama and Rousseff’s relationship is featured in several cartoons, and their liaison became complicated by the U.S. espionage scandals in 2013, as the next chapter will examine. The cartoon “Obama chega ao Rio. …” [Obama arrives in Rio] takes a darker tone, as he is compared to America’s frst colonizers. Dressed in a suit of armor and carrying a sword, Obama is accompanied by his dollar-sign caravels. “Pra que lado fca o Pré-Sal?” [Where will I go to fnd the Pre-Salt?] he menacingly asks a relaxed man on the beach, who looks confused and surprised by this modern-day invasion. Obama thus appears as a conqueror, invading foreign lands to exert his power and extract maximum proft from this post-colonial enterprise. In several of Carlos Latuff’s cartoons, the U.S. president emerges as a villain, ready to interfere in other nations’ political and economic affairs. In fact, Brazilian caricaturist Latuff is highly controversial, as he became internationally famous for his criticism of both U.S. interventionist policies and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (even comparing Israel’s actions to the Holocaust). Detractors accused Latuff of producing anti-Zionist cartoons, but he explained his motivations, asserting that “metaphors are the key point to political cartooning,” and that

we can fnd some similarities between the treatment given to Palestinians by the [Israel Defense Forces] and the Jews under Nazi rule. Inaccurate or not, it’s important to highlight that such comparisons have been made worldwide not only by cartoonists, but by people such as Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, Ariel Sharon’s former justice minister and a Holocaust survivor (deceased in June of 2008). He said in 2004, during an interview, that a photo of an elderly Palestinian woman searching through rubble reminded him of his grandmother who died in Auschwitz. (“Latuff: Cartoonist in Conversation”)33 84 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Therefore, Obama always emerges as an instrument of U.S. imperialism in Latuff’s work, whether as an ally of Israel to control the Middle Eastern nations or as an interventionist ready to economically dominate and oppress developing nations, especially Brazil. The U.S. president’s visit to Brazil polarized the country. Although most Brazilians celebrated Obama’s victory and praised his efforts to establish better diplomatic relations with Brazil, some groups saw his trip as an attempt to exploit Brazil’s natural resources. Moreover, in the land of racial democracy, at least one of the cartoons found online featured Obama in overly racist tones. In the online newspaper O Estado do Paraná [The State of Paraná], cartoonist Luiz Solda34 depicted Obama as a monkey, with the headline: “Almoço para Obama terá baião de dois, picanha, sorvete de graviola e banana, muita banana!” [Lunch for Obama will have baião de dois, picanha, graviola ice cream, and banana, a lot of banana].35 Following negative repercussions, Solda was fred from the newspaper. While some journalists used social media to express their indignation with the cartoonist, others defended Solda. In his blog Conversa afada [Sharp Conversation],36 journalist Paulo Henrique Amorim condemned the cartoon’s racist undertones (“Não, nós não somos racistas”); still, writer Deonísio da Silva reproached the editors of O Estado do Paraná for having fred the cartoonist. Silva did not defend Solda by basing his arguments on the ideals of freedom of expression; instead he charged that political correctness was harming Brazilian humor and promoting racism “where racism never existed” (qtd. by Solda). Solda later alleged that his depiction of Obama was not racist, but that he sought to emphasize the idea that North Americans think of Brazil as a “Banana Republic” (Solda). This episode is very similar to another that occurred in the United States: a 2009 New York Post cartoon compared the author of the economic stimulus bill, President Obama, to a chimpanzee. In the drawing, one policeman shoots a chimp, while another declares: “They’ll have to fnd someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” To many Afro- American activists, the cartoon by Sean Delomas was offensive and violent, as well as presented clear racist undertones. Reverend Al Sharpton quickly released a statement condemning the cartoon:

The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual 3 BARACK OBAMA IS BRAZILIAN 85

reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that “Now they will have to fnd someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

Being that the stimulus bill has been the frst legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the frst African American president) and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder, are they infer- ring that a monkey wrote the last bill? (Sharpton qtd. in S. Stein.)

Both the newspaper and the artist justifed the depiction, explaining that it was a reference to the shooting by the Connecticut police of a pet chimpanzee that attacked his owner’s friend. It is important to note that Sean Delomas does not shy away from controversy: he has been systematically criticized for his portrayal of gay characters (Burkeman). In any case, the newspaper later released an apology: “It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period. But it has been taken as something else—as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism. This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize” (“That Cartoon”). These depictions of Obama as a primate indicate that the social positioning of the two countries vis-à-vis racial attitudes and the representations of blacks might not be so different. Brazilians like to reaffrm the myth of racial democracy as an intrinsic quality of their national identity, but, in fact, racism permeates the structures of a still highly classist and hierarchical society. On the other hand, Obama can be appropri- ated as Brazilian because he is, at the same time, close and distant, kin and foreign. He could emerge as a friend or as a foe. These two types of Obama are also present in cartoons that portray Obama’s relationship with Dilma Rousseff. Chapter 4, “Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor,” studies the interesting dynamics between these two important political personalities: the frst black U.S. president and the frst female Brazilian president. In many of the cartoons and memes, Obama appears rather sympathetically, as he develops an infatuation with Rousseff; in others, he is again a villain who opportunistically seeks to exploit Brazil’s many riches. CHAPTER 4

Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor

Dilma Vana Rousseff was elected the frst woman president of Brazil on October 31, 2010, with 56.05% of the votes. She was the candidate of the Workers’ Party and succeeded Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who actively campaigned for Rousseff (“Dilma Rousseff é a primeira mulher”). Born on December 14, 1947 in Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Rousseff was the daughter of a Brazilian mother who was a teacher, and a Bulgarian father who was a lawyer. During the military dictatorship, she was a member of the Organização Revolucionária Marxista—Política Operária [Workers’ Marxist Revolutionary Political Organization], the POLOP, and later she joined the guerrilla movement of the Comando de Libertação Nacional [National Liberation Command], the Colina. In 1970, when she became involved with another guerrilla group, the Vanguarda Revolucionária Palmares [Palmares Revolutionary Vanguard], the VA R -Palmares, Rousseff was imprisoned and tortured in the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social [Department of Political and Social Order], the DOPS. Freed in 1972, she moved to Porto Alegre, got a degree in econom- ics, and started her political career, joining the Workers’ Party in 2001 (Juste). During Lula’s government, Rousseff was the minister of mining and energy from 2003 to 2005, and in 2005 she became the chief of staff of the Presidency of the Republic. As chief of staff, Rousseff worked on the implementation of Lula’s main project, the Plano de Aceleração do Crescimento [Plan of Growth Acceleration], the PAC, which sought to

© The Author(s) 2018 87 E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_4 88 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE develop Brazil’s infrastructure, mainly in housing, transportation, and energy. The PAC gave her national recognition, so much so that Lula nicknamed her “the mother of PAC.” In 2009, Rousseff underwent medical treatment for lymphatic cancer and was cured before her 2010 presidential campaign (Juste). In August 2012, Rousseff appeared on the cover of Forbes as one of “The 100 Most Powerful Women.” She was third in the magazine’s rank- ing, behind only German chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, in that order. At the beginning of her government, the Brazilian president had a staggering popular approval rating of 77%, a number slightly larger than her predecessor at the end of his term. Rousseff’s victory came as a result of two decades of remark- able growth for the country, led by a curbing of infation, a privatiza- tion of major state companies, and a commodities boom. This economic resurgence helped to increase the GDP to US$2.5 trillion in 2012, placing Brazil between the sixth and eighth largest economies in the world (Glick, Casserly, and Geromel). The article “Power Woman Dilma Rousseff: Brazil’s Entrepreneur-In-Chief” noted that “[n]o other BRIC [member nation] balances democracy and widespread wealth nearly as well. Half of Brazil’s population now occupies the middle class—their output alone surpasses the entire economy of neighboring Argentina” (Glick, Casserly, and Geromel). BRIC is the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the four major emerging national economies worldwide; later the acronym became BRICS, in order to include South Africa. It is not surprising, then, that President Obama sought closer ties with Brazil in his 2011 visit, when the United States was still feeling the effects of the 2008 economic crisis. As analyzed in Chaps. 2 and 3, Obama turned to the leader of Brazil, a country that had been on the rise politically and economically, to help alleviate the burdens of U.S. fnancial problems. However, a new dynamic of power, race, and gender emerged: Brazil’s president was a woman. The cartoon “Isso não é sério, é?” [This isn’t serious, is it?] (Fig. 4.1) by Aroeira1 shows Rousseff and Obama meeting for the frst time, during his visit. The two leaders smile and shake hands, and the U.S. president has a ragged top hat in his left hand. The relationship of dependency and power is reversed: Obama—the leader of the most powerful country in the world—appears as a beggar, hoping to get fnancial help from the newly elected Brazilian president. Rousseff laughs and asks, pointing to the hat, “This isn’t serious, is it?” Obama also laughs and responds, “Well, yes …” 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 89

Fig. 4.1 “Isso não é sério, é?” by Aroeira. Source O Dia Online

Chapter 2 discussed Brazil’s rising position in the world and how this prominence helped to solidify a friendly relationship between Lula and Obama. What would happen, then, when Lula’s successor was a woman, the frst female president of Brazil, an emerging global power? This current chapter seeks to analyze the interesting dynamics between these two important political personalities—the frst black president of the most powerful nation in the world and the frst female president of the largest economy in Latin America—in light of their representations in political cartoons and depictions on social media. This chapter mainly focuses on the 2013 espionage scandal, which rocked these leaders’ relationship. In the frst section, “Obama, the Spy Who Loved Brazil,” the U.S. president emerges again in several of the cartoons as an instrument of imperialism, the tyrant who wants to steal Brazil’s secret riches. Yet in the section “Obama, the Voyeur Who Loved Dilma Rousseff,” one can observe an interesting interplay between race and gender in many of the political cartoons, as Obama appears infatuated by the Brazilian president. The U.S. spying scandal, therefore, is not portrayed as a serious diplomatic incident between two nations, but rather as a humorous gender-play in which Obama is sexually obsessed with Rousseff and pursues 90 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE her romantically. This interesting twist celebrates mestiçagem [miscegenation], a notion that is at the very core of Brazilian national identity.

Obama, The Spy Who Loved Brazil In June 2013, the American journalist and resident of Brazil Glenn Edward Greenwald started a series of reports on a U.S. program of “global surveillance” (a euphemism for hardcore espionage), a scheme that was revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden. The series was published in The Guardian and won the 2013 Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award and the George Polk Award in journalism.2 Greenwald followed in the footsteps of New York Times journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau,3 who revealed in 2005 that President Bush had allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on U.S. citizens’ electronic communications two years earlier, without frst obtaining the proper legal court warrants. As Greenwald notes, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) dictates that eavesdropping without the proper warrant is a felony that is punishable with a maximum fne of US$10,000 and fve years’ imprisonment. However, no legal actions were brought in U.S. courts because the Department of Justice, frst under President Bush and then under President Obama, persuaded federal courts that “national security would be harmed if courts were to adjudicate its legality” (see Greenwald’s “Obama’s New FBI Chief”).4 In the 2013 series of articles on the NSA, The Guardian also revealed that the agency had developed “a powerful tool” to gather information not only on U.S. communications, but also on other nations: the Boundless Informant, a program that “details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks” (Greenwald and MacAskill). Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, provided the classifed information that exposed the agency’s massive reach: the NSA had also spied on 193 countries and monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders (Nakashima and Gellman; Ball).5 Among the many countries spied on were Germany, France, and China. These revelations created a great amount of tension between the United States and its allies (Ball). Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that she was “livid” over the espionage affair and called Obama to express her disapproval: “This would be a serious breach of confdence. Such practices have to be halted immediately,” she admonished the U.S. 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 91 president (Traynor, Oltermann, and Lewis).6 Additionally, NSA documents leaked by Snowden revealed that Brazil had also been an active target of eavesdropping. The newspaper O Globo noted that Brazil was the most surveilled country in Latin America:

Os documentos da NSA são eloquentes. O Brasil, com extensas redes públicas e privadas digitalizadas, operadas por grandes companhias de telecomunicações e de internet, aparece destacado em mapas da agência americana como alvo prioritário no tráfego de telefonia e dados (origem e destino), ao lado de nações como China, Rússia, Irã e Paquistão. É incerto o número de pessoas e empresas espionadas no Brasil. Mas há evidências de que o volume de dados capturados pelo sistema de fltragem nas redes locais de telefonia e internet é constante e em grande escala. (Greenwald, Kaz, and Casado) [The data is eloquent. Brazil, with its extensive public and privatized digital networks, operated by large telecommunication and Internet companies, appears highlighted in maps of the American agency as a priority target in traffc of communication and data (origin and destiny), alongside nations such as China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan. It is uncertain the number of people and companies that were spied on in Brazil. However, there is evidence that the data volume captured by the fltering system of the local communications network and Internet is constant and of large scale.]

Snowden actually addressed the Brazilian people in an open letter published by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. In the letter, Snowden expressed his willingness to help Brazil with the investigations, as requested by the country’s senators, and asked for political asylum. (The Brazilian government never answered his appeal.) He also confrmed that the NSA was monitoring not only Brazilian private and public companies, but also President Rousseff and her political associates (Snowden).7 Brazilian mainstream media amply emphasized the agency’s monitoring of the nation, causing great distress in diplomatic relations between Brazil and the United States. In fact, because of the embarrassing affair, Dilma Rousseff decided to cancel her offcial visit to the United States on November 23, 2013, despite Obama’s pleas to the Brazilian president via a telephone call (Sadi). Rousseff did, however, travel to New York, where she delivered a speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2013.8 In her fery speech, Rousseff accused the United States of violating international laws: 92 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Dados pessoais de cidadãos foram indiscriminadamente objeto de inter- ceptação. Informações empresariais—muitas vezes, de alto valor econômico e mesmo estratégico—estiveram na mira da espionagem. Também representações diplomáticas brasileiras, entre elas a Missão Permanente junto às Nações Unidas e a própria Presidência da República tiveram suas comunicações interceptadas. Imiscuir-se dessa forma na vida de outros países fere o Direito Internacional e afronta os princípios que devem reger as relações entre eles, sobretudo, entre nações amigas. Jamais pode uma soberania frmar- se em detrimento de outra soberania. Jamais pode o direito à segurança dos cidadãos de um país ser garantido mediante a violação de direitos humanos e civis fundamentais dos cidadãos de outro país. (Rouseff, qtd. by Passarinho, “Dilma diz na ONU”) [Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate information—often of high economic and even strategic value—was at the center of espionage activity. Also, Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the UN and the offce of the President of the Republic itself, had their communications intercepted. Tampering in such a manner in the affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and is an affront of the principles that must guide the relations among them, especially among friendly nations. A sover- eign nation can never establish itself to the detriment of another sover- eign nation. The right to safety of citizens of one country can never be guaranteed by violating fundamental human rights of citizens of another country.]9

Brazilian media also voiced negative views of U.S. eavesdropping on Brazilian companies. The Fantástico, a popular Sunday journalistic and varieties program, expressed it this way:

O faturamento anual da Petrobras é de mais de R$ 280 bilhões, maior do que a arrecadação de muitos países. E não são poucos os motivos para que espiões queiram acesso ao sistema protegido da empresa. A Petrobrás tem dois supercomputadores, usados principalmente para as chamadas pesquisas sísmicas, que avaliam reservas de petróleo a partir de testes feitos em alto mar. Assim, a empresa mapeou o pré-sal, a maior descoberta recente de novas reservas de petróleo no mundo. (“Petrobrás foi espionada pelos EUA”) [Petrobrás’ annual revenue exceeds 280 billion reais; it is larger than the earnings of many countries. And there are not only few motives that lead the spies to seek access to the company’s protected systems. 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 93

Petrobrás has two supercomputers, used mainly to conduct the so-called seismic research, which evaluates the oil reserves according to offshore tests. Using this system, the company mapped the Pre-Salt, the largest and most recent fnding of new oil reserves in the world.]

The mention of the main oil company, the state-owned Petrobrás, several times in the NSA documents fomented nationalistic indignation. In the realm of political humor, as demonstrated in Chap. 3, cartoonists characterized the U.S. president as a villain who sought to steal Brazil’s natural resources. The Pre-Salt is a recurrent reference in many political cartoons featuring the U.S. president. In “Espionagem: Obama quer conhecer o Brasil a fundo” [Espionage: Obama wants to get to know Brazil deeper] (Fig. 4.2), Cerino10 features Obama diving into the depths of the sea to steal Brazil’s treasure, the Pre-Salt. The president’s perceived desire to acquire greater knowledge about the country was seen as masking his evil intentions: to act as a tool of U.S. imperialism, economically exploiting Brazil. Many political cartoons also depict Rousseff and Obama together; the Brazilian president visibly distressed and upset with the latter’s breach of trust. In Regi’s “Não adianta se esconder, Obama” [You cannot hide, Obama] (Fig. 4.3),11 an angry Rousseff knocks at a Petrobrás oil pump and declares: “You cannot hide, Obama. … I know [that] you are there!” In Regi’s cartoon, Rousseff is portrayed with enlarged hair and teeth, features that are also prominent in representations by other artists. Additionally, Rousseff appears with a rolling pin in her left hand, a symbol of female domestic life, as if she were an outraged wife waiting to exert a swift whack on the husband’s head. As Edward and McDonald underscore, women are frequently restricted to stereotypi- cal representations that focus on domestic roles and personal appearance (316). In this sense, the cartoon hints at a possible intimacy between the two leaders. Within a widely publicized international political affair, Rousseff emerges in the Brazilian collective imaginary as the betrayed woman. In any case, upon the release of the NSA documents, the Obama– Rousseff relationship was damaged, and the U.S. president emerged neg- atively from the espionage incident. However, political humor also had a peculiar perspective on this episode. Conversely (and surprisingly), in many political cartoons, Obama is depicted rather sympathetically, as a 94 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 4.2 “Espionagem: Obama quer conhecer o Brasil a fundo” by Cerino. Source cerino.com.br devoted lover who has developed an infatuation for Rousseff. In other words, Obama does not actually spy on Brazil; rather he obsessively watches the Brazilian leader, who has become his romantic/sexual interest. The next section examines this interesting twist on the reading of the relationship between the two presidents.

Obama, The Voyeur Who Loved Dilma Rousseff In many Brazilian political cartoons, the international espionage affair is interestingly subverted: Obama is not so much interested in taking advantage of Brazil’s natural resources; instead, he is attracted to Rousseff, whom he sees as a love interest. Thus, one leaves the realm of international politics to enter the arena of interpersonal relations. As anthropologist Roberto DaMatta underscores, family and personal relations are crucial for the construction of social identities in Brazil (O que faz o brasil, Brasil? 24). In a society where the universal rules of 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 95 Source Humor político Obama!” by Regi. Source “Não adianta se esconder, Fig. 4.3 96 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE liberalism and capitalism are intertwined with the domains of friendship and patronage, opposites coexist naturally, characterizing a true “institu- tionalization of the intermediary” (DaMatta, “For an Anthropology of the Brazilian Tradition” 279). In other words, the intermediary has the role of bringing two apparently contrasting worlds together. Hence the importance of the mulatto: this national type “is not simply the empiri- cal result of a physical and sexual relation between ‘races’ but also the crystallization of the possibility for encompassing opposition” (279). The mulatto brings together the black and the white, embodying the national values of conciliation and tolerance. Thus, it is not a surprise that “our” mulatto Obama appears infatuated with “our” white power lady Dilma Rousseff. The visual depictions of Obama and Rousseff actually ratify Brazil’s national mythology. For instance, in Boopo’s cartoon12 (Fig. 4.4), Obama voyeuristically watches Rousseff while she takes a bath. However, his gaze is not hidden; on the contrary, he makes his presence known by establishing a dialogue with her. “You have a lot of love handles. … Why don’t you work out a bit?” Obama declares and questions the Brazilian president, and she replies, “Look, Obama. … Spying a little bit is OK. … But hearing your comments while I take my bath is just too much, OK?” The theme of Obama as a Peeping Tom—who looks at Rousseff’s naked body—is recurrent in many cartoons. In Aroeira’s “Porra, Obama!” [Damn, Obama!] (Fig. 4.5), Rousseff looks directly at spectator Obama and declares: “Damn, Obama! Do not be a pervert, sh#@&$%#!” Because she addresses Obama—who is also us, the viewers—we are will- ing participants in the voyeuristic act, thus reproducing the male gaze. In Iotti’s “Obama!!”13 (Fig. 4.6), Rousseff appears getting out of her shower wearing only panties, when she realizes a camera is observing her. “Obama!!” she reprovingly shouts. In the cartoons, Rousseff’s body emerges as a site of male gaze and desire. Nevertheless, these visual representations suggest her body- object to be fat and grotesque14; hence this object transforms into an abject that conversely arouses attraction. As Barbara Creed notes, the conception of the female as both a source of horror and a site of abjection is present in all human societies. Drawing from Kristeva’s theory of the abject, Creed postulates how patriarchal phallocentric ideology constructs the concept of the monstrous feminine: a “monster” that is at the same time fetish object and horror object, which provokes both the spectator’s desire and castration anxiety (44–50).15 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 97

Fig. 4.4 “Olha lá, Obama…” by Boopo. Source Humor político

Indeed, Aroeira noticed that when he created his Dilma Rousseff, the character was more full-bodied and unattractive, a perception that styl- ized her managerial style as a rigid iron lady who demanded high competence from her subordinates. As the cartoonist got closer to his creation, Aroeira softened Rousseff, making her more sensual and, from the espionage episode, he started to imagine an intimate relationship between the U.S. leader and the Brazilian president (personal interview). The transformation of Rousseff’s body was central to her political career and visual representations, as this chapter discusses. 98 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 4.5 “Porra, Obama!” by Aroeira. Source Aroeira Facebook

It is interesting to note, therefore, that within the male-dominated space of Brazilian political cartoons, artists represent Obama as a voyeur obsessed with both Rousseff’s physical body and her political power, which conversely appear as elements of seduction and fear. Furthermore, in the equally male-dominated realm of politics, female politicians are frequently subjected to society’s stereotyping, their policies and platforms being secondary elements to their physical appearance. In this sense, the humorous gag is achieved through the process of the sensualization/sexualization of the female president, as she is not the prototype of the Brazilian bombshell. On the contrary, Rousseff’s image and past history of guerrilheira [guerrilla woman] could not be further from a possible female objectifcation. In fact, when running for president, she had to be feminized to appeal to a larger number of voters, as an article in the weekly magazine Isto É notes. Lula himself told Dilma to “perder essa cara de escritório” [lose her offce face] in order to be 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 99

Fig. 4.6 “Obama!!” by Iotti. Source Zero Hora Online a more appealing candidate in the 2010 elections. João Santana, a specialist in political marketing who had helped to construct Lula’s centrist image in 2002,16 also worked to soften Rousseff’s image, transforming her from former guerrilla fghter and career woman politician to a “nicer” and more palatable candidate:

O rosto mais sereno, de olhos mais abertos e boca bem desenhada, resultado de uma cirurgia plástica a que a ministra da Casa Civil, Dilma Rousseff, submeteu-se no fnal do ano passado em Porto Alegre, foi apre- sentado ao país pela primeira vez na segunda-feira 12. A mudança no visual é parte de uma estratégia bem planejada com um único propósito: o de 100 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

conferir a Dilma um perfl menos sisudo e mais simpático e ser a embala gem que faltava para transformar a até então mera técnica competente no principal nome para disputar, como candidata do governo, a eleição presi- dencial em 2010. (Lago and Pardellas) [A more serene face, eyes more open and a well-structured mouth, these are the results of a plastic surgery that the Chief of Staff, Dilma Rousseff, underwent last year in Porto Alegre; she presented them to the public for the frst time on Monday 12. The changes to her appearance are part of a well-planned strategy that had the goal of building a less severe and more agreeable profle, completing the package that was missing—to transform a mere competent offceholder into the government’s candidate to run for the 2010 presidential election.]

Rousseff also changed her wardrobe, ditching darker brown and black suits for more colorful outfts (Lago and Pardellas). Hence, she underwent a physical and behavioral change to appeal to a larger number of voters. As Olivola and Todorov assert, “voting is no simple process”; on the contrary, it includes the voters’ complex and nuanced views of social, religious, moral, and political issues, as well as international and national issues (84). Olivola and Todorov also indicate that visual cues and nonverbal behavior are very important to the politician’s electoral success (84). Moreover, visual perceptions are important when considering gender bias vis-à-vis voting patterns, as Chiao, Bowman, and Gill demonstrate. They emphasize the importance of social appearance and gender facial expression to voter decision-making: whereas voters perceived male politicians to be more competent and dominant, they felt female politicians were more approachable and attractive (2–4). In a more recent study, Hehman, Carpinella, Johnson, Leitner, and Freeman also determined that “less feminine female politicians … were less likely to be voted for” (818). These scholars go so far as to suggest a formula for success for female politicians: to combine in their campaigns feminine traits and attractiveness with the evocation of competence (821). Additionally, they underline the role of the media in reinforcing gender stereotypes vis-à-vis women candidates: when covering female politicians, the media tend to emphasize personal traits more than actual political records and policies (821).17 Indeed, mainstream and social media have given much attention to the physical and behavioral transformations of female politicians. Press coverage consistently portrays women politicians through a series of cli- chés and focuses on their appearance rather than their policies or ideas. 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 101

As Edwards and McDonald note, visualization plays a key role in the constructions of “formulaic and stereotyped representations,” identi- fying key markers that operate in maintaining a certain “gender coher- ence” (317). Considering the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Edwards and McDonald underline gender within the political dynamic by analyzing how cartoons represented Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Whereas some cartoonists accentuated Clinton’s (supposed) coldness and calcu- lation (non-desirable female traits); others focused on Palin’s attractive youthful appearance and edgier sexuality (319–320).18 Although the abovementioned studies focused on the U.S. electorate, one can speculate that these fndings could be extrapolated to many countries, especially Brazil, a nation that has much in common historically with the United States. Thus, Rousseff was feminized to answer the expectations of a still largely conservative and machista [sexist] Brazilian electorate. Moreover, transforming a defeminized guerrilla woman into a sexual symbol who captures the heart of the U.S. president can be seen as incoherent; however, in the case now discussed, it actually makes much sense. Considering the national ideology of racial accord, to imagine the possibility of a love interest between Obama and Rousseff is to reaffrm the power of mestiçagem within the national collective unconscious. With Gilberto Freyre, the effects of miscegenation were no longer considered from a biological perspective; on the contrary, they started to be perceived as a cultural process. Miscegenation, therefore, was reappropriated as a highly positive element, in which the mestizo element of Brazilian society emerges to lead Brazil to an unparalleled democratic state among nations. Freyre recognized the many contributions that Africans made to Brazilian culture and society, consequently developing his idea of Lusotropicalism: the concept that the intersection of the Portuguese tradition with African elements within the Brazilian (tropical) landscape produced a mixed population and a unique country. Yet his Lusotropicalist miscegenation included a valorization of the black element completely adapted and co-opted by the white culture, ultimately valuing the whitening process as a symbol of social and cultural development (G. Santos 157–158). Within the miscegenation ideal, white values and traditions have remained central to the formation of the nation, which led to continuous discrimination against non-whites. Moreover, under democratic rule, Brazilian state institutions started to 102 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE refect more critically on the notion of miscegenation and the myth of racial democracy. Indeed, the Workers’ Party has placed the question of race and racism at the core of the national debate. In July 2010, Lula sanctioned Law 12,288, which instituted the Estatuto da Igualdade Racial [Statute of Racial Equality] elaborated by Senator Paulo Paim from the Workers’ Party in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Nevertheless, as discussed in Chap. 2, many sectors of society opposed the racial debate, especially disavowing the establishment of racial quotas and affrmative action policies. These groups, which also included many renowned aca- demics, argued that racial quotas and policies would transform Brazil into a biracial nation and promote racial prejudice where racism did not exist. The idea that through mestiçagem Brazil forged a racially harmonic country has been largely contested in recent decades, as discussed previously in this study. However, mestiçagem continues to be seen as a desirable trait of Brazilian society. For instance, black composer, singer, and political activist Gilberto Gil praised the mestiçagem in his 2003 acceptance speech as minister of culture:

Somos um povo mestiço que vem criando, ao longo dos séculos, uma cultura essencialmente sincrética. Uma cultura diversifcada, plural mas que é como um verbo conjugado por pessoas diversas, em tempos e modos dis- tintos. Porque, ao mesmo tempo, essa cultura é una: cultura tropical sin- crética tecida ao abrigo e à luz da língua portuguesa. … O Brasil aparece aqui, com as suas diásporas e as suas misturas, como um emissor de mensagens novas, no contexto da globalização. [We are a syncretic people that have created, through the centuries, an essentially syncretic culture. A diversifed and plural culture, which is like a verb conjugated by diverse people, in distinct time and manner. Because, at the same time, this culture is one: a syncretic culture netted under the harbor and in light of the Portuguese culture. … Brazil appears here with all its diasporas and mixtures, as an emitter of new messages within the context of globalization.]

Hence, within the neoliberal context of globalization, Brazil has a clear historical advantage among other nations, as it forged a povo mestiço [mestizo people] that produced a more diversifed and plural culture, which in turn is more attuned to current market forces and multicultural ideals. It is important to note, however, that Gil’s reading of mestiçagem 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 103 is not untroubled and apolitical; on the contrary, it considers the conditions of violence and power relations in which mestiçagem has historically occurred. Mestiçagem, therefore, continues to be a strong value in Brazilian national identity and an essential part of the country’s collective unconscious. It is, indeed, a trope that constantly reemerges in Brazil’s social imaginary. Therefore, a love affair between the biracial Barack Obama and the white Dilma Rousseff is within the realm of Brazilian possibilities. Political cartoons and memes on the 2013 espionage affair refect this trend. After the disclosure of U.S. espionage, Rousseff and Obama reunited in September 2013 at the G20 meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Prior to the encounter, the media speculated whether or not the leaders would return to having good diplomatic and personal relations. Indeed, before the event’s opening dinner, Obama had arranged a separate meeting with Rousseff, so he could “explain to her the nature of the U.S. intelligence efforts” and “better understand the Brazilian people’s concerns” (“Em meio a denúncias de espionagem”). Still, during the G20 meeting, one episode that attracted the attention of mainstream and social media (and the popular imagination) was “o episódio do beijo” [the kiss episode]: when Obama and Rousseff met for the offcial G20 picture with the other world leaders, they greeted each other with a kiss on the cheek. Photographers captured this moment, and both the event (the kiss) and photos of the kiss were widely publicized, being featured in many news media and going viral on the Internet. The Facebook page of Dilma Bolada, a fake profle for the president, joked about the situation19: “Obama me agarrou na frente de todo mundo e veio falar no meu ouvidinho: ‘Do you know what today is?’ e depois me deu um beijinho no rosto. … Fiquei toda sem graça, sem reação e não entendi nada!!! Que cara de pau” [Obama grabbed me in front of everybody and came to speak in my little ear: “Do you know what today is?” and then he gave me a little kiss on the cheek. … I was embarrassed, I did not have any reaction and did not understand anything!!! So brazen-faced] (“Foto onde Dilma aparece ‘beijando’ Obama”). Humorists quickly reimagined a steamy love affair between the two world personalities. The comic blog Não Acredito [I Do Not Believe It]20 declared that “os presidentes tiveram um momento romântico” [the presidents had a romantic moment] and described the alleged kiss: 104 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 4.7 “Ô Obama, a sua esposa não vai gosta”. Source http://crieseumeme. com

Existem momentos na vida dos presidentes mundo afora, em que é preciso se entregar ao amor. E foi quase isso que aconteceu hoje mais cedo com Obama e Dilma, por pouco a Dilma beija Obama na boca, bem na frente da esposa dele, Mrs. Michelle Obama. (“Dilma beija Obama na boca em evento!”) [There are moments in the lives of the presidents of the vast world when it is necessary to surrender to love. And it was almost that which happened earlier with Obama and Dilma, Dilma came very close to kiss Obama on his mouth, right in front of his wife, Mrs. Michelle Obama.]

Several memes about the episode also appeared on the Internet. In “Ô Obama, a sua esposa não vai gosta” [Obama, your wife will not like this] (Fig. 4.7), the meme forges the powerful drama of a love triangle between Dilma Rousseff, Barack Obama, and Michelle Obama: “The kiss episode” captured the imagination of the Brazilian population because it confrmed, at the collective unconsciousness level, the country’s ideology of racial accord, played in both spheres of public and private: the business of important political power players enmeshed with an intimate illicit affair between Obama and Rousseff. The series of memes based on the episode reveals Brazil’s signifcant discursive, rhetorical, and visual references vis-à-vis its people’s passions. In this sense, Susan Blackmore’s neo-Darwinist approach to the propagation of memes is not fully adequate to understand the importance of this memetic 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 105 idea within the nation’s historical and social context; instead, Tony D. Sampson’s notion of virology better explains “how discourse is intimately interwoven with a prediscursive fow of contagious affect, feelings, and emotions” (3). Sampson’s viral theory is based on relational encounters, in which certain “desire-events” intermingle; hence, virality does not analogically import genetics into social events (in contrast to Blackmore’s concept of memes), but instead it considers processes of subjectivities emerging from within the social (14). In the so-called neo-Darwinist approach, the idea of contagion is based on models of disease and immunology (drawn from genetics)21; yet Sampson rejects this approach to focus on “the forces of relational encounter in the social feld” (4), privileging a social, cultural, and relational perspective. To that end, he uses the ideas of the late nineteenth-century sociologist Gabriel Tarde, who understood human desires within a net of social relationality (3). Tarde’s theory of social contagion “is not concerned with the individual person or its collective representation but rather with the networks or relational fows that spread out and connect everything to everything else” (Sampson 7). As the notion of mestiçagem is a crucial part of Brazil’s affective and emotional discursive patterns, it is not a coincidence that the memes produced from “the kiss episode” represent a powerful social drama of interracial relations that are marked by social harmony. In the Brazilian context, all possible obstacles, be they public or private in nature, are surpassed by the power of the biracial union, which in turn helps to form a more diverse, tolerant, and even joyful society. When combined with political humor, the social drama of mestiçagem produces interesting scenarios. In the meme “Você é muito mais gata que a Angela Merkel” [You are prettier than Angela Merkel] (Fig. 4.8), the Obama–Rousseff affair is complicated by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s presence and watch- ful eye: The German chancellor is thus added to the love equation as a possible competitor for Obama’s heart and mind. Nevertheless, Rousseff prevails, since Obama believes that she “é muito mais gata que a Angela Merkel” [is prettier than Angela Merkel]. One can argue that the two female leaders function here as allegories of their nations; thus Obama’s preference is not an accident: by choosing Brazil over Germany, the frst emerges as superior to the latter. Indeed, the construction of Brazil’s discourse of a racially harmonic nation contrasts with Germany’s history of racial and ethnic 106 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 4.8 “Você é muito mais gata que a Angela Merkel”. Source Pitombas Blog cleansing. Sarah Bachrach observes that the idea of racial hygiene had been deeply rooted in Germany: in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, declining birth rates led medical and public health profession- als to propose reforms to improve the population stock. Nevertheless, eugenic theories failed to gain traction in German society till 1933, when the ascension of the Nazi Party to power swept aside opposition to eugenics and quickly began to popularize the idea. Racial hygien- ists helped to write the regime’s compulsory sterilization laws, focusing on families that had a history of mental and physical disabilities (417–418). “By 1945, some 400,000 Germans had been forcibly steri- lized. … Severing of the fallopian tubes was the typical method of ster- ilizing women, and vasectomy was the common procedure for men. As many as 5000 persons died as a result of the surgery, most of them women” (418), Bachrach noted. The Nazi regime’s eugenic policies sought to eliminate undesirable elements, cleansing “German society of people viewed as biologic threats to the nation’s health” (417), 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 107 among them not only the mentally and physically disabled, but also socially unwanted groups such as Jewish people, homosexuals, and gypsies. Conversely, as observed previously in this chapter, at around the same time, Gilberto Freyre rebutted social Darwinist and evolutionist theories to celebrate African heritage, which culminated in the formation of a socially and racially inclusive “Lusotropical civilization.” Therefore, the mestiço [mestizo] people, far from being degenerated, greatly contributed to Brazil’s cultural and social progress, helping to forge a unique nation among all the many others in the world, a notion that appealed to Brazilian society (but has also been shown to have privileged white values, as examined earlier in this chapter). Hence, Rousseff has a greater appeal to Obama: cartoons featuring their “affair” symbolize the reaffrmation of the Brazilian mestiçagem. Similar background and personal history also unite the two presidents. Both are children of immigrants who came to the American continent and—most importantly—achieved the pinnacle of the American dream: to be the frst-generation immigrant-born president of their respective nations. As noted in Chap. 2, despite his father’s absence, Obama sought to maintain ties with his family in Nigeria. Likewise, the Brazilian president remained connected with her father’s homeland. In May 2011, Dilma Rousseff visited Bulgaria to receive an honor from President Georgi Parvanov and to sign commercial and cultural agreements with the country (“Dilma recebe condecoração”). While still in Sofa, the capital of Bulgaria, Rousseff paid her respects at her half-brother’s burial site. She also visited Gabrovo, her father’s city of birth, to meet close relatives and see the exhibition “Dilma Rousseff’s Bulgarian Roots,” featured at a local museum (“‘Estou realizando um sonho’”). Interestingly, similarly to Obama, Rousseff faced a Birtherism controversy during her 2010 electoral campaign: rumors circulated that, if elected, she could not be president because she was actually born in Bulgaria. According to article 12 of the Brazilian Constitution, only Brazilian-born citizens can be eligible to be president. Rousseff denied the allegations, confrming that she had been born in Brazil (“Dilma recebe presidente da Bulgária”).22 The allegations that Obama and Rousseff were not really born in their respective countries refected their societies’ stands on race and gender; in other words, if race helped to promote the idea of Obama as the “other” in the United States, gender contributed to Rousseff’s alterity in Brazil. That Obama was black and that Rousseff was a woman 108 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE represented social handicaps that emerged during their election campaigns and again during their time in offce. For example, journalists have frequently stated that Rousseff could solve all her problems, political and personal, if she only found a boyfriend or had more sex (Cardoso).23 It is crucial to note that prejudice against minority groups is certainly reinforced by the lack of representation in important sectors of society. It is appalling that minorities are still underrepresented in politics in the two largest nations in the Americas. The beginning of 2013 brought the most diverse U.S. Congress in history; however, the number of Latino, Asian, female, and black representatives remains very low: 6% Latino, 5.6% Asian, 18.9% female, and 8% black (“Most Diverse Congress”). In Brazil, Congress is only 8.6% black and around 10% female (R. Santos; Cardoso). Yet, that Rousseff is the daughter of an immigrant goes along with the myth of Brazil’s social and racial accord. Jeffrey Lesser notes that “immigrants were often hailed as saviors because they modifed and improved Brazil, not because they were improved by Brazil. [This] ‘improve- ment’ took place in the most of Brazilian ways, through absorption and mixture, as well as with the use of increasingly fexible racial and ethnic categories” (3). Therefore, in the competition for Obama’s love and attention, it is clear that Rousseff had a better chance than Merkel to succeed because—despite the concrete evidence that women and blacks still occupy very few positions of power in the country—in Brazilian hearts and minds, the female president was a product of a more open and inclusive society. Thus, nothing was more adequate than uniting the “cosmopolitan mulatto” Barack Obama and the “sexualized guerrilla fghter” Dilma Rousseff; this “marriage” was a culmination of the celebration of the ideology of mestiçagem. However, in the equation of world power schemes, Merkel is not the only one who emerges as a possible threat to this harmonic union. Another important world leader appears to disrupt Obama and Rousseff’s love affair: Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia. The love triangle between these important political fgures is humorously portrayed in Aroeira’s cartoon in Fig. 4.9. “Não fque assim. … Você sabe que só espiono você!” [Don’t be this way. … You know I only spy on you!] says Obama, trying to appease Rousseff, who might feel betrayed because of Merkel. The Brazilian president replies angrily, “Só eu o c$%#@&! Aliás, há algo que você precisa saber. … Existe outro. E nós temos nos espionado, muito!” [Only me 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 109

Fig. 4.9 “Não fque assim … Você sabe que só espiono você!” by Aroeira. Source Aroeira Facebook

(expletive)! By the way, there is something that you need to know. … There is another (man). And we have been spying on each other a lot!]. The cartoon is a parody of the fnal scene of the 1942 movie Casablanca, a wartime romantic drama that featured the love triangle of the characters Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), Ilsa Laszlo (Ingrid Bergman), and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).24 In the cartoon inspired by the classic fnal scene, Obama is Bogart, Rousseff is Bergman, and Putin (featured in the background) is Henreid. In the movie, Blaine/Bogart makes the ultimate sacrifce: he renounces the love of his life—Laszlo/Bergman— and persuades her to leave with her husband, who has an important role in fghting the Nazi regime during the Second World War. “I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand. Here’s looking at you, kid!” Blaine tells Ilsa, 110 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE before she gets on the plane to join her spouse. Conversely, in Aroeira’s cartoon, Obama is trying to convince Rousseff to stay by his side, but she announces that because he has been unfaithful (by spying on others as well), the Russian leader has taken his place, winning over her affection. Thus, Putin is competing with Obama for political infuence over Brazil and the love of Dilma Rousseff. In another Aroeira cartoon, Putin puts his arm around Rousseff to take a selfe with her and declares: “Chupa, Obama … Essa vai pro Face Agorovsky” [Here you have it, Obama. … This (selfe) will go to Facebook Nowvsky] (Fig. 4.10). This cartoon was created during the sixth BRICS summit on July 15 and 16, 2014 in Fortaleza, the capital of the state of Recife. Presidents Rousseff and Putin met in Brasília on July 14 in order to sign commercial and cooperation agreements between the two countries regarding technology, defense, and energy (“Cúpula dos BRICS”).25 Thus, Putin and Obama contest for Rousseff’s attention, hoping to exert infuence over her heart, as well as over Brazil’s growing economic opportunities. In this cartoon, Dilma Rousseff emerges as an enigmatic Mona Lisa, crossing her hands and looking directly at the viewer with a discreet (yet enticing) smile. In fact, Aroeira portrayed Rousseff as Mona Lisa in several of his cartoons, crystallizing the Brazilian president’s subtle sensual appeal. If Rousseff’s representations accentuate a constructed sensuality, Putin’s popular depictions mark his masculinity, a trend that has been widely marketed by the Russian leader himself. One can postulate that his virility challenges Obama’s romantic and political intentions in relation to Rousseff. Putin is more than Russia’s president—he is an actual political icon and media personality, a politician who has enjoyed true superstar status (Goscilo). According to Helena Goscilo, his public image has been carefully crafted and orchestrated. After the Kursk sub- marine disaster of August 12, 2000, which led to the death of all the 118-man crew, Putin realized that handling public relations responses to crises had to be done swiftly and effciently. Since then, he has quickly learned the benefts of media promotion, not only to enhance his popularity, but also—and most importantly—to build his iconic political fgure. Therefore, nationally and internationally, he remains “a world- renowned political star,” despite the West’s continued reservations about his authoritarian traits. 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 111

Fig. 4.10 “Chupa, Obama… Essa vai pro Face Agorovsky” by Aroeira. Source Jornal Brasil Econômico

Part of Putin’s appeal emerges from the construction of a macho fgure, which corresponds to “fantasy-fueled paradigms of ideal masculinity” (Goscilo). As noted earlier in this chapter, Rousseff was transformed from a guerrilla fghter into a Brazilian bombshell; Putin went from being a “stolid bureaucrat” to “an international macho icon,” as he has built an image of a warrior whose strong physicality reassured the Russian public (Goscilo). The Internet helped to spread and solidify this image, as he frequently appeared on several websites practicing judo 112 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

(he holds a black belt in this sport), riding a Harley-Davidson, lifting weights, or copiloting a fghter jet. Goscilo asserts that “in the Russian public’s collective unconscious Putin’s energy and physical prowess symbolize a resurgent, dynamic Russia eager to take its place in the sun.” His tough image also plays a crucial role in international affairs, as he is seen as a strong political leader ready to make hard decisions in the global arena in order to place Russia again “on the map of key world players” (Goscilo). Both Brazil and Russia have sought a more prominent place economically and politically in the twentieth-frst century’s global arena. Hence, enacting a love affair between two important leaders of the BRICS countries is a fascinating and funny proposition. (It is interesting to note that both Rousseff and Putin remained single after their respective divorces.) In the case of Brazilian political humor, Putin, with his unrestrained masculinity, arises to disrupt Obama and Rousseff’s perfectly harmonious miscegenated union. Who has more power to win the Brazilian president’s heart (and consequently enjoy a greater political and economic infuence on the largest nation in Latin America): the “cosmopolitan mulatto,” whose election to the U.S. presidency curiously embodied the Brazilian ideal of racial democracy, or the white alpha male, whose male prowess has a defnite appeal in a still-sexist society? Imagining a love triangle between Obama, Rousseff, and Putin also confrms a certain allegorical narrative for the country: Rousseff/ nation is tempting and seductive, her richness and mysteries are worth watching as well as exploring. As Aroeira notes, both Obama and Putin are extremely charming men and charismatic leaders; consequently, Aroeira’s imagined romantic triangles featuring Obama, Rousseff, and Putin are small farces that symbolize the world’s tensions (personal interview). It is Obama, however, who ultimately wins the Brazilian president’s (and the country’s) affections, as many political cartoons, satirical memes, and Internet sites depict. For instance, on the site Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo [Uncyclopedia: the encyclopedia free of content],26 a humorous parody of Wikipedia, one can fnd an entry about Rousseff. Here she becomes “Bandilma Ruim$$eff,” a play on words: her frst name (Dilma) combined with the word bandido [thief], and her last name (Rousseff) is the amalgamation between ruim [bad] and “sseff” formed by dollar signs. This comic twist on her name obviously alludes to the corruption scandals of her government, especially 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 113 the diversion of funds from the state-owned oil company Petrobrás and the manipulation of the federal budget to disguise the growing Brazilian defcit (Leahy).27 Rousseff’s humorous entry is quite sizable, but this chapter will focus on the sections “Outras Lendas” [Other Legends] and “Noites Eróticas” [Erotic Nights]. In “Outras Lendas,” Rousseff appears as a vampire who sucks Obama’s energy and power. She is not intimidated by U.S. imperialistic domination; on the contrary, the Brazilian president emerges as the dominator/dominatrix who clearly holds all of the cards in the sexual and political relationship:

Mas, nas alcovas da Casa Branca dizem que o Obama não resiste as pica- das que a Dilma sempre lhe dá nas suas visitas à sede do imperialismo americano. Comenta-se por trás das cortinas da Casa Branca que depois de uma noi- tada com a Dilma, o Obama anda tomado por luxúria e obsessão […] [But, in the White House’s alcoves, (they) say that Obama does not resist the bites that Dilma always inficts on him during her visits to the head offce of the American imperialism. It is said behind the White House’s curtains that after having spent a steamy night with Dilma, Obama has been taken by luxury and obsession (…)]

In the left corner, the section features a picture of what seems to be another intimate/tender moment between Rousseff and Obama (Fig. 4.11). The headline, “Encontro de Cópula,” is a play on “summit meeting,” which in Portuguese is “encontro de cúpula,” but on the website acquires a sexual connotation when transformed into a summit [encontro] for copulation [cópula]. The pun denotes a game of power and seduction between the presidents. “Ok! Ok! A gente vai lá no Casa Branca e no quarto faz a canguru perneta. … não se preocupar com a Michelle, ela tem uma sono muito pesado” [Ok! Ok! We are going there in the White House and in the room we will have sex against the wall. … You do not need to worry about Michelle, she is a very heavy sleeper], Obama whispers in Rousseff’s ear, while she happily smiles. Moreover, in the entry “Erotic Nights,” Obama’s sexual prowess con- tributes to the Brazilian president’s radical transformation. In an obvious photomontage, a jubilant Obama appears in bed with a younger Rousseff (in the picture a young model actually represents her) (Fig. 4.12): “Dilma 114 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Fig. 4.11 “Encontro de Cópula”. Source Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo (http://desciclopedia.org/wiki/Dilma_Rousseff) rejuvenesceu. … Dilma deve ter feito bruxaria para fcar jovem só para ter uma noite de sexo no motel com o Barack Obama” [Dilma became younger. … She must have done witchcraft to become younger only to have a night of sex in a motel with Barack Obama], that section relates.28 Indeed, the image above illustrates this chapter’s proposition; that is, the persistent importance of the notion of mestiçagem for the Brazilian racial (and, for that matter, national) imaginary. The humorous love affair between Obama and Rousseff ratifes the idea of Brazil as a more racially open nation, which forged a unique society. For Brazilians, their dream of racial unity is still very alive, as Gilberto Gil’s celebratory speech (quoted earlier in this chapter) demonstrated: “o Brasil tem lições a dar, no campo da paz e em outros, com as suas disposições per- manentemente sincréticas e transculturativas” [Brazil can provide helpful 4 OBAMA AND DILMA IN LOVE: RACE AND GENDER … 115

Fig. 4.12 “Dilma rejuvenesceu”. Source Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo teachings in the peace arena and also other arenas (of social life), considering its dispositions, which are permanently syncretic and transcultural]. Interestingly, Obama’s ideal United States is described as a “cosmopolitan democracy,” an array of diverse people from several nationalities joined in a “perfect union” (Selzer 29), as illustrated in his 2008 Philadelphia speech, “A More Perfect Union,” examined in Chap. 3.29 According to Obama, the U.S. Constitution assured certain rights to some people, while providing a road map to expanding these rights to others in the future, thus creating “a more perfect union” (Selzer 30). Yet, to Brazilians, the future had always been already there, at least in terms of racial equality, as their nation’s foundational mythology is based upon the idea of racial mixture and harmony. Hence, in the visual representations of the biracial couple Obama–Rousseff, Obama’s “perfect union” becomes, in fact, the “most perfect union”—one that is uniquely Brazilian; that is, a union tempered by an unapologetic mestiçagem. In the next and fnal chapter, this study examines how Obama was reformulated as a sign in the Brazilian elections. From candidates who changed their names to Obama, to the several reinterpretations of Obama’s iconic ads, Chap. 5 investigates how Brazilian candidates for political offces reappropriated Obama’s discourse of hope and change to appeal to the country’s voters. CHAPTER 5

“Our” Candidate Obama: Barack Obama in the Brazilian Elections

The “Obamization” of Brazilian Politics, or How Obama Stole the Scene from Brazilian Politicians Chapters 2 and 3 examined the “Brazilianization” of Barack Obama; that is, how the Brazilian mainstream media and political cartoons transformed Obama into a Brazilian by using elements of the country’s culture, such as futebol and carnaval. Most importantly, Brazilians appro- priated Obama as the representative of the quintessential mulatto, one who could be the expression of their true national self. Thus, mestiçagem [miscegenation] emerges as a key element to understand the Obama phenomenon within the country’s constructed imaginary. Furthermore, Chap. 4 investigated the celebration of mestiçagem in light of visual depictions, more specifcally political cartoons and Internet memes. While the previous chapters studied the “Brazilianization” of President Obama, this last chapter conversely scrutinizes the “obamization” of Brazilian politics. According to the website Urban Dictionary, “obamiz- ing” is “achieving something big after starting as an outsider or encoun- tering many obstacles.” Many Brazilian candidates in state and federal elections sought to “obamize” a victory at the polls, despite not being part of mainstream politics or having big budgets to run their campaigns. This “obamization” also included a “darkening” of Brazilian politics, as many candidates celebrated Obama’s blackness and emulated his example of a black man who rose to power, hoping to capture the attention and vote of the large constituency of Afro-Brazilians. In this sense, the

© The Author(s) 2018 117 E. K. F. Oliveira-Monte, Barack Obama is Brazilian, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58353-6_5 118 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE ever-changing Obama transforms from cosmopolitan mulatto to black icon, fuelling the hopes of disadvantaged Afro-Brazilian candidates. These political outsiders placed their blackness at the center of their discourse, while Obama himself downgraded issues of race in his 2008 campaign, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Contrariwise, well-known politicians reappropriated Obama’s iconic political slogans and visual signs to shape their own campaigns. All these candidates, be they outsiders or insiders, tried to emulate Obama’s history of personal achievements and individual charisma, hoping to beneft from possible comparisons with the U.S. president. This chapter, therefore, expands the meaning of this new verb—to obamize—in order to explore Obama’s impact in the Brazilian elections. As noted in Chap. 2, even prior to Obama’s frst term as president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva had declared his preference for the Illinois senator’s candidacy at the height of the 2008 U.S. economic crisis. Right after Obama’s election, Lula stated that Obama’s rise to power was comparable to Nelson Mandela’s election to the South African presidency (Berlinck and Gois). In an interview, the then Brazilian minister of foreign relations Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim compared both candidates—Lula and Obama— and concluded that “hope triumphed over fear” in both countries (Cantanhêde). In other words, Lula and Obama overcame classism and racism, respectively, to become elected leaders of their respective nations. In the Brazilian municipal elections of October 2008, Senator Obama was in the minds and hearts of candidates and electorate alike. Fernando Gabeira, a contender for mayor of Rio de Janeiro for the Green Party, cited Obama’s example to answer media criticism that he did not have experience as an administrator: “Posso mencionar o caso de Lula e Sérgio Cabral, que não tinham essa experiência e hoje estão lá. Outro exemplo é a história dos EUA, onde a grande crítica é feita a um candidato que está à frente das pesquisas e não tem experiência administrativa. Os candidatos da oposição que ainda não chegaram ao governo sempre sofrem esse tipo de crítica” [I can mention the cases of Lula and Sérgio Cabral; they did not have this experience and now they are there (as president and gover- nor). Another example is the USA, where there is criticism of a candidate who is a front-runner in the polls and does not have any administrative experience. The opposition candidates who have not yet reached government always endure this type of criticism] (Duran).1 On Ipanema Beach, the sand sculptor Robson Bahia Machado, a popular fgure in the city of Rio de Janeiro, instead of openly supporting 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 119 local candidates in the 2008 elections, decided to honor the racial cause and pay homage to Barack Obama by making a huge sand sculpture of the U.S. candidate. “Sou negro e queria fazer uma menção ao que está acontecendo nos Estados Unidos. O Brasil tem a maior população negra do mundo e só 2% são universitários. Temos que ressocializar a escravidão atual” [I am black and wanted to mention what is happening in the United States. Brazil has the largest black population in the world and only 2% of us have a college degree. We have to change this state of slavery today] (Duarte e Gueiros). Moreover, in 2010, Dilma Rousseff, then a candidate for the Brazilian presidency, hired North American Internet marketing company Blue State Digital—the same company that successfully conducted Obama’s campaign in 2008—to coordinate her Internet operations for the November election (Rodrigues). What was the secret to success for Obama, a relatively unknown African–American politician, who frst won the primaries of his party against the brand name Hillary Clinton, and then landed a solid victory against the widely known Republican senator (and war hero) John McCain on his very frst bid for the White House? How was it possible that a black candidate could overcome the U.S. racial divide to be elected the leader of the most powerful nation in the world? Michael Tesler and David O. Sears indicate that during his time in the U.S. Senate and while campaigning for presidency in 2008, Obama articu- lated a race-neutral discourse that possessed an overarching appeal to the American public (1–3). Obama and his strategists were well aware of the high degree of racial aversion among the U.S. electorate, which indicated deep racial resentments in the country; thus, Obama’s campaign sought to neutralize the negative impact of racial tensions on voting patterns, developing a moderate and race-neutral message that mainly focused on economic recovery (Tesler and Sears 56). Although political antagonists attempted to cast Obama as the “other”—by highlighting his African heritage and portraying him as a Muslim (Tesler and Sears 137–141)2—he effectively built a broader coalition that made it possible for him to win the presidency: besides African–Americans and Latinos, Obama had the support of white liberals, who were attracted to his race-neutral discourse (106–113). With his motto of “hope and change,” Obama electrifed the base of the Democratic Party, brought Millennials into the political process, built a large coalition among minorities, and captured the vote of white liberals, leading to his 2008 victory. The election of the frst U.S. black president 120 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE was indeed historic in a country that has been always plagued by acute racial conficts. With the 2008 presidential election, Obama catapulted from relatively unknown politician to true popular cultural icon, whose body “became a discursive space for various inscriptions of national belonging” (Selzer 17). If several pictorial references tried to portrayal Obama as foreigner, anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-white (e.g. as in a picture of the candidate as a Somali elder that was widely circulated online) (Selzer 19–20), his campaign actually emphasized the idea that he could not be contained in the mainstream national narrative, as he embodied “something radically new in politics and national life” (22). Thus, Obama not only signifed change and transformation, but also— and most importantly—hybridity, in a true incarnation of the increasing diversity of the United States, as Linda F. Selzer notes: “reading nation onto Obama’s body, then, many saw in the successful offspring of black and white parents a material proof that whites and blacks can be successfully united in the social body” (24). As a pop icon, Obama has appeared in several cultural artifacts, such as comic books, rap songs, and online videos (Yanes). In the era of media fragmentation, the U.S. president retained the attention of the masses like no other media personality, but conversely managed to exert tight control of his image and narrative (Yanes). Going beyond national politics, Obama’s election would be acknowledged as a tremendous transformation for the globe as well. Indeed, the “Obama revolution” or the “Obama phenomenon” was hugely infuential worldwide, as Barbara Kellerman underscored: “Obama’s successful bid for the presidency will go down as a turning point in human history, not just in American history” (qtd. in Selzer 22). The “Obama-mania” was not limited to the United States; on the contrary, it swiftly spread throughout the globe, as discussed in Chap. 3. Obama’s transnational connections between the United States, Kenya, and Indonesia on one side, and urban Chicago, rural Kansas, and multiethnic Hawaii on the other, transformed him into “a foating signifer, only loosely connected to its referent” (Browne and Carrington 115). As a “foating signifer,” he could then be reappropriated to suit many messages and discourses, going from a U.S. public fgure to an international icon. Obama’s speeches and autobiographies, for example, underline the humanity, the common bond that surpasses nationalism to create a transnational agenda. As the campaign motto “Yes, We Can” expresses, “the self [is] … propped up … by unwavering hope and the possibility 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 121 of action, comfortable in the knowledge that worries and responsibilities can be shouldered collectively” (Banita 37).3 Because of Obama’s multicultural, multiethnic, and transnational appeal, it is not surprising that candidates worldwide would want to emulate his image. This chapter examines how Brazilian politicians have sought to reproduce Obama’s message in their own campaigns, in order to capture the attention of voters. On one hand, this “obamization” of Brazil’s political discourse frequently highlighted racial and class elements, adapting them to the country’s reality; on the other hand, this “obamization” reproduced Obama’s visual and discursive appeal without representing a more progressive social agenda.

“My Name Is Claudio Henrique, but You Can Call Me Barack Obama” Brazil has featured few blacks in key positions in the political arena; hence, it is no surprise that the country enthusiastically and overwhelmingly embraced Obama-mania, as Brazil has the largest African- descendant population in the world (Phillips). As Tom Phillips noted in 2008, “Obama T-shirts are everywhere while chat shows and newspaper columns are flled with talk of the 47-year-old Illinois senator.” Hoping to transform this enthusiasm into votes, local and national Afro-Brazilian politicians tried to copy Obama’s appealing formula. In the 2008 local elections, the state of Rio de Janeiro featured six candidates with the name Barack Obama; they sought to stand out among many competi- tors from several parties (Downie). Andre Downie explains that “many [Brazilian politicians] use their long-held nicknames, but some adopt outlandish identities to grab attention.” One candidate for mayor of Belford Roxo (a poor region in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, known as the Lowlands) and six candidates for city councilman adopted the name of the then candidate for the U.S. presidency, Barack Obama. However, Rio de Janeiro was not the only state to feature “Obamas”; states such as Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Pernambuco also had candidates registered as “Obama” in the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral [Superior Electoral Tribunal, the federal agency that oversees and regulates state and federal elections in Brazil]. Davi Cardoso, candidate for council in Pompeu, a small city in the interior of Minas Gerais, campaigned under the title “Davi, o Obama do Assentamento” [David, the Obama of Land Settlement]. Also, “Epaminondas, o Obama brasileiro” [Epaminondas, 122 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE the Brazilian Obama] competed for a seat in the council of Barreto, a city in the state of São Paulo. Alexandre Nunes Jacinto, candidate for councilman of Petrolina in Pernambuco, adopted the name “Alexandre Barack Obama,” because he believed that he shared many similarities with the U.S. candidate: a zest for speeches, his black skin, and marked physical characteristics. He declared: “a ideia de usar o nome Barack Obama foi minha mesmo. Falei um dia: vou ser igual a esse rapaz. E eu serei. Eu quero ser o Barack Obama. No início, o pessoal da coli- gação achou que era gozação, fcaram de chacota. Mas decidi que usaria o nome. Registrei e depois todo mundo apoiou. Agora, em vez de me chamarem de Alexandre, me chamam de Barack [the idea of using the name Barack Obama was really mine. One day, I said: I will be just like this young fellow. And I will. I want to be Barack Obama. In the beginning, everyone in the political coalition thought that it was a joke; they mocked me. But I decided that I would adopt the name. I registered it and then everyone supported me. Now, instead of calling me Alexandre, they call me Barack] (Boas). Brazilian newspapers highlighted that Obama was a true “phenomenon” in U.S. politics and many candidates hoped to “pegar carona no sucesso do candidato” [take a free ride on the candidate’s success] (Boas). Obama continued to leave a mark in Brazilian elections in subsequent years. In 2010, in the largest electoral college in Brazil, the state of São Paulo, Ananias Rodrigues da Silva, who worked as an Obama imper- sonator, competed in the elections as “Obama Brasil” for the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro [Brazilian Workers’ Party]. He noted that his physical resemblance to the U.S. president could bring him votes, and added: “a nossa biografa é idêntica. Somos advogados, religiosos, temos duas flhas e temos a mesma altura. Temos um contato espiritual” [our biography is identical. We are lawyers, we are religious persons, we have two daughters and are the same height. We have a spiritual connection] (“Eleição tem Obama”). Failing to win in 2010, “Obama Brasil” tried to get elected in 2014, after Barack Obama’s victory to a second term as president in 2012. The 2014 elections for the Brazilian House of Representatives also had a good share of Obamas4: Cosme Barack Obama from the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro [Brazilian Democratic Movement Party] in São Paulo; Obama de Colombo from the Partido Verde [Green Party] in Paraná; and Cláudio Henrique Barack Obama from the Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ Party] in Rio de Janeiro.5 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 123

Cláudio Henrique dos Santos, known as Cláudio Henrique Barack Obama, was the 2008 candidate of the Brazilian Workers’ Party for mayor of Belford Roxo, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, but he was defeated in his bid to become the city’s frst black mayor. At that time, he was featured on Frontline PBS documentary Brazil: The Obama-Samba, as well as several U.S. cable television channels such as CNN, Al-Jazeera America, and Fox News (Garcia). The PBS documentary begins with a pretty landscape shot of a beach in Rio de Janeiro, and an abrupt cut shows the image of an underprivileged neighborhood. The narrator comments:

For the lucky few, Rio de Janeiro is a playground flled with beach, soccer, bikinis, and samba. But the reality is bleak for those living on the out- skirts of the city, in the Lowlands of Belford Roxo, where violence and poverty rule. The need here is endless, but the few politicians who have tried to change things have been silenced or killed. Recently, some hope has come back to Belford Roxo, thanks in large part to one man. He has returned from Rio to his boyhood home to campaign for mayor. His name is Cláudio Henrique, but as he tries to become the frst black mayor, people here have given him a new name [another cut to Belford Roxo’s people, who say to the camera], “Barack Obama. Cláudio Henrique Barack Obama. The Barack Obama of the Lowlands.”

The documentary follows Cláudio Henrique on his quest to be elected the frst black mayor of Belford Roxo, highlighting the dangers of running for political offce in one of the most oligarchical and violent zones of Rio de Janeiro, the Baixada Fluminense [Lowlands]. Obama-Samba also denounces the country’s white power structure:

What started out as a small joke turned into an international phenomenon: commentators around the world ran with the story. The punchline is that Claudio was not alone; at least seven other candidates across the country were using Obama’s name. But for these black politicians trying to break Brazil’s political color barrier, the story was no laughing matter…. At least half of the country’s population has African ancestry, making Brazil the largest black nation on earth after Nigeria. But these numbers have not translated to political power, as black politicians are virtually absent from government.

The documentary then narrates Cláudio Henrique’s story: a poor child from Belford Roxo, he received a degree in electronics during his time 124 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE in the Air Force and became an entrepreneur, opening a small electronics company in downtown Rio de Janeiro. “But like his mentor, he says his heart is in community organizing,” the voice-over reveals, while the camera focuses on Cláudio Henrique, who appears reading the Brazilian translation of Dreams from My Father. Like Obama, Cláudio Henrique informs the viewers that he wants to be a role model for his community, especially Afro-Brazilians and children. In fact, the candidate’s political jingle “Cláudio Henrique é trabalho, juventude e esperança” [Cláudio Henrique is work, youth, and hope] (sung by a colorful character in the documentary) draws from Obama’s ideas (hope) and qualities (hard work and youth), celebrating the notion of meritocracy, a concept that has been gaining steam in the Brazilian democratic era. “If you set your mind to it, you can accomplish anything,” the hopeful candidate seems to declare, which in turn echoes Obama’s “nothing is impossible” attitude. Cláudio Henrique Barack Obama received 30,000 votes, placing him in third place, but the Superior Electoral Tribunal annulled his candidacy because “he failed to prove his party affliation.” According to Cláudio Henrique, the annulment was a dishonest strategy of his political adversaries to prevent his participation in the elections (Garcia). Despite his defeat, he managed to gather attention to his name and political projects, so much so that a news agency invited him to travel to Washington to witness Obama’s inauguration. He visited the Capitol and the Senate, falling in love with “a democracia que funciona” [the democracy that works]. This meaningful experience renewed his resolve to participate in Brazil’s political life (Garcia). In 2014, he sought a congressional seat as representative from the Workers’ Party in Rio de Janeiro. Cláudio Henrique Barack Obama believes that the nickname helped to catapult his political ambitions, but he truly aims to attract the electorate with his projects: “o humor pode ser um caminho na política e até uma forma de manifestação. Adotei o Obama na minha vida porque deu visibilidade, mas o objetivo maior é chamar a atenção para os meus projetos” [humor can be an entry to political life and even a type of protest. I adopted Obama in my life because the name gave me visibility, but the biggest goal is to attract attention to my projects]. Cláudio Henrique has political projects in the areas of environmental protection, social inclusion, tax reduction, and sustainability (Garcia). His campaign design is also very similar to that of the real Obama, as can be seen below (as shown in Leslie Larson’s “Barack Obama of Brazil runs for Congress”) (Fig. 5.1). “Use bem seu voto” [Use your vote well], the ad admonishes, suggesting that a vote for the Brazilian Obama is a vote well cast. One can 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 125

Fig. 5.1 “Use bem seu voto”. Source New York Daily News (http://www. nydailynews.com/news/politics/barack-obama-brazil-seeks-congressional-seat- article-1.1913125) see also the same “O” design, the blue-and-red Obama sun of hope and change, now transformed into blue with a white stripe and stars, which suggests the circle of the Brazilian fag. The name Cláudio Henrique appears below the logo in a smaller font, with the name “Barack Obama” in a larger font to capture the attention of potential voters. In between the words “Barack” and “Obama,” the red star, symbol of the Workers’ Party, emerges. Below “Barack Obama,” the Brazilian candidate’s motto appears in a different font: “nada resiste ao trabalho” [nothing defes work]. This slogan reveals Cláudio Henrique’s strong work ethic and faith in the future for those Afro-Brazilians who seek to apply themselves to any achievement. On the left, Cláudio Henrique stands in a confdent pose, wearing a suit and smiling, his picture framed by a white glow which contrasts with the blue-palette background. The choice of colors 126 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE invokes the black candidate’s purity and tranquility, qualities that make him stand out in a political feld mainly controlled by a white elite and mined by turmoil and corruption. In fact, one of Cláudio Henrique’s projects, the “Contra Partida Social” [Social Equivalence] was inspired by a newspaper article about corruption, as he reveals: “tive a ideia em 1999 quando li em uma matéria que indicava que 30% do nosso PIB era desviado para corrupção. E apenas 3% seria necessário para acabar com a fome” [I had the idea for this project in 1999, when I read in a newspaper article that 30% of our GDP was diverted to corruption. And only 3% was needed to abolish hunger] (Garcia). Local candidates were not the only ones to appropriate Obama’s image during elections in Brazil. The highly disputed 2014 presidential elections also featured politicians seeking to repeat the U.S. president’s success by using textual cues and copying iconic ads from his historical 2008 campaign. The candidate for the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira [Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, PSDB], Aécio Neves, reframed the mottos of “hope,” “change,” and “yes, we can” according to his appeal as a successful young politician who could bring renovation after twelve years of Workers’ Party presidency. As the grandson of Tancredo Neves, the frst civilian president after twenty-one years of military government, Aécio Neves had political pedigree; hence, he was seen as a political insider. Still, he represented a possible alternative to the political party in power. The next section examines the 2010 and 2014 Brazilian presidential elections, in order to ascertain the candidates’ strategies vis-à-vis capturing the hearts and minds of Brazilian voters. While Dilma Rousseff focused on her ties to the still-popular former President Lula, emphasizing her past role as a fghter against the military regime and constructing an image of herself as “mother of the people,” Aécio Neves emulated Obama’s main slogans and visual representations to underline his youth as an element of change.

Rousseff as “Mother of the People” vs. Aéciobama and “Brazil Can Do Better”: The 2014 Presidential Campaign Dilma Rousseff offcially announced her bid for the presidency on June 13, 2010 during the Workers’ Party national convention and received ample approval and support from President Lula and the party’s 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 127 leadership. During her 2010 campaign, she focused on the socio-economic achievements of the Lula era, emphasizing that she would continue Lula’s policies: “O presidente Lula mudou o Brasil e o Brasil por essa mudança, quer seguir mudando. A continuidade que o Brasil deseja é a continuidade da mudança. O que queremos é seguir mudando para melhor, com mais crescimento e inclusão social” [President Lula changed Brazil and because of this change Brazil wants to have continu- ity within the change. What we want is to keep changing for the better, with more growth and social inclusion], she affrmed during the party convention (Passarinho). The correspondences “Rousseff equals Lula” and “Rousseff’s government will be equivalent to Lula’s government” reveal that she was identifed more as a candidate of lulismo than petismo, an idea that was reinforced during her 2010 campaign (Pires 159).6 Lulismo centers more on the Lula cult of personality than the Workers’ Party agenda, as Lula’s popularity had remained robust throughout his two presidential terms. While the Workers’ Party constructed the image of Lula as “Pai do Povo” [Father of the People], João Santana, marketing strategist of Rousseff’s campaign, sought to promote the candidate as “Mãe do Povo” [Mother of the People] (Pires 157–159). This sym- bolism was used in several TV programs of the Horário Gratuito Político Eleitoral [Free Political Advertising Time],7 in which the lyrics of a jingle declared: “Agora as mãos de uma mulher vão nos conduzir/Eu sigo com saudade, mas feliz a sorrir/Pois sei, o meu povo ganhou uma mãe/Que tem um coração que vai do Oiapoque ao Chuí” [Now the hands of a woman will conduct us/I am still longing, but happily I smile/Because I know that my people won a mother/Who has a heart that goes from the Oiapoque to Chuí] (Pires 157). In the jingle, the electorate is still yearning for Lula, the Father of the People, but the Mother of the People, Dilma Rousseff, also has an encompassing heart that embraces Brazil from North to South. This huge embrace represents “um carinho de mãe” [the mother’s tenderness], an idea that helped to create affective bonds between Rousseff and the Brazilian voters (156). The programs also highlighted common women of all ages and ethnicities, seeking to capture the attention of the important female electorate (Pires 157). In the 2010 elections, Rousseff faced Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s former minister of health, José Serra, from the opposition PSDB. The election headed for a runoff, and Rousseff won with 56% of the popular vote. As a candidate for reelection in 2014, she then faced Aécio Neves, the former Minas Gerais governor, as the PSDB’s candidate. Fernando 128 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Henrique Cardoso, President of Honor of the PSDB, strongly backed the young politician’s candidacy. Cardoso believed that his party needed renovation, after having lost to the Workers’ Party in the last three presidential elections (“Com foco em 2014, tucanos escolhem Aécio”). Dilma Rousseff’s 2014 campaign capitalized on her image as a former guerrilla fghter, using a design that was elaborated from a mug- shot photo shot by the military. The popular campaign design “Dilma, Coração Valente” [Dilma, Brave Heart] was based on the illustration created by artist Sattu Rodrigues, which in turn used a picture of when she was a student political activist jailed in January 1970, in a military operation known as “Operação Bandeirante” [Bandeirante Operation] (see Figs. 5.2 and 5.3).8 To the original Rodrigues design were added the Brazilian fag’s yellow and green colors (which contour the right side of Rousseff’s face) and offcial documents of her capture (which underlay her upper body).

Fig. 5.2 “Dilma, Coração Valente”. Source Diretório Estadual do PT/RN 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 129

Fig. 5.3 “Dilma Rousseff” by Sattu Rodrigues. Source El País Brasil

In this sense, traces of her past appear written on her body, reminding the voters of Rousseff’s former struggle against authoritarianism, as well as highlighting her courage to remain steadfast in the face of adversity, hence the motto “Coração Valente” [Brave Heart]. Rousseff’s visual recreation suggests that “layers of memory” resur- face on objects and bodies, making visible repressed traumas and pain- ful episodes (as Rebecca Atencio argues in her analysis of recent protests against the 1964 military coup). In April 2012, to mark the 48th anni- versary of the coup, the Coletivo Fora do Eixo, a group of young political and human rights activists, projected a series of pictures and flms depicting the violence of the dictatorship onto the façade of the Clube Militar, 130 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE a social club where retired offcers gather. According to Rebecca Atencio, the activism of groups like Fora do Eixo works against historical erasure and amnesia, “reinscribing—albeit in a feeting way—memories onto the urban landscape” (2). Also in April 2012, Tata Amaral’s flm Hoje [Today] was released in Brazilian national theaters. In the movie, the protagonist, Vera, moves into an apartment bought with a check received from the Brazilian government as a reparation for her husband’s disappearance during the years of political repression. The fctional cinematic account seeks to bring “trauma into the feld of visibility through the scenario of a household move (in which the external environment refects Vera’s internal state), through play with light, shadow, and mirrors, and through the use of video projections onto the bare walls of the apartment” (3), as Atencio underscores. Projection of textual fragments—such as the Law of the Disappeared, offcial police reports, and oral interviews of torture survi- vors9—“create a powerful and suggestive visual image of the layeredness of memory and render visible how the past remains present” (Atencio 4). In this sense, Dilma Rousseff’s campaign ad “Coração Valente” offers powerful imagery of the traumatic traces of the past that are still part of the current Brazilian political and social landscape. Therefore, the poster remains as a powerful visual reminder of what lies beneath in the nation’s collective unconscious, bridging the past and the present, as it effectively intertwines her revolutionary past struggles with her recent governmental agenda for the nation’s social and economic advancement. The 2014 reelection campaign video “Dilma, Coração Valente,” created by João Santana’s advertising agency, features these same ideas. The ad connects the accomplishments of her frst term in government—many of her developmental projects—with the military dictatorship period, as colorful images of the present are cut to black-and-white pictures of the 1960s past protests and Rousseff’s now iconic picture of her interroga- tion by a military tribunal in November 1970.10 The forró (a popular musical genre from the Northeast) lyrics featured in the video ratify the idea that Rousseff fought for the people in the past and continues her battle in the present:

Dilma, Coração Valente Nada nos segura pra seguir em frente Você nunca desviou o olhar do sofrimento do povo Por isso, eu te quero outra vez 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 131

Por isso, eu te quero de novo Você nunca vacilou em lutar Em favor da gente [Dilma, Brave Heart Nothing can hold us, to push forward You never took your sight away from the people’s suffering Because of that, I want you one more time Because of that, I want you again You never hesitated in fghting For us]

The legend “Dilma, Coração Valente” closes the video. The Workers’ Party not only recreated Sattu Rodrigues’ artwork, but also widely circulated the iconic image, using it in campaign ads and products. The party’s website actually commercialized T-shirts and mugs featuring Rodrigues’ illustration without the artist’s permission. He then sued the Workers’ Party for copyright infringement, and a judicial court in São Paulo ordered the Party to stop the placement and dissemination of all materials using his original work and its recreations, especially those cir- culating on social networks and the Internet (Tardáguila).11 While Rousseff’s campaigns constructed her as “Mother of the People” and a “Brave Heart” woman who fought against political oppression and social injustice, her opponent in the 2014 elections, Aécio Neves, focused on youth and renovation. Neves comes from an important political dynasty: he is the grandson of Tancredo Neves, the frst civilian president in twenty-one years, nominated by an electoral college in 1985. Tancredo Neves died on April 21, 1985, before being sworn in, and his vice president, José Sarney, took offce on March 15, 1985.12 Aécio Neves built his own political name: he was the gover- nor of Minas Gerais from 2003 to 2010 and defeated the then favorite José Serra in the PSDB’s primary to be the Party’s candidate in the 2014 presidential contest. At that time Aécio Neves was ffty-four years old, a very young candidate when compared to sixty-six year-old Dilma Rousseff, who was running for reelection. Rousseff hoped to give the Workers’ Party a fourth term in power, consolidating the PT as one of the most infuential political forces in Brazil’s recent democracy. In this sense, Obama’s motto of “hope and change” seemed to be a good ft for candidate Neves. His presidential campaign mainly stressed the mineiro’s young dynamism, as well as the need for renovation after twelve years 132 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE of the Workers’ Party administration. His political jingles announced: “um novo Brasil para gente … caminhando diferente, seguro” [a new Brazil for us, tracing a different path, a safer one]; “Por esse país inteiro, a mudança está no ar” [Throughout this entire country, change is in the air]; and “Aécio, é para mudar o Brasil” [Aécio, to change Brazil].13 Moreover, Neves’ proponents sought to emulate Obama visually, also hoping to evoke the slogans of “hope” and “change.” Renowned fashion designer Sergio Kamalakian, owner of the men’s clothing label Sergio K., which targets upper-class segments of Brazilian society, created a T-shirt supporting Aécio Neves’ candidacy. The product, which sold for 99 reais (roughly US$39 at that time), recreated the famous Obama poster “Hope,” designed by artist Shepard Fairey, using the image of the Brazilian candidate (Fig. 5.4).

Fig. 5.4 “Uai We Can” by Sérgio Kalamakian. Source Folha de São Paulo 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 133

The symbol of Sergio K.’s clothing line appears at the bottom left, with the hashtag #Aecio45, his electoral number, at the bottom right. (The Superior Electoral Tribunal assigns candidates numbers, so voters can select them at the electronic voting machines, making the voting process easier and quicker.) The blue and red colors, distinctive in Obama’s poster, cover Aécio Neves’ image. However, contrary to a pensive and serious Obama, the mineiro politician appears with a smile, which grants the candidate an agreeable fair. The celebrated slogan “Yes, We Can” has been transformed into “Uai We Can,” “uai” being the well-known interjection used by people from the state of Minas Gerais. Kalamakian declared about his creation: “Escolhi o Obama porque ele também veio para mudar, da mesma forma que o Aécio [es]tá vindo. Eu escolhi Aécio pelos ideais, pelo partido. O PT precisa sair do governo, toda mudança é válida” [I chose Obama because he also came to change, the same way that Aécio is coming to change. I chose Aécio because of his ideals, because of his party. The Workers’ Party must leave the government, all change is good] (Mesquita). Nevertheless, Kalamakian’s smiling Aécio Neves could not be further from Fairey’s Obama. To craft his Obama poster, Fairey chose a pho- tograph taken from the Internet, one that Fairey described as presidential—“he is gazing off into the future, saying, ‘I can guide you,’” the artist declared (qtd. in Booth).14 Fairey painted Obama using a patriotic red, white, and blue palette and fnished his poster with Obama’s campaign words: “progress,” “hope,” and “change.” The artist explained his creation:

I wanted the poster to be recognizable as my work, and to be appealing to a younger, apathetic audience, yet tame enough not to be seen as radical or offensive to the core mainstream political participants. You want to create the most fattering shapes. Strong in the face of adversity. How the light falls beautifully. It’s idealized. (qtd. in Booth)

Washington Post journalist William Booth declared that the design had the same iconic qualities of the classic Che Guevara poster: Fairey’s work was “aspirational, inspirational, and cool,” a piece destined to be a true phenomenon. Rachel Sklar from The Huffngton Post also pronounced that “Fairey’s image works because it’s art, not branding, genuinely inspired and genuinely memorable and arresting, whatever your politics.” Fairey’s prints quickly sold out on the artist’s website and the image 134 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE went viral, becoming one of the most recognizable items of Obama’s campaign, nationally and internationally.15 It is not a surprise, therefore, that other artists have borrowed the concept to celebrate candidates of their choice, as Kamalakian did. Nevertheless, journalist Pedro Carvalho asked Sergio Kamalakian in an interview about the paradoxical nature of the T-shirt design, because Obama was a candidate of the center-left from the U.S. Democratic Party, and Neves represented a center-right candidacy in Brazil. Kamalakian affrmed that he was focusing on fashion more than politics (Carvalho). Thus, although the Brazilian designer recreated Fairey’s poster, he was far from promoting leftist ideas. While Kamalakian is a fashionista whose designs target the Brazilian elite, Fairey is an artist whose works set out to condemn the political and social alienation promoted by consumerist society.16 Fairey actually believes that the media and government bom- bard individuals with forceful messages that impel them to conform, obey, and consume. His works greatly criticize advertising and consumerist society, interestingly through the use of ad language and pop culture references, as Tom Matlack explains:

In many ways Shepard Fairey’s work is an ad campaign making fun of ad campaigns. It’s his consistency of message that has earned him respect. He is the McDonald’s of guerrilla art. He has had amazing success in getting his message out so that a remarkably large number of people recognize it. But it’s only recently that his brilliance is being appreciated for its aesthetic beauty, both in terms of the content of the work and the way it takes the existing advertising model and turns it on its head.

Indeed, visuals played an essential role in Obama’s 2008 campaign, refashioning the importance of posters in contemporary presidential campaigns (Seidman 2–3). Obama’s commitment to powerful visuals inspired many independent artists to contribute to his campaign, as discussed in Chap. 2. Obama’s brand was “unique and recognizable,” eliciting from the audience emotional feelings and thus creating loyalty toward his brand (5–6). Visuals were especially effective with Millennial voters, which gave Obama “the largest percentage (66%), achieved for this group since exit polling commenced in 1972” (Seidman 5). Unsurprisingly, Brazilian candidates also hoped to reach this “Net Generation.” In 2014, eleven million adolescents between the ages of sixteen and twenty were set to vote for the frst time in Brazil (Caitano). 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 135

Some of these were the same youngsters who participated in the infuential 2013 wave of protests known as Protestos de Junho [June Protests]. The protests started rather timidly, following an increase in public transportation tariffs in São Paulo. Manifestations were promoted by the Movimento Passe Livre [Free Pass Movement], which advocated free public transportation for all citizens, as explained on its website, tarifazero.org: “O Movimento Passe Livre (MPL) é um movimento social autônomo, apartidário, horizontal e independente, que luta por um transporte público de verdade, gratuito para o conjunto da população e fora da iniciativa privada” [The Free Pass Movement is an autonomous social movement, non-partisan, horizontal, and independent, which fghts for true public transportation, free for the population and not provided by private companies] (“O que é o Movimento Passe Livre”). As ferce police violence and repression ensued, protests grew in size and scope, reaching all major Brazilian capitals. The movement also started to include new agendas, such as opposition to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. At the height of the demonstrations, one million Brazilians took to the streets (“Protestos de junho de 2013 atraíram 1 milhão”).17 Amounting to 10% of the Brazilian electorate, these young protesters became eligible voters in the 2014 elections, so parties quickly started mobilizing to attract them to their platforms. Brazilian presidential candidates hired specifc staff to develop digital media campaign strategies, especially focusing on Facebook and Twitter (Caitano). Nevertheless, attracting the Brazilian Millennial generation to the 2014 presidential run proved to be a challenge, as the main candidates had high percentages of rejection among those voters: on the second round of the elections, 33% of them declared that they would never vote Aécio Neves and 42% refused to vote for Dilma Rousseff (Muzzolon). Still, Neves performed better among young voters than Rousseff, mainly because of the inability of her government to answer the demands of the 2013 popular manifestations, postulated Aldo Fornazieri, a political science professor at the School of Sociology and Politics in São Paulo (qtd. in Muzzolon). Therefore, it is not a coincidence that Aécio Neves’ campaign strategists tried to imitate Obama’s formula to positively impress Millennials. In the 2010 presidential elections, former president Lula had already pointed out the irony of the PSDB’s slogan “o Brasil pode mais” [Brazil can do better] and accused the opposition party of copying Barack Obama’s famous “Yes, We Can” (“Lula diz que PSDB copia slogan”). “Eu nunca pensei que, com a inteligência de nossos adversários, eles fossem copiar o slogan do 136 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Obama” [I never thought that, due to the intelligence of our adversaries, they would copy Obama’s slogan], Lula affrmed during a speech for the Metalworkers’ Union in São Paulo (“Lula diz que PSDB copia slogan”). Yet, Neves’ 2014 campaign concept of change was centered on his persona, whereas Obama’s discursive devices emphasized change as a collective experience. The Illinois senator’s 2008 campaign promoted collective identity and agency, which galvanized the base of the Democratic Party and attracted youth participation. Akwugo Emejulu argues that three key concepts structured Obama’s “hope” campaign discourse: “the existence of a shared purpose/common dreams among the public, the necessity of active reciprocal citizenship and the requirement for a major- itarian and intersectional form of progressive politics” (120). Moreover, equality emerges as the core of the American dream; equality is the nation’s manifest destiny: in the United States, all individuals are free to pursue happiness and achieve their potential. Still, the path to equality has to be constructed together, creating “a more perfect union” (120) (Obama’s concept of “a more perfect union” was examined in Chap. 2).18 In this sense, Obama campaign’s social practices emphasized a multiracial and multiclass broad-based constituency, a community- organizing goal that refected his 1980s work on Chicago’s South Side (122). This discourse recognized differences of race, class, and gender, yet it challenged a broader group of people to exercize their citizenship rights by engaging in politics, so the American dream could fnally be all embracing (Emejulu 123–124). Within this discursive scheme, Obama appears as the “facilitator for the public’s hopes, dreams, and aspirations” (124), and his self “in the hope discourse does not stand alone; Obama does not construct himself as a ‘Great Man of History’ but as a facilitator of a shared vision for America” (124). Therefore, the concept of “hope” actually represents a code word for collective action (Emejulu 125). Obama’s 2008 campaign has been widely celebrated for its ability to transcend self and communicate collectiveness, what Jennifer Crocker and Shayne B. Hughes name an “ecosystem perspective.” Crocker and Hughes describe:

the biological notion of an ecosystem as a metaphor for a perspective on human relationships in which the self is seen as part of a larger whole, as part of a system of separate but interconnected individuals whose actions have consequences for others, with repercussions for the entire system, and ultimately affect the ability of everyone to satisfy their fundamental needs. (126) 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 137

Obama was thus an “ecosystem” leader, as he established self-transcendent goals, downgraded personalism, possessed a larger and systemic vision for the nation, and demonstrated the ability to listen to people’s demands (126). Ecosystem leaders have far-reaching appeal because they are less ideological and less partisan, consequently attracting swing voters and independents alike, as well as moderate Republicans (135). Although a far-reaching appeal is generally seen as a positive trait, some scholars indicate that Obama’s broader reach was actually realized by dera- cializing his campaign discourse, which did not emphasize Afro-American community’s issues. Todd Rho’Dess stressed that, although Obama’s campaign was “one of the most brilliant and innovative in modern history” (118), it was also deracialized by the race neutrality of his speeches and lack of clear agenda for the advancement of African–American interests. Obama actually focused on evoking general American values, as an expression of an overarching nation’s unifcation (119). Seeking to attain a centrist ideological positioning, the candidate frequently downplayed the social exclusion and subordination of African–Americans (120). Ultimately, Obama’s race- neutral strategy obscured “the possibility of addressing African American subjective and objective interests,” as well as “inadvertently embraced strategies that … ‘sell out’ their constituency, further postponing the fght for substantial racial justice” (121).19 In this sense, Obama’s “deracialization” made it easier for mainstream candidates from other nations to reappropriate his discourse of hope and change, but many times this transformative message reemerges elsewhere as devoid of a true commitment with a political base or to social change. This phenomenon is particularly true when one considers Brazilian politics, a realm in which weak political parties tend to promote personalism. In fact, Brazil’s multiparty political system is so fragmented that it is impossible to reach a majority in Congress, making it virtually impracti- cal to govern without establishing ample coalitions that often cross different party lines with very distinct ideological allegiances (Power 231). The so-called Presidencialismo de Coalição [Coalition Presidentialism], which started under Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s presidency and con- solidated in Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s era, emerged as a true achievement of recent Brazilian democracy, as both presidents had to “deploy their tools with an essentially coalitional logic in mind” (232), consequently emphasizing political accord while downplaying overly individu- alistic traits. However, personal charisma remained a powerful device to construct political alliances and entice voters to the polls. In this sense, 138 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Lula and Obama not only reached across the left or right of the ideological spectrum, but also demonstrated the possession of a legitimate charismatic persona. Analyzing the 2014 Brazilian presidential campaign, Denis de Oliveira, a professor of communication and politics at the University of São Paulo, noted that Dilma Rousseff’s lack of charisma worked as a considerable handicap in both her 2010 election and 2014 reelection, yet her deep knowledge of the economy and governmental programs made her a competive candidate (qtd. in Padrão). In this sense, Rousseff can be compared to Hillary Clinton in the United States. Still, a more personable Aécio Neves was not able to broaden his electoral base; “Ele fala muito para o seu eleitor, não sai muito dali, além de usar um discurso muito duro e autoritário” [He mostly speaks to his voters, he does not go beyond them, and he uses a very authoritarian and hardcore discourse], Oliveira observed (Padrão). Nevertheless, Aécio Neves made an effort to appeal to various groups of the electorate, by emphasizing his youth while still highlighting his political experience. During the PSDB’s Horário Gratuito Político Eleitoral [Free Political Advertising Time], he directly addressed the voters on national radio and television through a series of speeches that centered on his personal, political, and administrative attributes (Mira, Oliveira, and Leal 216–218). For the very competive second round against Dilma, he also stressed the theme of “change”; in fact, “administrative ability” and “change” were the main elements of the second round of his campaign (219). Still, the notion of change largely revolved around the candidate’s alleged capacity to undo the many problems of Dilma Rousseff’s government. Thus, despite reappropriating Obama’s visual and discursive cues, Neves’ 2014 presidential campaign possessed a strong personalistic tone and did not succeed in addressing the communal goals of diverse social agents. Neves’ “hope and change” did not have the appeal of the original motto, because average voters identifed the mineiro candidate as a white male who was part of the political establishment and economic elite. In contrast to Lula, Neves does not present any similarities with Obama, be they related to their socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds or their political ideologies. One could argue that Lula’s political heiress, Dilma Rousseff, is closer to Obama ideologically and also has a biography similar to the U.S. president’s (both are children of immigrants who rose to political pinnacles of their countries), although they obviously differ in terms of race and gender. However, 5 “OUR” CANDIDATE OBAMA: BARACK OBAMA IN THE BRAZILIAN … 139 the frst black U.S. president and the frst female Brazilian president had different strategies to appeal to their voters: while Obama’s sought to downgrade the racial element, Rousseff’s campaign aimed to highlight the gender issue, as discussed earlier in this chapter. Moreover, it is interesting to note that Obama was reinvented by black Brazilian candidates seeking offce (as his blackness appealed to a nation that has been slowly confronting its own racial problems), as well as by a young white candidate from a center-right party (as his mottos of “hope” and “change” could indicate an alteration of power after twelve years of the Workers’ Party administration). In this sense, Obama is a foating signifer which has been continously altered, renewed, and adapted in order to appeal to diverse audiences and to ft into different conjunctures. As the world took notice of the charismatic Obama, Brazil was one of the countries that enthusiastically embraced “Obama-mania.” The black U.S. president opened a new political imaginary for many countries that were starting to confront their racial and social inequalities. One can only conjecture whether Obama will continue to resonate in the hearts and minds of Brazilians now that he has left the offce. After having voted for its frst female president, is Brazil ready to elect its own “Tropical Obama”? Is Brazil prepared to have its frst (self-declared) black president? The conclusion of this sudy explores the possible legacies of Obama in a country where almost 54% of the population is of African descent, according to the 2014 report from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografa e Estatística [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, IBGE] (“Negros representam 54% da população do país, mas são só 17% dos mais ricos”). CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

Barack Obama’s presidency concluded on January 2017. Analysts were quick to make an assessment of the two terms of the frst African– American U.S. president. While some celebrated Obama’s legacy, others were very critical of his administration. African–Americans have clearly understood that the celebrated post-racial America was a mere myth; yet they also realized that Obama’s presidency had opened a new positive chapter in U.S. history. Peniel E. Joseph cites a pivotal moment of the president’s tenure, when a fve-year-old black child asked to touch Obama’s hair, “as if to assure himself that the leader of the free world not only looked like him, but had similar hair as well.” This signifcant exchange was captured in a picture that became iconic not only in the United States, but also worldwide, and was widely publicized in Brazil.1 At the core of Joseph’s argument is what he calls “the humanization of black experience”; that is, the humanization of a group that had been continuously dehumanized and objectifed in the history of the Americas. Joseph concludes:

The Obamas leave the White House, if not the world stage, having accom- plished, through sheer force of will, something entirely unprecedented in American history: humanizing the black experience by simply being themselves. In the process they normalized black excellence, codifed graceful resist- ance to white supremacy and illustrated the profundity of black romantic

and familial love. And they looked great doing it. The Obamas will be missed by millions – but no one will miss them more than black Americans. We found in Obama a president who justifed the faith of generations who persisted in loving America – even when the nation refused to love us back.

Some other perspectives were less celebratory, however. Refecting on Donald Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory, Cornel West noted that the Obama years promoted the neoliberal policies that helped to elect billionaire Republican candidate Donald Trump. Obama’s two- term presidency witnessed the top 1% concentrate two–thirds of income growth, while “Obama’s education policy unleashed more market forces that closed hundreds of public schools for charter ones.” Although over twenty-fve million people acquired healthcare coverage, the Affordable Care Act’s market-based system still left some twenty million people behind (West, “Pity the Sad Legacy”). In any case, African–Americans and Latinos were the main benefciar- ies of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA.2 The state-mandated insurance beneftted over four million Latinos and contributed to the expansion of community health centers (Gamboa). In 2008 and 2012, Latinos turned out heavily to vote for Obama, and in 2012 the president signed an executive action defending young immigrants against the threat of deporta- tion. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, beneftted around 800,000 youngsters, who, because of the program, were able to attend college and to have careers and businesses, as well as to become homeowners (Gamboa). Still, Obama expelled illegal immigrants at an unprecedented rate, deporting more than 2.5 million people between 2009 and 2015. Obama’s administration actually deported “more than the sum of all the presidents of the twentieth century” (Marshall), so much so that human rights’ activists and immigration groups nicknamed the president the “deporter-in-chief.” In terms of international policy, criticism of Obama is even starker. Medea Benjamin noted that, although Obama decreased the number of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, he exponentially intensifed the use of special operations forces and air strikes. In this sense, the president could be also known as the “drone-warrior-in-chief, [because] he spread the use of drones outside the declared battlefelds of Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly to Pakistan and Yemen” (Benjamin). Cornel West went as far as to state that Obama’s drone strikes represented a “lapse of 6 CONCLUSION 143

[the president’s] character” (“Pity the Sad Legacy”). Although it is very diffcult, if not impossible, to keep an account of the casualties, it might be accurate to affrm that thousands of civilians perished during Obama’s administration due to the relentless air strikes.3 With many achievements and shortcomings, much praise and criticism, Obama’s government ended on a high note. His popularity soared to around 60% at the end of his second term; he left the White House a well-liked president.4 Yet Obama was unable to get his choice of successor—former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton from the Democratic Party—elected as the next president. Instead, Donald Trump, a billionaire and reality TV star who gave voice to the Birtherism movement and represented the very opposite of everything Obama stood for, won the electoral vote to become the 45th President of the United States of America.5 Many theories tried to explain the Trump phenomenon. He ran as the “outsider,” a person who did not belong to the mainstream political parties, a businessman who could fx a supposedly dysfunctional and enlarged state. Political analysts also highlighted the important vote of the white blue-collar class, impover- ished by disappearing manufacturing jobs which were shipped overseas. Trump captured the traditional Democratic enclave of the Rust Belt states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and had an important win in Ohio, consolidating a sound victory among white males and females without a college degree (Tankersley). According to Jim Tankersley:

In polling, these voters have expressed deep racial and cultural anxieties. In exit polls they were more likely than the country as a whole to say that illegal immigrants should be deported. But those polls also suggested economic concerns and hostility toward leaders in Washington were much more important factors driving them to Trump.

John B. Judis noted that the rise of Republican candidate Donald Trump, as well as Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, represented a new wave of U.S. populism, one that took a frm stand against neoliberalism. During their primary campaigns, both candidates slandered neoliberal global blueprints: the free trade programs—the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP)—and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) economic treaties with China. (Trump continued with this rhetoric against Democratic 144 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE nominee Hillary Clinton, who tried to downplay her past agenda on free trade.) Bernie Sanders was a successful mayor of Burlington and built a solid career in Congress as a moderate socialist politician from the state of Vermont. “In the House and Senate, he stood frm against the party’s embrace of neoliberalism,” writes Judis. Conversely, Trump was never a politician, but toyed with the idea of running for president several times. He announced his candidacy in 2015 with a bombastic speech: “Politicians are all talk, no action. Nothing is going to get done. They will not bring us, believe me, to the promised land. They will not.… I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money.… I’m really rich” (qtd. in DelReal). Trump’s political rhetoric was compared to that of fellow billionaires and former U.S. presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. Like Buchanan and Perot, Trump opposed free trade; thus, trading blocs such as NAFTA and TPP became the front and center of his presidential campaign. Also, similarly to Perot, Trump focused on restoring American manufacturing, criticizing American cor- porations for outsourcing their production to foreign countries, such as Mexico, China, and Japan (Judis). These same issues were at the core of Bernie Sanders’ primary campaign against candidate Clinton. Judis explains that the disappearing white lower and middle classes gave rise to Trump and Sanders’ populist discourses; in this sense, they were ideological opposites, but different sides of the same coin. Still, unlike Sanders, who supported comprehensive immigration reform,6 Trump’s rejection of Mexican and Muslim immigrants became increasingly important to his appeal. One promise that helped to galva- nize Trump’s base was his pledge to build an impassable wall between Mexico and the United States, and then make Mexico pay for it: “I would build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border. And I will have Mexico pay for that wall,” Trump declared during his announcement speech (qtd. in “What Donald Trump has said about Mexico”).7 Regarding Muslims, he went so far as to propose a Muslim registry and ban in the United States, a statement that he would deny and yet restate repeatedly at various moments of his presidential campaign.8 In this sense, Trump’s rhetoric against minority groups makes him less a populist and more a neo-fascist candidate. As Cornel West notes, Trump is a 6 CONCLUSION 145

pseudo-populist billionaire with these narcissistic sensibilities and fascist— neofascist proclivities. And he presented himself as caring for their [the white workers’] situation. And so, that economic insecurity, that economic neglect, is very real. There’s no doubt about that. And it’s disproportion- ately white brothers and sisters, but they are suffering. And it was a cry of the heart. Unfortunately, given the right-wing populist and authoritarian orientation of Trump, he uses that kind of anguish to scapegoat Mexicans, Muslims and others, rather than confront the most powerful.9 (“Cornel West on Donald Trump”)

Trump’s political base quickly embraced this rhetoric of hate against the “other,” which begs the question: how much did the issue of race play a part in the 2016 presidential election? After elevating an African– American for the frst time to the position of the most powerful man in the world, the election of Trump stunned large portions of the U.S. population and sent shockwaves throughout the world. Could Trump’s victory, therefore, be a backlash from certain segments of the lower white classes who felt increasingly threatened by minorities? Ta-Nehisi Coates underscores that

if somebody didn’t have a problem with their daddy being employed by the federal government, and didn’t have a problem with the Tennessee Valley Authority electrifying certain communities, and didn’t have a problem with the interstate highway system being built, and didn’t have a problem with the GI Bill, and didn’t have a problem with the [Federal Housing Administration] subsidizing the suburbanization of America, and that all helped you build wealth and create a middle class—and then suddenly as soon as African Americans or Latinos are interested in availing themselves of those same mechanisms as ladders into the middle class, you now have a violent opposition to them—then I think you at least have to ask yourself the question of how consistent you are, and what’s different, and what’s changed.

One can argue that when white male privilege is challenged, as in the case of the election of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and Barack Obama in the United States, mainstream groups fght back in order to reassert their power within the social, political, and economic arena. As demonstrated in this study, both presidents suffered relentless attacks that went well beyond mere criticism of their governments’ policies; instead, these attacks clearly related to their gender and race respectively. After 146 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE

Rousseff’s impeachment in August 2016, her vice president, Michel Temer from the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro [PMDB, Brazilian Democratic Movement Party] ascended to power and chose the least diverse cabinet since the 1950s: he selected twenty-one white men and no women, Afro-Brazilians, indigenous people, or persons with disabilities.10 Diversity, which has been a core value of the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-frst century, has been giving way to homogenization; the idea of nation reappears within a discourse that emphasizes the rejection of any outsiders and of any voices of dissent within the social body. On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union, a movement that was known as Brexit. The Brexit campaign heavily appealed to the voters’ emotions, producing anti- immigrant ads that were accused of inciting racial hatred (Sweney and Plunkett). The phenomena of Brexit and Trump underscore the emergence of extreme right and right-wing populism in nations throughout the globe. In Brazil, Congress is currently dominated by the Evangelical caucus, which has been stripping women and LGBT groups of civil liber- ties.11 Despite her efforts to court Evangelicals,12 this group had a shaky relationship with President Rousseff; she was frequently compared to the biblical fgure of Jezebel, a powerful woman with a cruel soul (Dip). (It is also important to note that, in 2013, one in four Americans thought Obama was the Antichrist.)13 Pressured by conservative forces, in October 2015, the Brazilian Congress approved the Estatuto da Família [Family’s Statute], which aimed to recognize the family as a union between a man and a woman only.14 For the next Brazilian presidential elections in 2018, the center-left will certainly be represented: possible candidates are environmental- ist Marina Silva from the Rede Sustentabilidade [Sustainable Network], as well as competing nominees from the PT, former president Lula da Silva, and Rousseff’s former secretary of state Aloízio Mercadante.15 However, extreme-right candidates, such as Jair Bolsonaro from the Partido Progressista [Progressive Party], have also gained strength. He received the most votes for representative from the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 2014 elections and advertises himself as trustworthy and out of the mainstream political system, although he has been a state representative since 1990. Bolsonaro expresses a strong nationalistic rhetoric and is openly and unapologetically anti-gay, anti-feminism, and pro-torture. He has declared that he would prefer his children to be dead than 6 CONCLUSION 147 gay, encouraging parents to beat their children to “straighten out” their sexual preferences, and he has compared homosexuality to pedophilia (O’Boyle). He has also made openly racist comments, noting that his sons “would never marry a black woman, because they had an excellent upbringing.” Moreover, he declared that he would never rape a representative from the Workers’ Party, Maria do Rosário from the state of Rio Grande do Sul, because “she did not deserve it” (implying she was unattractive). During a speech on the foor of the House, he celebrated a well-known torturer from the military dictatorship period, General Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra.16 Other names outside mainstream politics have been emerging as popular potential candidates, among them two former hosts of Brazil’s version of The Apprentice. João Dória (PSDB-SP), the newly elected mayor of São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil and the nation’s fnancial center, campaigned with a strong populist message and has been frequently compared to Donald Trump. A successful businessman, Dória was able to connect to ordinary citizens who were upset with mainstream politicians; his campaign message “não sou politico, sou gestor” [I am not a politician, I am a manager] appealed to the city’s voters (Venturini). The entrepreneur pulled off a stunning victory against Workers’ Party mayor João Haddad, as Dória was the frst politician elected mayor of São Paulo in the frst round in twenty-four years, amassing around 54% of votes. Another The Apprentice host and popular millionaire Roberto Justus is considering running for president in 2018. “We need to take the man- agement of the country out of the hands of politicians,” Justus declared, vowing to sell the giant state-owned Petrobrás if elected (Douglas and Biller). Brazilian voters are fed up with widespread corruption and the incompetency of mainstream politicians; hence, they see Trump-like candidates in a very positive light: citizens think wealthy contenders already have money, so they will not steal from the government’s fnancial resources (Douglas and Biller). If Trump-like candidates of the right and extreme right are on the rise in Brazil, will Obama’s social, political, and—most importantly—racial legacy be all but forgotten in a nation that struggles to elevate blacks to important positions in society? Will Obama’s symbols of hope and change, so signifcant for Afro-Brazilians, be gradually dislodged by a wave of racism, sexism, and xenophobia? Recent migration of Haitians and Senegalese to Brazil has spun a new upsurge of racism in a country that has long embraced the myth of racial democracy.17 With the 148 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE backlash from conservative forces, will it be possible for Brazilians to nominate and elect a black president in the near future? Maria Osmarina Marina Silva Vaz de Lima, or simply Marina Silva, formerly Lula’s minister of the environment, left the Workers’ Party in 2009 and ran for president in 2010 for the Partido Socialista Brasileiro [PSB, Brazilian Socialist Party]. Silva was the vice-presidential choice of the former governor of the state of Pernambuco, Eduardo Campos, but in a surprising twist, she became the party’s presidential candidate when he died in an airplane accident when campaigning. Silva founded the Rede Sustentabilidade [Sustainable Network]18 in 2013 and ran as the party’s presidential candidate in 2014. Setting her sights on the 2018 presidential elections, Silva wants to be “a primeira mulher negra, de origem pobre, presidente da República Federativa do Brasil” [the frst black woman of poor background President of the Federative Republic of Brazil], but she did not receive the wide support of Afro-Brazilian political activists in the 2014 presidential elections. Many of them cited the lack of clear policies specifcally addressing black concerns, such as the protection of Afro-Brazilian religions, land registry of maroon communities, and affrmative action policies. The absence of these important issues from her platform represented a clear disconnect between Silva and the black Brazilian population (Senra). Marina also incensed the Brazilian LGBT community when her 2014 campaign platform changed a very specifc agenda that guaranteed the constitutionality of same-sex marriage to a more general statement about supporting same-sex civil unions. Moreover, the item that warranted equal protection under the law, regardless of the individual’s sexual and gender identity (similarly to how categories of race, ethnicity, and religion are already safeguarded under the 1988 Brazilian Constitution) was erased from her government’s program.19 In fact, Silva’s candidacy received support from the Evangelical caucus, a fact that alienated many leftist groups. It is important to note that Silva belongs to the Assembléia de Deus [Assembly of God] Evangelical church, which complicates her relationship with more progressive factions of Brazilian society. As stated earlier, Silva will prob- ably run for president again in 2018, and she will face the same challenges as her last candidacy. Silva will have to juggle opposing sides, the Evangelicals’ conservative values and the Rede’s progressive platforms, to capture wider political support. Another potential candidate for the 2018 presidential election is Joaquim Benedito Barbosa Gomes, or simply Joaquim Barbosa, a former 6 CONCLUSION 149 judge of the Supreme Federal Court. Barbosa is the frst self-declared black on the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court and, despite a very diffcult upbringing, he succeeded in building an extraordinary career. Barbosa was not the product of affrmative action policies (as these policies started to be implemented in the early 1990s), but of a strong work ethic. Son of a construction worker and a maid, he worked as a janitor while attending public school. Then he studied law at the prestigious University of Brasília during the day and, to support himself, worked the graveyard shift at a printing company. He passed the very selective exams to be a district attorney and was nominated to the Supreme Federal Court by President Lula in 2003. Barbosa also speaks English, French, and German. He was catapulted to national recognition during the men- salão scandal in 2007 and was seen as being swift yet fair (“De faxineiro a presidente do Supremo”). In 2013, the well-known journalist Míria Leitão interviewed Barbosa and asked him whether Brazil was ready to have a black president. Barbosa answered candidly, “não. Porque acho que ainda há bolsões de intolerância muito fortes e não declarados no Brasil. No momento em que um candidato negro se apresente, esses bolsões se insurgirão de maneira violenta contra esse candidato” [no, because I think there are still strong but hidden pockets of intolerance in Brazil. From the moment that a black candidate emerges, these pockets will violently oppose this candidate] (Leitão). In 2015, when asked at a keynote address event if he would ever be a candidate for the country’s presidency, he replied, “Tornar-se presidente de meu país é a honra suprema. Mas, em primeiro lugar, é preciso ter vontade e até hoje não tive. Pode ser daqui a alguns anos” [To become the president of my country is the greatest honor. But, frst, it is necessary to have the will to do it and I do not have it right now. Perhaps in a few more years I will] (Desidério). Yet, when asked again in November 2016, Joaquim Barbosa did not completely reject the idea of a presidential candidacy. “Eu sou um homem livre, muito livre” [I am a free man, a very free man], he replied, leaving the door open to a future presidential bid (Ventura). Clearly, Barbosa’s enormous personal accomplishments make him a strong contender for the 2018 presidential elections. Still, one could conjecture that the potential candidacy of an Afro-Brazilian leader was forged within a political imaginary that Obama has indubitably opened worldwide, and which affected many nations, Brazil included. In his 150 E. K. F. OLIVEIRA-MONTE farewell address to the nation, Obama urged the U.S. to embrace its diversity: Yes, our progress has been uneven. The work of democracy has always been hard. It has been contentious. Sometimes it has been bloody. For every two steps forward, it often feels we take one step back. But the long sweep of America has been defned by forward motion, a constant widen- ing of our founding creed to embrace all, and not just some. (“Presidential Farewell Address”)

In his speech, Obama was referring to America as the United States, yet America as a continent has always faunted a discourse of racial and eth- nical inclusion, while actually trying to systematically exclude minority groups from the political sphere. Despite stepping down from power, Obama—the sign, not the politician—will remain a powerful representation for blacks worldwide. For Afro-Brazilians in general, Obama’s legacy opens a political imaginary that has been almost completely restricted to a white male bourgeoisie. (Lula and Rousseff were also exceptions that positively unlocked Brazil’s political unconscious, as analyzed in this study.) Obama represents a “sense of possibility”; that is, a sense that everything is possible, even in light of apparently insurmountable racism, sexism, or classism, because, in the end, the people will prevail and the American dream, which is a continental theme, will be accessible to all.20 “Yes, we can! Yes, we did!”—these two closing phrases of Obama’s farewell address in Chicago will reverberate for years to come, inspiring many Afro-Brazilians who seek the dream of economic, social, political, and racial equality. Endnotes

Introduction 1. Alain Patrice Nganang was born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on March 17, 1970. Nganang has won the 2001 Prix Littéraire Marguerite Yourcenar for his novel Temps de chien and the 2002 Grand Prix Littéraire D’Áfrique Noire. He is currently an associate professor of comparative literature at Stony Brook University. 2. António Emílio Leite Couto, or Mia Couto, was born in Beira, Mozambique, on July 5, 1955. He is a prolifc author who has written novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. He was awarded the following important literary prizes: the 2007 Latin Union Prize, the 2013 Camões Prize, and the 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. 3. In his 2003 inaugural speech, Lula vowed to eradicate hunger and reduce poverty in Brazil, so in the frst months of his government he launched the Fome Zero [Zero Hunger] platform. Fome Zero included several programs, among them the Bolsa Família, the most important Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program of Lula’s administration. The Bolsa Família “guarantees direct cash transfer to families in poverty or extreme poverty contexts, which have in their composition pregnant women, nursing mothers, children between zero and twelve, and adolescents from twelve to ffteen years old. In 2008, the age group was extended to 17-year- olds” (Santos, Paes-Souza, Miazagi, Silva, and Fonseca 1).

4. Matthew Fuller’s Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture studies the intersection of several elements and processes that include information and communication technology, organizational behavior, and human interaction. In other words, media ecology analyzes what happens when media systems interact to produce specifc meanings. To Fuller, memes are “fecks of identity” that serve to locate and situate a user within a determined fow of information (10). Davi Johnson’s “Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist Rhetorical Criticism” investigates the meme as a unit of cultural exchange, but centers on what Johnson names a “geographical approach”; that is, rather than being considered as a material and historical constituent only, the meme is also understood within its spaciality. In this sense, “the geography oriented critic does not seek below the surface of discourse for hidden content or the prior intents of a speaking subject, but stays at the surface, tracing connections and mapping dissociations” (31). Tony D. Sampson’s Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks understands memes as elements of social contagion in which affection plays a crucial role in the production and reproduction of discursive and rhetorical references. The introduction and Chap. 4 use Sampson’s concepts of social relationality to understand memetic units. 5. In the United States, Google receives around 1.6 billion visitors per month and Yahoo around 400 million. See “What Are the Top 10 Most Popular Search Engines?” for more information. In Brazil, Google dominates the Internet, having a whopping 96.7% market share, while Yahoo comes in far second with 1.2% of the market share. For more information, see “Popular Online Search Engines in Brazil as of May 2014, Based on Market Share.” 6. The newspaper Folha de São Paulo was the readership leader in all platforms in Brazil—printed circulation and digital editions—with 341,500 newspapers sold and 117,700 digital visits daily only in February 2012. O Globo came in second place with 311,200 newspapers sold and 93,700 digital visits daily in the same period. For more information, see “Maior jornal do Brasil, Folha é líder em diferentes plataformas.” Veja is the top-selling magazine in Brazil, with 1,098,642 issues sold weekly (“As 10 revistas semanais mais vendidas no Brasil”). Endnotes 153

Obama Dreams of Brazil: A Mulatto in the Land of Racial Democracy 1. In a 2014 Modern Language Association (MLA) panel, I boldly compared Machado de Assis to Obama because, even separated by more than a century and different countries, these biracial individuals displayed a great awareness of their nations’ race relation structures, and set out to dodge them or use them to their personal advantage (“Machado’s Whitening or Darkening? Machado de Assis as a Customer of the Caixa Econômica”). Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is the quintessence of the Brazilian “cosmopolitan mulatto.” Without ever having set foot outside Brazil, he produced a vanguardist body of literary work that defed writers of his generation. See Susan Sontag’s “Afterlives: The Case of Machado de Assis” and also Harold Bloom’s Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. Machado de Assis also achieved greater highs, being the father of national literature and founder of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Some literary critics, however, accused Machado de Assis of having “whitened” himself (for more information on the relationship between canonicity and race, see Chap. 3 of my book Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature). 2. Current studies show black males have been left out of mainstream society to a far greater degree than poor whites or Latinos. African–Americans still suffer from historical burdens, such as slavery and segregation (Eckholm). See also Ronald B. Mincy’s Black Males Left Behind; and Harry J. Holzen, Peter Edelman, and Paul Offner’s Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men. Obama himself frequently affrmed his difference from blacks in America, underscoring that he had never suffered the legacy of slavery (see his speech “A More Perfect Union”). 3. In the introduction of the second edition of Dreams from My Father, Obama’s reference to a “divided soul … trapped into two worlds” (16) comes directly from W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (D. Stein 6). The “tragic mulatto,” also mentioned in the introduction, was a recurrent character in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature; divided between the two worlds, unable to be accepted by blacks or whites, this character would be prone to depression and suicide. Far from being a 154 Endnotes

tragic mulatto, Obama actually emerges as a quintessential cultural mulatto. For more information on the infuence of African– American literature and thought on Obama’s writings, see Daniel Stein’s “Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and African– American Literature.” 4. See also “Livro-polêmica de Ali Kamel completa 5 anos.” 5. During this process of paternal creation, Obama reinvents the father as much as he reinvents himself. When he was ten years old, attending school in Hawaii, he told his classmates his grandfather was a king of a Luo tribe and his father was a prince, the heir to the throne (Dreams from My Father 68–69). It is interesting to note that the stories Obama invents as a child mimic the colonial Western narratives about Africa: they are full of improbable adventures, mysterious sites, and exotic cultural traditions. When his father visits the United States and decides to come to the school, Obama’s fantastic tales come tumbling down (Dreams 70). 6. Although the book centers on the quest for identity through the paternal fgure, trying to transform the absence in presence, Letizia Guglielmo interestingly underlines that the feminine presence in the autobiography is marginal, yet fundamental to Obama’s identity construction. See Guglielmo’s “Voices of His Mothers: Feminist Intervention and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.” 7. “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given we. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no abiding.” The epigraph was taken from the frst Book of Chronicles, Chap. 29, verse 15. Joly notes that Obama extracted from the passage half of verse 15 (76–77). First and Second Chronicles detail the history of humanity from Adam to the Israelites’ exile in Babylon after the destruction of the kingdom of Judah. The quote relates to the Diasporic displacement of Africans because of the transatlantic slave trade. 8. In “An Image of Africa: Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Rewriting of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” Michael Zeitler interestingly notes that, although Obama criticizes Conrad’s novel because of his Eurocentric perspective, the diegetic narrator Endnotes 155

paradoxically reproduces the mythic and symbolic structures of Heart of Darkness when developing the autobiography’s narrative—the journey of an educated Western onlooker facing the native primitivism in pursuit of responses to our current collective identity: “Obama’s journey to his ancestral homeland in the ‘Kenya’ section of Dreams from My Father structurally retraces Marlow’s journey in Heart of Darkness” (120). 9. For more information on Jacques Lacan’s concepts of imaginary, real, and symbolic, see The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Vol. Book XI) (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan). 10. Throughout the book, Jorge compares Breno Mello and Obama Sr. using the word sósia [double], connecting the Kenyan economist to the Brazilian actor many times. See pages 43, 47, 49, 50, 52, 57, 59, 62, 86, 111, 223, 417, 428, 436 (the word sósia is used twice on this page), 438, and 447. 11. Nevertheless, Obama’s vision of multicultural Hawaii does not disregard the history of violence embedded in the conquest of that group of islands, as the narrator notes: “The ugly conquest of the native Hawaiians through aborted treaties and crippling disease brought by the missionaries; the carving up of rich volcanic soil by American companies for sugarcane and pineapple plantations; the indenturing system that kept Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino immigrants stooped sunup to sunset in the same felds; the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war—all this was recent history.” (Dreams from My Father 38). 12. It is important to note, however, that Nilo Peçanha had never seen himself as an Afro-Brazilian; on the contrary, he tried to disguise his black ancestry, whitening himself in offcial photos. Moreover, the Brazilian press frequently mocked him because of his African ancestry. For more information on Nilo Peçanha’s personal and public history, see Isabel Lustosa’s Histórias de presidentes: A República no Catete, 1897–1960. 13. The seventh child of illiterate peasants from Caetés, in the interior of the state of Pernambuco, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva was born in extreme poverty in 1945. When he was only seven years old, his mother migrated to Santos, in the state of São Paulo, and took the children with her; her goal was to fnd her husband, who had moved in search of work and better living conditions. Lula started 156 Endnotes

working at the age of eight, performing several menial jobs. During his adolescence, his mother separated from the father and moved to the city of São Paulo, taking the children with her. In the capital of the state, Lula fnished high school and started the technical course for training as a lathe worker, securing a job at a metallurgic facility at the age of fourteen. He became involved in politics through the workers’ union, being the frst president of the Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT [Workers’ Party]. He campaigned against the military dictatorship at the end of the 1970s and for the return to democracy. In 1986, Lula was elected federal representative for the state of São Paulo, carrying the largest number of votes in Brazil. He ran for the presidency unsuccess- fully three times, being fnally elected on November 27, 2002, and reelected for a second term in 2006. Lula remained very popular throughout his presidency. When he left offce in 2011, his approval rating was an astonishing 87 percent. For more information on Lula’s history and presidency, see Sérgio Oliveira’s A era Lula, a visão geral do governo mais popular. 14. Lula had already visited Washington on March 30, 2007, when George W. Bush was president. The relationship between presidents Lula and Bush had never been very close, though. 15. Bahia is nicknamed “the black capital of Brazil,” as over 80 percent of the state’s population is of Africa descent. It is estimated that 1.5 to 2 million slaves were brought to Bahia to labor on the sugar plantations before the abolition of slavery in 1888. Despite the state’s repression, African culture thrived in Bahia, giving birth to religious and cultural manifestations, such as the candom- blé and capoeira. 16. Since 2010, the economy has cooled, with GDP growth slowing down to 2.7% in 2011 and 0.9% in 2012 and pushing back to 2.3% in 2013, while social and infrastructure issues continue to loom (Casanova and Kassum 45). 17. Lute, the pen name of Lunarde Teles dos Santos, has been a cartoonist for the newspaper Hoje em Dia since 1993. He was born in Carlos Chagas (MG) and graduated in fne arts at the Guignard College (MG). His cartoons were published in several Brazilian newspapers, and he participated in showings in France, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Romania. He has also won numer- ous national and international prizes and is the founder and Endnotes 157

president of Cartuminas, Cartunistas Mineiros Associados, or the Union of Cartoonists of Minas Gerais. He posts daily cartoons on the following websites: http://www.chargeonline.com.br/, http://www.hojeemdia.com.br/, http://www.cartuminas.blogspot.com, and http://www.lutecartunista.com.br (personal interview). Samuca, or Samuel Rubens de Andrade,was born on May 6, 1965 in Recife (PE). He has been a cartoonist for the Diário de Pernambuco since 2006. In 2000, he founded the Pernambuco Cartoonist Union, ACAPE, of which he is the current president. He has won several national prizes, and in 2011 he was awarded frst place in the World Press Cartoon, the most prestigious graphic arts competition in the world. His cartoons can be found on the following sites: http://www.samucartum.com. br/#!about/c240r and http://www.samucartum.com.br/ (personal interview). 18. In her doctoral dissertation “Obama in Time and Lula in Veja: A Case Study of Presidential Campaign Coverage in News Magazines of the United States and Brazil,” Sonia Cristina Pedrosa Pereira analyzes the coverage of Obama and Lula’s presidential elections, examining narratives and ideologies of the United States and Brazil, as well as the meanings of nation and national identity produced during the coverage of these countries’ elections. Pereira emphasizes that “it is worth noting the different way each one of the magazines presented itself in the political context of the historical event. While Time magazine shows proximity with Obama’s ideas and inserts itself into the political event, suggesting that it has contributed to the democratic process, Veja appears as a distant observer of Lula’s election, a skeptical witness of the historic occurrence and, above all, a guardian of the social order and the status quo” (389). These differences have to do with the editorial lines of Time and Veja; whereas the frst can be defned as a center-left magazine, the latter is more ideologically connected to a right-wing ideology. 19. Lula was referring to the Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma. He was born on October 26, 1959 in Isallavi, a mining village in Bolivia’s western Oruro department, to indigenous parents from the Aymara group. After serving in the Bolivian military, he and his family migrated to the Chapare region in eastern Bolivia to farm coca, a traditional crop in the country (which is also used 158 Endnotes

in the production of cocaine). He became active in the coca- growers’ union in the 1980s and was elected representative for the House of Deputies in 1997. Morales won the presidency in 2005, becoming Bolivia’s frst Indian president. He was elected in for a second term in 2009, and for a third term in 2014. For more information on Evo Morales’ personal and political trajectory, see Martín Sivak’s Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of the First Indigenous President of Bolivia. 20. In his frst interview after his 2002 election, Lula declared, “a esperança venceu o medo” [hope triumphed over fear], in a reference to the hope of political change in Brazil overcoming the supposed panic over the election of a leftist president (considered a communist by right-wing groups). The sentence became a slogan in Lula’s subsequent campaigns. See “‘A esperança venceu o medo’, diz Lula em pronunciamento em SP.” 21. Lula is still a very infuential fgure in the United States. On May 27, 2014, a statue of the former president was inaugurated in the National Mall, right next to the White House and near the stat- ues of other important political and cultural leaders: Abraham Lincoln, Simon Bolívar, and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Lula is the frst Brazilian president to have a statue in Washington, DC. See “Lula ganha estátua em bronze ao lado da Casa Branca.” 22. In “A More Perfect Union,” Obama affrmed: “I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrifced again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. Both black and white Americans are to blame for the profound racial divisions that emanate from that nation’s society.” Obama sought to emphasize the iniquities of both blacks and whites vis-à-vis their misunderstandings of the racial “other,” while also highlighting their positive contributions to the racial debate and a more sympathetic racial coexist- ence. To him, he could not have been possible without the one or the other: “These people are a part of me.” Therefore, he called America to consider the possibility of envisioning “a more perfect Endnotes 159

union,” where the two races would have a place at the nation’s table, because “they are a part of America, this country that I love.” 23. Here are the frst and last parts of “This Is Your Victory”: “Hello, Chicago. If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the frst time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference…. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffrm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.” For the full victory speech see “Transcript: ‘This Is Our Victory,’ Says Obama.”

Barack Obama Is Brazilian 1. Obama concludes the speech by directly addressing Berliners and all people of the world, hence consolidating his role in international affairs: “People of Berlin—and people of the world—the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. Let us build on our common history, and seize our common destiny, and once again engage in that noble struggle to bring justice and peace to our world.” 2. To anthropologist Roberto DaMatta, Brazil has chosen a historical narrative that emphasizes a coherent and harmonious mixture, the “fable of three races,” whereas U.S. national identity 160 Endnotes

has emphasized the Puritan tradition and liberalism. To DaMatta, “every tradition implies a choice, a compromise” (“For an Anthropology of the Brazilian Tradition” 272). 3. However, Daniels underscores the contradictory nature of this ternary project, as the mulattos were pushed to identify with the white population and suffered social sanctions when they closely related to blacks (34), which characterizes a whitening ideology. 4. In The Racial Contract, Charles W. Mills seeks to construct a theoretical framework within Western philosophical matrixes to discuss race and white racism. Mills writes of the need to recognize that racism (or global white supremacy, as he describes it) is a political system, a power structure in which formal and infor- mal rules and norms work to guarantee socio-economic privilege, material wealth, and opportunities for whites. By using the mainstream political theory on “social contract” (especially the philosophers Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant), which has been central to Western political theory, Mills strives to reveal the mechanisms of group power and domination, as well as to understand how values and concepts of the Enlightenment actually contributed to rationalizing oppression (2–6). 5. Thus, Mitchell opposes scholars Joshua Appiah, Joshua Glasgow, and Naomi Zack who support “racial eliminativism”; that is, the elimination of the concept of race. Instead, he aligns with Taylor, Cornel West, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his approach to race: they propose a “prophetic pragmatism,” the use of Eurocentric theoretical models to critically refect upon the Afro-American experience (Seeing Through Race 184, footnote 6). 6. In What Do Pictures Want?, Mitchell stresses the high reproduc- ibility of images, noting that they acquire “quasi-life” forms. However, Mitchell does not discuss image as a virus, or its virality, a notion very common in media studies today. For example, Susan Blackmore analyzes the reproduction of images in the age of social media, drawing from Richard Dawkins’ idea of genetic continuous reproduction; in other words, Blackmore uses Dawkins’ notion that the gene contains information that is replicated with almost total fdelity for generations, in order to understand the production and reproduction of memes. These ideas are discussed in more detail in Chap. 4. See Richard Dawkins’ The Endnotes 161

Selfsh Gene and Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine for more information. 7. For more information on the controversy of Obama as a Peace Prize winner, see also Thom Poole’s “Why Has the Nobel Prize Chairman Been Demoted?” and Richard J. Rosendall’s “Debasing the Peace Prize.” 8. Roberlan Borges is a Brazilian graphic designer, vector artist, and illustrator from Vitória, capital of the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. He has a degree in marketing and advertising and is currently working as an art director for local advertising and graphic design companies. He also creates designs for companies all around the world (personal interview). The poster analyzed is not the one that appears in the anthology Design for Obama, but “Obama: Presidente do Brasil” is examined here for its relevance to this current study. 9. The banner analyzed appeared in Paula Góes’s “Will the Elections End Up in Another Bradley Effect?” from the blog Voices Without Votes (October 17, 2008). 10. A sincere note of gratitude to Margerite Itamar Harrison, associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Smith College, for the reference. 11. For information on Brazil’s reaction to the Libya bombing, see “Onda de revoltas: Brasil rejeita ‘ação aguda’ contra Líbia”; “Ataques à Líbia roubam a cena da visita de Presidente” (Cantanhêde, Rodrigues, and Nery); “Brasil defende fm de ataques na Líbia” (Cantanhêde); “Obama, Líbia e Brasil” (Murta); “Itamaraty pede em nota cessar-fogo na Líbia”; and “À TV portuguesa, Dilma lamenta ataque à Líbia.” For information on Obama’s security measures causing embarrassment to the Brazilian government, see “Fim do mundo” (Bergamo) and “‘Revista de americanos foi agressiva,’ diz Mercadante” (Angelo and Foreque). 12. The National Palace Congress houses Brazil’s Congress. The symbol of the country’s capital, it was designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer and completed in 1960. Christ the Redeemer is internationally recognized as the symbol of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The Art Deco monument was created by Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, with the collaboration of French sculptor Paul Landowski and engineer Albert Caquot. The project 162 Endnotes

took eight years to complete, and the statue was inaugurated on October 12, 1931. 13. Hélio de la Peña is the artistic name of Hélio Antonio do Couto Filho. He started his career as a comedian when he and two other colleagues from the college of engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Beto Silva and Marcelo Madureira, created the humor magazine Casseta Popular [Popular Gazette]. (The title is actually a play on casseta, an idiomatic expression that indicates surprise or has sexual connotations, and the word “gazette.”) Later, two other humorists, Bussunda and Claudio Manuel, joined the group. Finally, in 1984, the comic magazine Planeta Diario [Daily Planet] was created with the collaboration of Hubert, Reinaldo, and Cláudio Paiva, writers who had previously worked for the newspaper Pasquim, which used humor to oppose and criticize the military dictatorship. In 1992, they started a TV comedy program, Casseta & Planeta, Urgente! [Gazette & Planet, Urgent!], which aired on TV Globo for 18 years. For more information, see Casseta & Planeta’s website: casseta.com.br. 14. Lou is a 13-year-old blogger who has always been passionate about cartoons. Because he believed his drawing skills were limited, he decided to express his humor through memes. However, Lou prefers to name them fototirinhas [photo–cartoons], as he wants to show that his creations are unique and original. For more information, see his website: merece1tirinha.com.br. 15. A spin on the iconic motto “Yes, We Can” quickly emerged on the Internet. “Obama said ‘Yes, we can,’ but I said ‘Yes, weekend!’,” several memes humorously pronounced. 16. Abaporu, one of most important paintings of Modernist Tarsila do Amaral, became a symbol of the Anthropophagic Movement. Abaporu came to Brazil borrowed from the Museum of Latin- American Arts in Buenos Aires for the 2011 show “Brazilian Women Artists – Twentieth Century Productions.” For more information on this event, see “Casal Obama fca curioso sobre o quadro Abaporu” (Lina). 17. Ironically, the Cidade de Deus slum became nationally and internationally famous because of the movie Cidade de Deus, which featured violent drug wars. For more information about Obama’s Endnotes 163

visit to Rio de Janeiro, see “Na Cinelândia e na Cidade de Deus” (Araújo and Werneck). 18. Embaixadinha is the diminutive of embaixada, or freestyle, in which the player demonstrates his or her individual ability with the ball by controlling it with the feet and head. Embaixadinha is part of the Brazilian tradition of soccer as an art form, the jogo bonito, or beautiful game. 19. Pedro Marques de Freitas is a freelance cartoonist from Goiânia. He works as a public servant for the state of Paraíba and mainly uses his blog, http://blogdopedromarques.blogspot.com, to publicize his cartoons. 20. Fellipe Elias da Silva was born on December 26, 1974, and graduated in design at the FMU, Faculdades Metropolitanas Unidas, in São Paulo. He works as a freelance designer and is a soccer af- cionado. His blog, Felldesign (http://felldesign.wordpress.com), focuses on political humor and soccer (personal interview). 21. For more information on the history of race and racism in Brazilian soccer, see the classic Mario Filho’s O negro no futebol brasileiro [Blacks in Brazilian soccer]. Some sociologists and historians dispute Mario Filho’s version of events: to them, the notion that the Vasco da Gama, the team of the Portuguese immigrant colony, was the frst to desegregate soccer in Brazil is part of the mythology of the nation’s miscegenation and racial democracy. For more information on the subject, see Ronaldo Helal, Antônio Jorge Soares, and Hugo Lovisolo’s A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolotria, especially the articles “O racismo no futebol do Rio de Janeiro nos anos 20: uma história de identidade” (Soares) (101–119); “História e a invenção de tradições no futebol brasileiro” (Soares) (13–50); and “Sociologia, história e romance na construção da identidade nacional através do futebol” (Helal and Gordon Jr.) (51–75). 22. In an email interview, Fellipe Elias da Silva revealed that he had a slightly different idea when creating the cartoon: he wanted to connect Obama’s visit to Brazil, specifcally to the city of Rio de Janeiro, to that week’s soccer games. He was, therefore, playing with the teams’ results in the local championship: 1) the Botafogo, known as the “Lone Star” (indeed, the symbol of the team is a yellow star), had lost the game to Vasco; 2) Vasco won; 3) Flamengo had also won another match, so Silva decided to 164 Endnotes

portray Obama as Ronaldinho, at that time playing for the squad; 4) Fluminense lost to the lesser-known Boa Vista (the colors featured are Fluminense’s and the phrase “Boa Vista” [Nice View] pays homage to the underdog team). I decided, however, to maintain my interpretation here, because it correlates well to the context of already analyzed historical events and popular manifestations. 23. To Wisnik, soccer paradoxically works as a “veneno remédio” [poisoned medicine] in Brazilian society. On the one hand, it represents all the maladies of the country—its backwardness, poverty, and lack of progress; on the other, it emerges as its medicine, the celebration of Brazil’s potentiality and greatness. In this sense, Wisnik asserts: “o país é ou receita de felicidade ou fracasso sem saída” [the country is either a recipe for happiness or a failure without (any) solution] (408). 24. Flamengo’s website and the media had different versions of this event: the site affrmed that Obama asked for the shirt, but journalists stated that Flávia Amorim had the shirt ready to be given to the president. Flávia described their brief conversation: “Ele desceu do carro e dei as boas vindas. Expliquei que era um prazer enorme recebê-lo e sua família em nossa casa. O Obama agrade- ceu e me perguntou se eu era a primeira presidente mulher do clube. Respondi que sim e ele me deu os parabéns” [He got out of the car and I welcomed him. I explained that it was an enormous honor to receive him and his family in our home. Obama thanked (me) and asked if I was the frst woman president of a soccer club. I answered “yes” and he congratulated me] (“Site do Flamengo diz que Obama quebrou protocolo”). 25. Here I use Benedict Anderson’s now classic concept of “imagined communities”; that is, a nation as (imagined) social construct. 26. Jorge Ben Jor, the artistic name of Jorge Dullio Lima Menezes, was born on March 22, 1945 in Rio de Janeiro. A famous singer and composer of MPB, Música Popular Brasileira [Brazilian Popular Music], he mixes samba, funk, soul, Bossa Nova, and rock, creating an original style that emphasizes the popular classes’ everyday life. Obama quotes from his acclaimed song “País Tropical” from the album Jorge Ben (1969), whose lyrics celebrate the exuberance and creativity of a young and happy nation: “Moro num país tropical/abençoado por Deus/e bonito Endnotes 165

por natureza/Mas que beleza!” [I live in a tropical country/ blessed by God/and naturally beautiful/How lovely!] sings Ben Jor. For more information on the singer and composer, see his web page: jorgebenjor.com.br/novo. 27. For more information on the deterioration of the relationship between the two countries and Brazil’s opposition to U.S. policies in the Middle East, see the articles “Dilma vai decidir onde Lula será politicamente útil” (Sweig); “Por nova relação, Obama deve visitar Brasil em março”; “Entrevista: Fernando Henrique Cardoso” (Cantanhêde); “Visita deve deixar para trás ‘rusgas’ com Lula”; “Desafeto”; “Memória”; and “O que está na agenda de Obama e Dilma.” 28. For more information about Brazil’s commercial relationship with China, and the United States’ interest in replacing China as Brazil’s main trade partner, see the articles “Dilma visitará China, EUA e mais 5 países até abril”; “Depois de Obama, Dilma nego- ciará com a China”; “EUA: Acionista minoritário” (Sá); and “Clima de surpresa” (Cantanhêde). 29. Dilma Rousseff believed that the attack on Libya overshadowed Obama’s visit to Brazil. For more information about Brazil’s reaction to the U.S. bombing of Libya, see the articles “Onda de revoltas”; “Ataques à Líbia roubam a cena” (Cantanhêde, Rodrigues and Nery); “Brasil articula movimento anti-interven- ção”; “No Rio, Obama monitorou a guerra”; “Brasil defende fm de ataques”; “Dilma fcou ‘decepcionada’”; “Obama, Líbia e Brasil” (Murta); “Obama: duas gafes e uma decepção” (Mori); “Para Dilma, encontro traz dividendos”; “Dilma pede cesar fogo na Líbia”; and “À TV portuguesa, Dilma lamenta ataque à Líbia.” 30. The cartoon in the fyer is by Carlos Latuff, a ferce critic of U.S. foreign policies. More information on Latuff will follow in this chapter. 31. Pelicano, the pen name of César Augusto Vilas Bôas, has been published in several newspapers in the city of Ribeirão Preto, in the state of São Paulo. He has also published cartoons in major Brazilian newspapers, such as O Pasquim, Folha de São Paulo, Jornal da Unesp, Correio Popular de Campinas, and Jornal do Comércio de Jahu. In 2001, he also produced the TV Pelica, which released daily animated cartoons. Pelicano received several prizes, including the Salão Internacional de Humor de Piracicaba 166 Endnotes

[International Humor Exhibition of Piracicaba] and Best National Cartoon of Salão de Humor [Humor Exhibition] of Piauí. For more information on Pelicano, see: pelicanocartum.net. 32. Marcos Borges was born on October 26, 1966 in Campo Grande (Mato Grosso do Sul). He currently works for the newspaper O estado from the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. 33. For the whole interview, see forward.com/culture/14745/latuff- cartoonist-in-conversation-02995/#ixzz3p2EoEpT4. Latuff’s work is so controversial that the Simon Wiesenthal Center included him in its 2012 list of “The Top Ten Anti-Israel/Anti- Semitic Slurs” (Marquardt-Bigman). Many Brazilian political activists and intellectuals expressed solidarity with Latuff, asserting that his critique of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians does not equate to hatred against the Jewish people. For more information on this subject, see Latuff’s blog: latuffcartoons.wordpress.com/ tag/carlos-latuff/. 34. Solda, the pen name of Luiz Antônio Solda, was born in Itararé, in the state of São Paulo, in 1952. Cartoonist, poet, and retired publicist, he currently lives in Curitiba, the capital of the state of Paraná. 35. Baião de dois, picanha, and sorvete de graviola are traditional Brazilian dishes. Originally from Ceará, in the northeastern region of Brazil, baião de dois is prepared with rice, beans, onions, toma- toes, and green peppers. Picanha is a cut of meat similar to the tri-tip steak. Sorvete de graviola is an ice cream made with graviola [soursop], a fruit from the northeastern region of Brazil. 36. The title is a play on words—“conversa fada” [casual and incon- sequential chat] and “conversa afada” [sharp conversation]— which reveals the blog’s critical tone.

Obama and Dilma in Love: Race and Gender in the Realm of Political Humor 1. Aroeira, the pen name of Renato Luiz Campos Aroeira, was born in Minas Gerais and today resides in Rio de Janeiro. He worked as a cartoonist for the newspapers O Globo and Brasil Econômico and currently publishes in O Dia. He is also a saxophonist and has Endnotes 167

a jazz band named Trio das Quartas [Trio of Wednesdays] (personal interview). For his political cartoons, see his Facebook page. For more information on his political views, see his interview with Pedro Zambarda de Araújo on the website Diário do Centro do Mundo (September 17, 2015). 2. Publication of the series of articles titled “The NSA Files” started in June 2013. 3. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau’s “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts” was published in the New York Times on December 16, 2005. “Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court- approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government offcials,” Risen and Lichtblau reported. 4. Obama nominated James Comey—who was Bush’s deputy attorney general and who authorized the NSA eavesdropping program—as the FBI’s new director in May 2013. Comey was a controversial fgure because he had authorized Bush’s torture program, after initial reluctance (Greenwald, “Obama’s New FBI Chief”). Comey also played a controversial role in the 2016 presidential election, as he notifed Congress that the FBI was investigating Clinton’s new emails right before the election (see “Comey Tried to Shield the FBI From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election” by Matt Apuzzo, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau). 5. Documents showed that all countries but four were surveilled: Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (Nakashima and Gellman). 6. French President François Hollande also called Obama to voice his disapproval regarding the United States spying on France. 7. See also “Snowden’s Open Letter to Brazil: Read the Text,” published December 17, 2013, in the Washington Post. 8. Brazil traditionally opens the UN’s General Assembly, because it was the frst country to join the organization in 1945. 2013 was the 68th General Assembly. 9. The English quotation is from Julian Borger’s article “Brazilian President: US Surveillance a ‘Breach of International Law’,” from The Guardian. According to the British newspaper, “Rousseff’s 168 Endnotes

angry speech was a direct challenge to President Barack Obama, who was waiting in the wings to deliver his own address to the UN general assembly, and represented the most serious diplomatic fallout to date from the revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden” (Borger). 10. Cerino, or André Cerino, is a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, web designer, and cartoonist. He was born in Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco, on September 10, 1964, but moved to Brasília in 1983. He participated in several art and humor shows in Brazil and abroad. He won national prizes and published in the catalogue of the Third International Satirical Contest, Karpik 2005. For more information on André Cerino, see the web page “Galeria de Arte André Cerino” (http://www.andrecerino.com. br/#!contatos/c24vq) and his blog Cerino Exposições (http:// andrecerino.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html). 11. Regi is the pen name of Reginaldo Moreira. He was born in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazon, on October 25, 1979. He currently works as a cartoonist for the newspaper Amazonas Atual. 12. Boopo is the artistic name of Roberto Alvarez Fabregat. He was born in Spain in 1968, but moved with his family to his mother’s homeland, Uruguay, when he was a child. He studied psychology and law, but abandoned both careers to dedicate himself solely to marketing and art. He has worked as a cartoonist in Uruguay (publishing in Jaque, Opinar, Guambia, Patria, La democracia, La República, Últimas Notícias, and El diario de la noche), Argentina (La Urraca, Humor Registrado, Sex-Humor, Humi, and Super Humor), and Brazil (Blow-up, Revista Avantto, Braziljounal, A tribuna, Recreio, Exame, and Veja). Boopo has received several international prizes. He currently lives in São Paulo (personal interview). 13. Iotti, or Carlos Henrique Iotti, was born in Caxias do Sul, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, on February 24, 1964. He is a famous cartoonist, as well as a journalist, comedian, and actor. He created the celebrated character Radicci, an Italian–Brazilian, and his family: the wife Genoveva, the son Guilhermino, and his father Anacleto. These characters were featured on radio and television, in magazines, and even in advertising for the 2014 World Cup. Curiously, in 2008, Iotti, a Brazilian of Italian origins, ran Endnotes 169

for election in Italy and received the most votes ever for a non- Italian-born candidate, eventually becoming a deputy alternate. For more information, see Radicci’s web page (http://radicci. com.br/portal/) and “Cartunista gaúcho será suplente no senado italiano.” 14. I would like to thank Leila Lehnen, from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, for noting that Rousseff’s body was depicted in these cartoons as somewhat masculine and grotesque. 15. In her classic article “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection,” published in Screen (1986), Barbara Creed examines how horror movies portray women, especially focusing on the maternal fgure. To Creed, horror movies construct the maternal fgure as an abject, a monstrous feminine that threatens the stability of the masculine symbolic order. She draws her ideas from Julia Kristeva’sPowers of Horror: An Essay onAbjection, which postulated that women appear as abjection (and consequently as a source of horror) in patriarchal societies, causing a separation between human (the desirable) and non-human (the abject). For more information, see Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. 16. João Santana helped to forge the image of “Lulinha Paz e Amor” [Little Lula Love and Peace]—urging Lula to adopt a less radical leftist position and smile more often—which played an important part in his 2001 presidential election victory. 17. In another recent article, Monica C. Schneider and Angela L. Bos contested the so-called “trait” approach as a voting pattern predictor. Instead, they suggested an alternative theory for the analysis of female politicians, postulating that trait stereotypes for women in general do not apply to female politicians. Schneider and Bos proposed that female politicians belong to a subtype of group, similar to professional women, who were labelled by voters as “well-educated, confdent, assertive, well-spoken, and hard- working” (259), while women in general were described as”... emotional, feminine, motherly, caring, affectionate, beautiful, sensitive, loving, and compassionate” (254). For more information, see Monica C. Schneider and Angela L. Bos’s “Measuring Stereotypes of Female Politicians” in Political Psychology. 18. Palin’s transformation did not come without a cost, though. During her campaign, the episode known as “Wardrobegate”—in 170 Endnotes

which she was accused of buying costly designer clothing for herself and her family on a Republican operative’s credit card, while she portrayed herself as a bastion of working-class values—was highly publicized by the media and featured in many political cartoons (Edwards and McDonald 320). 19. Dilma Bolada is a character created by Jeferson Monteiro, a marketing specialist. A sympathetic parody of the Brazilian president, Dilma Bolada has a commanding presence on social media, being on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Her fake profle won several prizes, including Best Fake Profle on Twitter, Youpix prize 2012; Best Anonymous Profle on Facebook from magazine Superinteressante 2012; Shorty Awards Best Use of Social Media 2013; and Youpix Best Twitter of 2013. Interestingly, Dilma Bolada has been more successful and popular than the real president. In May 2016, The Guardian declared, “Brazilian president’s digital alter ego is more popular than she is” and “the fake social media character, which roughly translates to badass or sassy Dilma, is everything the real president is not—brash, vain and mocking” (Watts, “Dilma Bolada”). However, the fake profle has been controversial as well. For example, Monteiro has been accused of receiving money from the Workers’ Party to promote Rousseff’s government, a charge that he has always vehemently denied. For more information, see Jonathan Watts’s “Dilma Bolada: Brazilian President’s Digital Alter Ego Is More Popular Than She Is”; “Em CPI, autor do perfl Dilma Bolada nega ter recebido dinheiro do PT”; and “Após rompimento, ‘Dilma Bolada’ volta a defender presidente sob impeachment.” 20. According to the blog, “O nome ‘Não Acredito’ partiu da idéia de publicar notícias nas quais o internauta, ao ler o título, pen- sasse: ‘Ah, não! Não acredito nisso!’ pelo teor cômico da notícia, gerando assim curiosidade para ler e comentar” [the name ‘I Do Not Believe It’ came from the idea of publishing interesting news, so when the reader reads the title, she (or he) would think: ‘Ah, no! I cannot believe this!’ because of the comic vein of the news, thus generating curiosity to read it and comment on it]. See: http://naoacredito.blog.br/contato/. 21. For more information on the neo-Darwinist approach to understanding social media phenomena, see Richard Dawkins’ The Selfsh Gene and Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine. Endnotes 171

22. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution establishes that “são privativos de brasileiro nato os cargos: I – de Presidente e Vice-Presidente da República; II – de Presidente da Câmara dos Deputados; III – de Presidente do Senado Federal; IV – de Ministro do Supremo Tribunal Federal; V – da carreira diplomática; VI – de ofcial das Forças Armadas; VII – de Ministro de Estado da Defesa (Incluído pela Emenda Constitucional nº 23, de 1999)” [the following posts are exclusive to Brazilian-born citizens only: I – President and Vice-President of the Republic; II – President of the House of the Representatives; III – President of the Federal Senate; IV – Supreme Court Justices; V – Diplomats; VI – Offcers of the Military Branches; VII – Secretary of Defense (included in the Constitutional Amendment number 23 of 1999)] (22). 23. For more information on sexist comments about Rousseff, see Clarice Cardoso’s “Quando a misoginia pauta as críticas ao governo Dilma,” which argues that misogyny has fed most of the criticism of her government. 24. In a personal interview, Aroeira noted that he liked to mix elements of “high culture” and “low culture” in his cartoons. He also uses aspects of pop culture in his work, as this cartoon exem- plifes. “A referência à Casablanca vem da cultura pop, a referên- cia que eu tenho junto ao leitor, aquilo que eu e ele tenhamos em comum” [The reference to Casablanca comes from pop culture, (which is) a source that I share with my reader, (it is) something that we could have in common], he added (personal interview). 25. Among several agreements, two important initiatives were approved: the New Bank of Development and an emergency fund for the BRICS. The New Bank of Development, with an initial fund of US$50 billion, has the goal of fnancing BRICS infrastructure projects. The bank’s headquarters are in Shanghai, and the president is from India. Every fve years, a new president from the BRICS countries is chosen. Additionally, the creation of an emergency fund of US$100 billion for the BRICS, which would work as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund, was agreed upon. China donated US$41billion to the fund; Russia, India, and Brazil gave US$18 billion each; and South Africa contributed US$5 billion (“Cúpula dos BRICS”). 26. Just as in Wikipedia, its serious counterpart, anyone can create a humorous entry in the Desciclopédia, as the site explains: 172 Endnotes

“Bem-vindo(a) à Desciclopédia, uma (des)enciclopédia escrita com a colaboração de seus leitores. Este site utiliza o sistema de programação Wiki, que permite a qualquer pessoa, inclusive a você, piorar de imediato qualquer artigo clicando em editar no menu superior de cada página” [Welcome to the Desciclopédia, an (un)cyclopedia written with the collaboration of its readers. This site uses the Wiki programming system, which allows any person, including you, to immediately worsen any entry, clicking in edit at the upper menu of each page]. Contents of entries, therefore, can change daily. 27. In a controversial political maneuver, the Brazilian Congress in April 2016 voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff for alleg- edly masking the federal defcit (nicknamed in Portuguese “pedaladas fscais”). The Desciclopédia website is updated frequently and some of the entries were modifed to include Rousseff’s impeachment process. 28. “Motel” in Brazilian culture has a different connotation from the word “lodging”: it is a place where couples usually meet to engage in illicit love affairs. 29. As Linda F. Selzer notes, “The need to recognize difference yet work toward a more perfect union plays a prominent role in Obama’s thinking” (29).

“Our” Candidate Obama: Barack Obama in the Brazilian Elections 1. Fernando Gabeira was born in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, in 1941. He is a journalist and former federal representative for the state of Rio de Janeiro. In the late 1960s, he participated in the urban guerrilla kidnapping of U.S. ambassa- dor Charles Elbrick. Imprisoned, tortured, and exiled, Gabeira returned to Brazil after the political amnesty in 1979. He was elected federal representative for the frst time in 1994 and was reelected in 1998, 2002, and 2006. For more information, see his web page: gabeira.com.br. Sérgio de Oliveira Cabral Santos Filho, born in 1963 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, was a former senator and governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro from 2007 to 2014. Endnotes 173

Rio’s victorious bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games helped to reelect him to the offce in 2010. He was accused of syphoning tens of millions of dollars from public construction projects during his administration and was arrested on November 17, 2016. For more information, see Vinod Sreeharsha’s “Sérgio Cabral, Ex-Governor of Rio de Janeiro, Arrested on Corruption Charges” (New York Times—Americas, November 17, 2016). 2. Conservative electors who mistakenly identifed Obama as Muslim found it diffcult to trust the candidate. Tesler and Sears call this phenomenon “the mistaken identity hypothesis”: “The mistaken identity hypothesis holds that the large impact of attitudes towards Muslims on vote choice in both the primaries and general election was predominantly caused by the signifcant minority who believed that Obama is, or was at one time, a Muslim” (137). 3. As the presidential candidate frequently reminded his supporters, they, not him, were carrying forward this collective project. Banita names this the “Obama project,” in which Obama’s self becomes even more ineradicable through this temporary oblitera- tion (37). 4. The 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 Brazilian elections also featured candidates nicknamed after other popular icons and world celebri- ties: Osama Bin Laden, Batman, Jesus, and Santa Claus, just to name a few. 5. This information is from the website eleicoes2014.com.br, which also contains the results of elections for president, governor, and senator, as well as federal and state representative elections. 6. André Singer created the term lulismo to emphasize the main strategy of Lula’s government: gradual social reform through a political conservative pact. Lula’s charismatic personality and political shrewdness guaranteed the success of this project. See André Singer’s Os sentidos do lulismo: reforma gradual e pacto conservador. 7. According to Law 9096 of September 19, 1995, Brazilian political parties and their candidates have access to free time on radio and television in order to present their political platforms. According to this law, paid political advertising is not allowed on radio and television. For more information on the Free Political Advertising Time, see “Lei dos Partidos Políticos: do 174 Endnotes

acesso gratuito ao rádio e à televisão,” on the site of the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (tse.jus.br). 8. For more information on Rousseff’s capture and torture, see Daniel Favero’s article “Dilma conta como teve dente arrancado a socos por torturador” in Terra Online Brasil. 9. Law 9140, from December 4, 1995, recognizes as dead all persons who participated in political activities and disappeared in the period from September 2, 1961 to August 15, 1979. Families and/or descendants of the disappeared can ask the federal government for fnancial reparation. See “Lei No 9.140, de 04 de Dezembro de 1995” on the site of the Brazilian Presidency [Presidência da República] (planalto.gov.br). 10. Journalist Ricardo Amaral, the author of Rousseff’s biography A vida quer coragem, found this picture, which was part of the military court case against the then young student. The photo- graph was taken after Rousseff endured twenty two days of torture. She was only 22 years old. When the picture was published by the magazine Época, it quickly spread over several social networks, especially Facebook. See Kerison Lopes’ “Foto histórica traz Dilma sendo interrogada pela ditadura militar” (December 3, 2011 in Vermelho Portal). 11. Sattu Rodrigues declared that “Eu fz essa ilustração em 2010 para ser usada na revista ‘Época.’ Como base, usei uma foto 3x4, em preto e branco, da Dilma na época do regime militar. Entre idas e vindas, demorei de três a quatro dias trabalhando na imagem digital, que está comigo. Eu vi que a campanha fazia uso dela na TV, no fechamento de um episódio de um programa eleitoral da candidata. Aí procurei na internet para saber se estavam usando [em outros lugares]. Em nenhum momento eles pediram para usar a imagem” [I made this design in 2010 to be used by the Época magazine. As inspiration I used a 3 cm 4 cm black-and- × white picture of a document at the time Dilma (was jailed by) the military regime. After some time, I spent three or four days working on the digital image that I had, I saw that her campaign was using (the image) on TV, (which appeared) closing her electoral advertisement. Then I looked over the Internet to see if they were using it in other places. They never asked my permission to use the image] (Tardáguila). See also Marina Rossi’s “Dilma, Coração Endnotes 175

Valente: PT terá de pagar multa por uso indevido de desenho de Dilma Rousseff” (El País Brasil, April 28, 2015). 12. Tancredo Neves’ sudden death fuelled several conspiracy theories. Historians and journalists conjecture there was a medical error. Neves’ sudden death was one of the most dramatic episodes of recent Brazilian history. See Bertha Makaaroun’s “Nova investi- gação sobre morte de Tancredo Neves pode estar a caminho após 30 anos” (www.Em.com.br: Política, April 19, 2015). 13. See YouTube videos “Artistas cantam música da campanha de Aécio,” “Agora é Aécio,” and “É para mudar o Brasil.” 14. The picture was under the Associated Press (AP) copyright. AP actually sued Fairey for using the image to create his poster. Fairey defended his creation, declaring it was fair use; however, he was sentenced by a Manhattan federal court to two years of probation and 300 hours of community service. About this copyright dispute and the trial, see David Ng’s “Shepard Fairey Gets Two Years’ Probation in Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Case” (Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2012); “Shepard Fairey Sentenced to Probation Over Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Case” (The Guardian, September 7, 2012); and “Was Shepard Fairey’s Use Fair?” (Ethics in Graphic Design, September 18, 2012). 15. Initially, Fairey sold 350 posters and put another 350 on the streets. He used the money from selling the 350 to print another 4000 and gave them away at rallies. For more information, see Ben Amon’s “How the Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Reached a Tipping Point and Became a Cultural Phenomenon: An Interview With the Artist Shepard Fairey” (The Huffngton Post, November 13, 2008). 16. Shepard Fairey grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, in an upper-class family—his father was a doctor and his mother a real- tor—but he describes himself as an outcast: “I felt cornered and oppressed; I felt disconnected from school and the team sports that my parents encouraged. Nothing was giving me that visceral feeling of enjoying being alive,” the artist stated about his childhood and adolescent years (qtd. in Hunt). He found his outlet in skateboarding and later visual design, when he took art courses at Wando High School. After graduating, he was accepted to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). “He never drank, smoked, or did drugs, so we didn’t worry about that…. 176 Endnotes

He just defed the status quo; he tested everything,” his parents stated (qtd. in Hunt). For more information, see Stephanie Hunt’s “Shepard Fairey Has a Posse” (Charleston Magazine, May 2009). Sérgio Kalamakian is of Armenian descent and comes from a successful business family. He created his signature male trademark Sergio K. in 2004. Sergio K. targets the relatively untapped niche of men’s upper-class fashion in the Brazilian market. Against Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs such as the Bolsa Família, Kalamakian sponsors a center-right ideology. For more information, see André Lima’s “Mensch Entrevista: Sérgio K—o homem por trás da marca” (Mensch, June 23, 2011) and Pedro Carvalho’s “Sergio K lança camiseta pró-Aécio, ataca Bolsa Família e diz que ‘representa os jovens’” (Época Negócios, October 10, 2014). 17. The 2013 June Protests were so infuential that mainstream media and scholars quickly paid attention to the phenomenon. For more information on the June Protests, see João Wainer’s documentary Junho—o mês que abalou o Brasil. 18. Akwugo Emejulu postulates that Obama “constructs himself as the personifcation of the America dream” (121), thus gaining wide acceptability among diverse segments of the electorate. 19. For more information on Obama’s deracialized campaign, see also Dewey M. Clayton’s The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama: A Critical Analysis of a Racially Transcendent Strategy.

Conclusion 1. For more information on how the episode of the boy appeared in the Brazilian media and on Afro-Brazilian activism websites, see “‘Queria saber se meu cabelo é igual ao seu’, disse garoto a Obama”; “Garoto negro toca cabeça de Obama para sentir cabelo do presidente” (R7 Internacional); “Foto de criança tocando cabeça de Obama tem lugar especial na Casa Branca”; and “Garoto negro toca cabeça de Obama para sentir cabelo do presidente” (Geledés). 2. As Suzanne Gamboa writes, “by the time Obama became president, Latinos had become the largest minority group, edging past African Americans in 2001. But while more than three quarters of Endnotes 177

whites had private health insurance when Obama entered offce, only about 44 percent of Hispanics did. Latinos led all racial and ethnic groups, except Native Americans, in the rate of uninsured.” 3. Medea Benjamin notes that, “given that drones account for only a small portion of the munitions dropped in the past eight years, the numbers of civilians killed by Obama’s bombs could be in the thousands. But we can’t know for sure as the administration, and the mainstream media, has been virtually silent about the civilian toll of the administration’s failed interventions.” 4. About Obama’s approval ratings, see Gallup’s poll “Presidential Approval Ratings—Barack Obama” at www.gallup.com, and Ronald Brownstein’s “President Obama’s Approval Rating Is the Highest in Years.” 5. Both candidates had a high rejection rate before the election, but it is important to note that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Gregory Krieg observes that “the Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certifed fnal election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia” (CNN Politics, December 22, 2016). 6. For more information on Bernie Sanders’ immigration policies, see “A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy” on the senator’s web page. 7. John B. Judis underlines that Perot, unlike Trump, was not bigoted against other social groups, such as Mexicans, blacks, and women, and never tried to turn his supporters against segments of the mainstream media. 8. See Mark Landler’s article “Trump Suggests Berlin Attack Affrms His Plan to Bar Muslims” (New York Times, December 21, 2016). 9. Cornel West argues that neofascism is actually a continua- tion of neoliberal policies in the United States: “neofascist, it’s an American-style form of fascism. And what I mean by that is we’ve had a neoliberal rule, from Carter to Obama. That neoliberal rule left in place a national security state. It left in place massive surveillance. It left in place the ability of the president to kill an American citizen with no due process. That’s Obama. That was the culmination of the neoliberal era. Now you get someone who’s narcissistic, which is to say out of control psychologically, who is ideologically confused, which is to say in over his head. 178 Endnotes

And who does he choose? The most right-wing, reactionary zeal- ots, which lead toward the arbitrary deployment of law, which is what neofascism is, but to reinforce corporate interest, big bank interest, and to keep track of those of us who are cast as other— peoples of color, women, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans and so forth and so on. So this is one of the most frightening moments in the history of this very fragile empire and fragile republic” (“Cornel West on Donald Trump”). 10. For more information on Michel Temer’s cabinet, see Paulo Prada’s “White Male Cabinet Raises Fears of Backsliding in Diverse Brazil”; Jonathan Watts’ “‘A Lot of Testosterone and Little Pigment’: Brazil’s Old Elite Deals a Blow to Diversity”; Roque Planas’ “We’re Starting To Get A Bad Feeling About Brazil’s New Interim President”; Shannon Sims’ “Brazil’s New President Michel Temer Fills Cabinet With Only White Men”; and Claire Zillman’s “Brazil’s New President Just Selected an All- Male Cabinet.” 11. Roxana Pessoa Cavalcanti observes that right-wing groups fash- ioned a tight alliance in the Brazilian Congress, forming what would be named the “Bullets, Bible, and Beef caucus”: “But the right’s most visible political advocates are gathered in Congress, where they form the Bullets, Bible and Beef (BBB) caucus. An increasingly dominant political bloc, the BBB began to form in 2012 during legislative discussions about Brazil’s forest code. Right-wing pro-deforestation rural lobbyists forged an alliance with the evangelicals, and later with armaments and ammuni- tions lobbyists” (“How Brazil’s Far Right Became a Dominant Political Force”). For more information on Evangelicals in Brazilian contemporary politics, see Jonathan Watts’ “Brazil’s Evangelicals Become a Political Force to Be Reckoned With.” 12. Dilma Rousseff was the only 2012 presidential candidate to attend the inauguration of the Salomon Temple in the city of São Paulo (see video “Inaugurado Templo de Salomão—Fala Brasil”). The temple is the headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an Evangelical church founded by the controversial Bishop Edir Macedo. He has been accused of systematic money laundering. For more information on this topic, see Marina Dias’ “Igreja Universal mantinha esquema ilegal no exterior, diz ex-bispo.” Endnotes 179

13. The survey of conspiracy theories conducted among U.S. voters by Public Policy Polling also revealed that thirty seven percent considered global warming a hoax, and twenty eight percent believed that a sinister global New Order was ruling the world. See Paul Harris’ “One in Four Americans Think Obama May Be the Antichrist, Survey Says.” 14. The statute reads: “a entidade familiar formada a partir da união entre um homem e uma mulher, por meio de casamento ou de união estável, e a comunidade formada por qualquer dos pais e seus flhos” [the familial entity is formed from the union between a man and a woman, by means of marriage or stable union, and the community formed by any of the parents and their children] (“Câmara conclui aprovação do Estatuto da Família”). 15. For more information on potential candidates for the 2018 Brazilian elections, see “Eleições 2018 Candidatos a Presidente” on the website eleicoes2018.com.br. 16. See the following videos on these episodes: “Jair Bolsonaro responde pergunta de Preta Gil - O Povo Quer Saber”; “‘Não estupro porque você não merece’, diz Bolsonaro a Maria do Rosário”; and “Bolsonaro vota ‘sim’ por um homicida #TeDedico Ustra.” 17. Haitians and Senegalese travel to Ecuador and pay US$4,000 to coyotes to smuggle them into Brazil, entering through the state of Acre. For more information on this topic, see Gabriela Bazzo’s “Senegaleses: Esta é a nova cara da imigração no Brasil.” 18. Although a political party with several state and federal representatives, its website describes the Rede as a grassroots movement: “A Rede Sustentabilidade é fruto de um movimento aberto, autônomo e suprapartidário que reúne brasileiros decididos a reinventar o futuro do país. É uma associação de cidadãos e cidadãs dispostos a contribuir de forma voluntária e colaborativa para aprofundar a democracia no Brasil e superar o monopólio partidário da representação política institucional” [The Sustainable Network is the result of an open, autonomous, and supra political party, which unites Brazilians invested in recreating the country’s future. It is a free association of citizens who wish to voluntarily and participatively contribute to the deepen- ing of Brazilian democracy and to overcome the party monopoly within the institutional political channels] (“A#REDE – Quem 180 Endnotes

somos nós?”). For more information about the Rede, see Renan Ramalho’s “TSE registra Rede Sustentabilidade, partido fundado por Marina Silva.” 19. For more information about Silva’s 2014 platform changes and the LGBT community in Brazil, see “Campanha de Marina tira do programa apoio a casamento gay”; “Pressionada por pastor, Marina Silva muda plano de governo”; and “Para Jean Wyllys, Marina Silva “brincou com as esperanças de milhões de pessoas”.” 20. The notion that America as a continent presents a “sense of possibility” was one of Obama’s points in his 2011 speech in Rio de Janeiro. Bibliography

“About the Blacks Lives Matter Network.” Black Lives Matter. Web. January 21, 2015. “Acordo no pré-sal.” O Globo. March 16, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “‘A esperança venceu o medo’, diz Lula em pronunciamento em SP.” Folha Online. October 10, 2002. Web. February 4, 2015. “A Fair and Humane Immigration Policy.” Bernie Sanders. Web. January 12, 2017. “Agora é Aécio.” Youtube, uploaded by PSDB Youtube. October 21, 2014. “A#REDE – Quem somos nós?” Rede Sustentabilidade. Web. January 11, 2017. Amorim, Paulo Enrique. “Não, nós não somos racistas.” Conversa afada Blog. March 20, 2011. Web. February 15, 2015. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Refections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983. Andrade, Hanrrkison de. “Pelo Twitter, governador do Rio confrma visita de Obama à Cidade de Deus.” UOL notícias. March 15, 2011. Web. February 17, 2015. Angelo, Claudio, and Flávia Foreque. “‘Revista de americanos foi agressiva,’ diz Mercadante.” Folha de São Paulo. March 22, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Após rompimento, ‘Dilma Bolada’ volta a defender presidente sob impeachment.” BBC Brazil. December 2, 2015. Web. December 16, 2015. Apuzzo, Matt, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau. “Comey Tried to Shield the FBI From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.” The New York Times. April 22, 2017. Web. April 30, 2017.

Araújo, Pedro Zambarda de. “Tudo é excessivamente simplifcado e rasteiro: o cartunista Aroeira no DCM.” Diário do Centro do Mundo. September 17, 2015. Web. December 14, 2015. Araújo, Vera, and Antônio Werneck. “Na Cinelândia e na Cidade de Deus.” O Globo. March 15, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Arnon, Ben. “How the Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Reached a Tipping Point and Became a Cultural Phenomenon: An Interview With the Artist Shepard Fairey.” HuffPost. November 13, 2008. Web. February 18, 2016. Aroeira, Renato Luiz Campos. “Chupa, Obama…. Essa vai pro Face Agorovsky.” Jornal Brasil Econômico. July 15, 2014. Web. November 18, 2015. ———.“Isso não é sério, é?” O Dia Online. March 19, 2011. Web. August 22, 2015. ———. Personal interview (via Skype). April 6, 2017. ———. “Porra, Obama!” Aroeira Facebook. Facebook. September 2, 2013. Web. November, 23, 2015. ———. “Não fque assim… Você sabe que só espiono você!” Aroeira Facebook. Facebook. September 9, 2013. Web. November 16, 2015. “Artistas cantam música da campanha de Aécio.” Youtube, uploaded by Aécio Neves. August 31, 2014. “As 10 revistas semanais mais vendidas no Brasil.” Lista 10. July 7, 2013. Web. November 15, 2015. Ashe, Bertram D. “Post-Soul President: Dreams from My Father and the Post- Soul Aesthetic.” Obama Effect: Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008 Campaign. Eds. Heather E. Harris, Kimberly R. Mofftt, and Catherine R. Squires. Albany: State University of New York P, 2010. 103–115. ProQuest ebrary. Web. February 1, 2015. Atencio, Rebecca J. “Projections of the Past: Making the Invisible Visible in Tata Amaral’s Hoje.” 1920s to 2020s: To Hollywood and Back: Latin American Cinema and Gender in a Global Context. The Richard E. Greenleaf Symposium. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. February 7, 2014. “À TV portuguesa, Dilma lamenta ataque à Líbia.” O Globo. March 24, 2011. Web. Factiva. August 20, 2015. Atwater, Deborah F. “Senator Barack Obama: The Rhetoric of Hope and the American Dream.” Journal of Black Studies 38.2 (2007): 121–129. JSTOR. Web. February 1, 2015. Bachrach, Susan. “In the Name of Public Health—Nazi Racial Regime.” New England Journal of Medicine 351.5 (2004): 417–420. Ball, James. “NSA Monitored Calls of 35 World Leaders after US Offcial Handed over Contacts.” October 25, 2013. The Guardian. Web. December 5, 2015. “Bandilma Ruim$$eff.” Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo. Web. March 4, 2016. Bibliography 183

Banita, Georgiana. “‘Home Squared’: Barack Obama’s Transnational Self- Reliance.” Bibliography 33.1 (2010): 24–45. Web. Revues.org. February 1, 2015. Bazzo, Gabriela. “Senegaleses: Esta é a nova cara da imigração no Brasil.” HuffPost Brasil. June 6, 2015. Web. January 11, 2017. Benjamin, Medea. “America Dropped 26,171 Bombs in 2016. What a Bloody End to Obama’s Reign.” The Guardian. January 9, 2017. Web. January 11, 2017. Bergamo, Mônica. “Fim do mundo.” Folha de São Paulo. March 21, 2011. ProQuest. Web. February 12, 2015. Berlinck, Deborah, and Chico de Gois. “Lula: não se deve esperar muito do G-20.” O Globo. November 2, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. November 9, 2014. Bhabha, Homi. “The Other Question.” Screen (1983) 24.6: 18–36. Villanova. Web. January 12, 2015. Blackmore, Susan. The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Black Orpheus. Dir. Marcel Camus. Perfs. Marpessa Dawn, Breno Mello, and Léa Garcia. Dispat Films (FR), Gemma (IT), and Tupan Films (BR), 1959. Film. Bloom, Harold. Genius: A Mosaic of a One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. New York: Warner, 2002. Boas, Bruno Villas. “Os ‘Obamas’ tupiniquins. Seis candidatos catam votos com nome do democrata.” O Globo. August 25, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. October 24, 2014. “Bolsonaro vota ‘sim’ por um homicida #TeDedico Ustra.” Jornalistas Livres. Online video. YouTube. April 18, 2016. Boopo [Roberto Alvarez]. “Olha lá, Obama…” September 4, 2013. Humor político. Web. December 2, 2015. ———. Personal interview (via email). April 30, 2017. Booth, William. “Obama’s On-the-Walll Endorsement.” The Washington Post. May 18, 2008. Web. November 16, 2015. Borger, Julian. “Brazilian President: US Surveillance a ‘Breach of International Law’.” September 24, 2013. The Guardian. Web. December 5, 2015. Borges, Marcos. “I Love Pré-Sal!” O Estado. March 20, 2011. Web. January 5, 2013. Borges, Roberlan. “Obama: Presidente do Brasil.” http://www.roberlan.devian- tart.com. Web. January 1, 2013. ———. Personal interview (via Skype). February 20, 2015. Brazil: The Obama-Samba. Dir. Andrés Cediel. Frontline World. PBS. October 27, 2008. Browne, Simone, and Ben Carrington. “The Obamas and the New Politics of Race.” Qualitative Sociology 35 (2012): 113–121. Springer. Web. October 20, 2013. 184 Bibliography

Brownstein, Ronald. “President Obama’s Approval Rating Is the Highest in Years.” The Atlantic. December 12, 2016. Web. January 11, 2017. Burkeman, Olivier. “New York Post In Racism Row Over Chimpanzee Cartoon.” The Guardian. February 18, 2009. Web. August 22, 2015. Caitano, Adriana. “Brasil nas urnas em 2014 terá 11 milhões de jovens que vota- rão pela primeira vez.” http://www.Em.com.br. January 19, 2014. Web. November 12, 2014. “Câmara conclui aprovação do Estatuto da Família formada a partir da união de homem e mulher.” Mídia, Religião e Política. October 26, 2015. Web. January 12, 2017. “Campanha de Marina tira do programa apoio a casamento gay.” G1 Eleições 2014. August 30, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. Cantanhêde, Eliane. “A visão de Brasília: Amorim exibe um ‘otimismo vigi- lante’.” Folha de São Paulo. November 9, 2008. ProQuest. Web. November 12, 2014. ———. “Brasil articula movimento anti-intervenção.” Folha de São Paulo. March 20, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. ———. “Brasil defende fm de ataques na Líbia.” Folha de São Paulo. March 22, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. ———. “Clima de surpresa.” Folha de São Paulo. March 17, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. ———. “Entrevista: Fernando Henrique Cardoso.” Folha de São Paulo. March 19, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Cantanhêde, Eliane, Fernando Rodrigues, and Natuza Nery. “Ataques à Líbia roubam a cena da visita de Presidente.” Folha de São Paulo. March 20, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Cardoso, Clarice. “Quando a misoginia pauta as críticas ao governo Dilma.” April 2, 2016. Carta Capital. Web. April 8, 2016. “Cartunista gaúcho será suplente no senado italiano.” April 16, 2008. Portal Terra. Web. November 15, 2015. Carvalho, Pedro. “Sergio K lança camiseta pró-Aécio, ataca Bolsa-Família e diz que ‘representa os jovens’.” Época Negócios. October 10, 2014. Web. November 16, 2015. Casablanca. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Perfs. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Warner Bros, 1942. Casanova, Lourdes, and Julian Kassum. Political Economy of an Emerging Global Power: In Search of the Brazil Dream. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 45–67. ProQuest ebrary. Web. January 23, 2015. Cavalcanti, Roxana Pessoa. “How Brazil’s Far Right Became a Dominant Political Force.” The Conversation. January 25, 2017. Web. January 27, 2017. Cerino [André Cerino]. “Espionagem, Obama quer conhecer o Brasil a fundo.” http://www.cerino.com.br. Web. December 3, 2015. Bibliography 185

———. “Galeria de Arte André Cerino.” http://www.andrecerino.com.br. Web. December 12, 2015. ———. “Cerino exposições.” http://www.andrecerino.com.br. Web. December 12, 2015. Chiao, Joan Y., Nicholas E. Bowman, and Harleen Gill. “The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial Inferences That Predict Voting Behavior.” PlosOne 3.10 (2008): 1–7. “Cinema faz elo simbólico de Obama com o Rio.” O Globo. March 20, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Clayton, Dewey M. The Presidential Campaign of Barack Obama: A Critical Analysis of a Racially Transcendent Strategy. New York: Routledge, 2010. Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “My President Was Black: A History of the First African American White House—and What Came Next.” The Atlantic. January/ February 2017. Web. March 1, 2017. “Com foco em 2014, tucanos escolhem Aécio presidente do PSDB.” Terra Online: Política. May 17, 2013. Web. November 20, 2015. Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Brasília: Edições Câmara, 2012. Cordeiro, Amanda. “A origem dos meus sonhos.” Blog O Espanador: feito para quem gosta de livros. Web. November 12, 2014. “Cornel West on Donald Trump: This is What Neo-Fascism Looks Like.” Democracy Now! December 1, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Cover. Veja. November 12, 2008. Acervo Digital Veja. Web. January 22, 2015. Creed, Barbara. “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection.” Screen 27.1 (1986): 44–70. Crocker, Jennifer, and Shayne B. Hughes. “Ecosystem Perspective and Barack Obama’s Campaign for the Presidency.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 6.1 (2009): 125–136. “Cúpula do BRICS: veja as principais decisões do encontro de países.” July 16, 2014. GloboNews. Web. December 16, 2015. DaMatta, Roberto. “For an Anthropology of the Brazilian Tradition or ‘A vir- tude está no meio’.” The Brazilian Puzzle: Culture on the Borderline of the Western World. Eds. David J. Hess and Roberto DaMatta. New York: U of Columbia P, 1995. 270–292. ———. “Futebol: ópio do povo x drama de justiça social.” Novos estudos 4 (1982): 54–60. ———. O que faz o brasil, Brasil? Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1986. Daniels, G. Reginald. Race and Multiraciality In Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2007. 186 Bibliography

D’Ávila, Sérgio. “Em encontro entre Lula e Obama, sai ‘o ponto G’ e entra ‘o pepino.’” Folha de São Paulo. March 15, 2009. ProQuest. Web. October 14, 2013. Dawkins, Richard. The Selfsh Gene. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. “De faxineiro a presidente do Supremo.” Gazeta do Povo: vida pública. November 22, 2012. Web. January 13, 2017. Degler, Carl. Neither Black Nor White: Slave and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1986. DelReal, Jose A. “Donald Trump Announces Presidential Bid.” The Washington Post. June 16, 2015. Web. January 11, 2017. “Depois de Obama, Dilma negociará com a China.” O Globo. March 20, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “Desafeto.” Folha de São Paulo. March 28, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Desidério, Mariana. “Joaquim Barbosa para presidente em 2018? Talvez.” Exame. May 21, 2015. Web. January 14, 2017. Dias, Marina. “Igreja Universal mantinha esquema ilegal no exterior, diz ex- bispo.” Folha de São Paulo. August, 15, 2016. Web. January 14, 2017. “Dilma beija Obama na boca em evento!” September 6, 2013. Não acredito! Mas deveria, é tudo verdade! Web. December 15, 2015. “Dilma, Coração Valente.” Diretório Estadual do PT/RN. June 23, 2014. Web. October 24, 2014. “Dilma fcou ‘decepcionada em parte’ com a visita de Obama.” Folha de São Paulo. March 24, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Dilma pede cesar fogo na Líbia e quer uma solução pacífca.” O Globo. March 22, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Dilma recebe condecoração na Bulgária e diz estar ‘emocionada’.” May 10, 2011. G1 Política. Web. December 15, 2015. “Dilma recebe presidente da Búlgaria nesta segunda em Brasília.” January 2, 2016. G1 Mundo. Web. January 21, 2016. “Dilma rejuvenesceu.” Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo. September 25, 2013. Web. December 15, 2015. “Dilma Rousseff é a primeira mulher eleita presidente do Brasil.” October 31, 2010. G1 Eleições 2010. Web. December 3, 2015. “Dilma visitará China, EUA e mais 5 países até abril.” O Globo. January 7, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Dip, Andrea. “Bancada evangélica cresce e mistura política e religião no Congresso.” UOL Notícias. October 19, 2015. Web. January 12, 2017. Downie, Andrew. “‘Barack Obama’ Contests Brazil Elections Against ‘Chico Bin Laden’.” The Telegraph. October 1, 2008. Web. October 27, 2014. Douglas, Bruce, and David Biller. “Brazilians Want Their Own Donald Trump.” Bloomberg. January 17, 2017. Web. January 20, 2017. Bibliography 187

Duarte, Alessandra, e Pedro Motta Gueiros. “Dia começa cinza e vai passando a azul e verde.” O Globo. October 27, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. November 12, 2014. Duran, Sérgio. “Lula e Cabral não tinham experiência.” O Globo. October 24, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. November 12, 2014. Eckholm, Erik. “Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn.” The New York Times. March 20, 2006. Web. January 24, 2015. Edelman, Peter, Harry J. Holzen, Harry J., and Paul Offner. Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2006. Edwards, Janis L., and C. Austin McDonald II. “Reading Hillary and Sarah: Contradictions of Feminism and Representation in 2008 Campaign Political Cartoons.” American Behavioral Scientist 54 (2010): 313–329. “Eleição tem Obama, Bin Laden e Maradona na disputa.” Isto É. July 28, 2010. Web. October 24, 2014. “Eleições 2018 Candidatos a Presidente.” www.eleicoes2018.com.br. Web. January 13, 2017. “Ele pode ser o homem mais poderoso do mundo.” Cover. Veja. June 11, 2008. Acervo Digital Veja. Web. January 22, 2015. “Embaixada dos EUA premia mensagens de boas-vindas à Obama.” Notícias Terra, March 10, 2011. Web. September 16, 2015. “Em CPI, autor do perfl Dilma Bolada nega ter recebido dinheiro do PT.” October 29, 2015. G1 Política. Web. November 16, 2015. Emejulu, Akwugo. “‘We Are the Ones We’re Been Waiting For’: Community Development, Collective Identity and Agency in the Age of Obama.” Community Development Journal 46.1 (2011): 117–131. “Em meio a denúncias de espionagem, Obama se encontra com Dilma.” September 5, 2013. BBC Brasil. Web. December 9, 2015. “Encontro de cópula.” Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo. September 25, 2013. Web. December 15, 2015. “É para mudar o Brasil.” Youtube, uploaded by Aécio Neves. August 31, 2014. “Especialistas elogiam tom pragmático de Dilma.” O Globo, March 21, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “Estado da União: Obama confrma viagem ao Brasil em março.” O Globo. January 26, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “‘Estou realizando um sonho’, diz Dilma em visita à terra natal do pai.” May 10, 2011. G1 Política. Web. December 15, 2015. “‘Eu adoro esse cara’, diz Obama para Lula.” Folha de São Paulo. April 3, 2009. ProQuest. Web. January 22, 2015. Favero, Daniel. “Dilma conta como teve dente arrancado a socos por torturador.” Terra Online Brasil. December 11, 2014. Web. January 21, 2015. Fernandes, Florestan. The Negro in Brazilian Society. Trans. Jacqueline D. Skiles, A. Brunel, and Arthur Rothwell. New York: Atheneum, 1971. 188 Bibliography

Filho, Mario. O negro no futebol brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1964. “Foto de criança tocando cabeça de Obama tem lugar especial na Casa Branca.” D24am. May 24, 2012. Web. January 10, 2017. “Foto onde Dilma aparece ‘beijando’ Obama faz sucesso nas redes sociais.” September 6, 2013. Valera Notícias. Web. December 15, 2015. Freire, Flávio, and Lino Rodrigues. “Lula: benefício da crise é eleger Obama.” O Globo. October 20, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. November 12, 2014. Freyre, Gilberto. Preface. The Masters and The Slaves. Trans. Samuel Putnam. New York: Knopf, 1970. Fries, Amadé. “Swiss Support.” Stephen Heller, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee, eds. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. 111. Fuller, Matthew. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture. Cambridge: MIT P, 2005. “Full Script of Obama’s Speech.” CNN.com. July 24, 2008. Web. March 5, 2015. Web. January 12, 2016. Gabeira, Fernando. http://www.gabeira.com.br. Web. January 12, 2016. Galhardo, Ricardo. “Lula: crise é tsunami nos EUA e, se chegar ao Brasil, será ‘marolinha’.” O Globo. April 10, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. January 26, 2015. Gamboa, Suzanne. “¡Obámanos! President Barack Obama’s Legacy, Through a Latino Lens.” NBC News. January 9, 2017. Web. January 10, 2017. Garcia, Carolina. “Conheça o candidato Cláudio Henrique, o Barack Obama brasileiro.” IG São Paulo. July 28, 2014. Web. October 24, 2014. “Garoto negro toca cabeça de Obama para sentir cabelo do presidente.” Geledés. May 25, 2012. Web. January 10, 2017. “Garoto negro toca cabeça de Obama para sentir cabelo do presidente.” R7 Internacional. May 24, 2012. Web. January 10, 2017. Gilberto Gil [Gilberto Passos Gil Moreira]. “Leia na íntegra o discurso de posse.” February 1, 2003. Folha Online. Web. December 9, 2015. Glick, Alexis, Meghan Casserly, and Ricardo Geromel. “Power Woman Dilma Rousseff: Brazil’s Entrepreneur-In-Chief.” August 22, 2012. Forbes. Web. December 3, 2015. Góes, Paula. “Will the Elections End Up in Another Bradley Effect?” Blog Voices Without Votes. October 17, 2008. Web. November 5, 2013. Golberg, David Theo. “The Tale of Two Obamas.” Qualitative Sociology 35 (2012): 201–212. Gonzalez, Maristella. “Obama Te Ama.” Stephen Heller, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee, eds. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. 95. Bibliography 189

Gordo Nerd. “Não vote em branco.” Paula Góes. “Will the Elections End Up in Another Bradley Effect?” Blog Voices Without Votes. October 17, 2008. Web. November 5, 2013. Goscilo, Helena. “Putin’s Performance of Masculinity: The Action Hero and Macho Sex-Object.” Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon. Ed. Helena Goscilo. Kindle ed. Routledge: New York, 2013. Greenwald, Glenn. “Obama’s New FBI Chief Approved Bush’s NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Scheme.” May 30, 2013. The Guardian. Web. December 3, 2015. Greenwald, Glenn, and Ewen MacAskill. “Boundless Informant: the NSA’s Secret Tool to Track Global Surveillance Data.” June 11, 2013. The Guardian. Web. December 5, 2015. Greenwald, Glenn, Roberto Kaz, and José Casado. “EUA espionaram milhões de e-mails e ligações de brasileiros.” O Globo. July 6, 2013. Web. December 2, 2015. Guglielmo, Letizia. “Voices of His Mothers: Feminist Intervention and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.” Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Charlene T. Evans and Michael A. Zeitler. Lewiston : Edwin Mellen Press. 143–169. EBSCOhost. Web. February 3, 2015. Harris, Paul. “One in Four Americans Think Obama May Be the Antichrist, Survey Says.” The Guardian. April 2, 2013. Web. January 10, 2017. Hasenbalg, Carlos A. “Negros e mestiços: vida, cotidiano e movimento.” Relações raciais no Brasil contemporâneo. Eds. Nelson do Valle Silva and Carlos A. Hasenbalg. Rio de Janeiro: Rio Fundo, 1992. 139–164. ———. “Perspectives on Race and Class in Brazil.” Black Brazil: Culture, Identity, and Social Mobilization. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1999. 61–84. ———. “Race and Socioeconomic Inequalities in Brazil.” Race, Class, and Power in Brazil. Ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1985. 25–41. Hehman, Eric, Colleen M. Carpinella, Kerri L. Johnson, Jordan B. Leitner, and Jonathan B. Freeman. “Early Processing of Gendered Facial Cues Predicts the Electoral Success of Female Politicians.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 5.7 (2014): 815–824. Helal, Ronaldo, Antônio Jorge Soares, and Hugo Lovisolo, eds. A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolatria. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2001. Helal, Ronaldo, and Cesar Gordon Jr. “Sociologia, história e romance na cons trução da identidade nacional através do futebol.” Eds. Ronaldo Helal, Antônio Jorge Soares, and Hugo Lovisolo. A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolatria. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2001. 51–75. 190 Bibliography

Helio de la Peña [Helio António do Couto Filho]. “Presidente Obama (de la Peña): Brasil—Março 2011.” Blog do Helio de la Peña—Casseta & Planeta. March 15, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. Heller, Stephen, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee, eds. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. Hughey, Matthew W. “Show Me Your Papers! Obama’s Birth and the Whiteness at Belonging.” Qualitative Sociology (2012) 35. Springer. Web. October 22, 2013. 163–181. Hunt, Stephanie. “Shepard Fairey Has a Posse.” Charleston Magazine. May 2009. Web. September 22, 2016. Ifll, Gwen. The Breakthrough: The Politics of Race in the Age of Obama. New York: Doubleday, 2009. “Inaugurado Templo de Salomão - Fala Brasil.” Record TV—Europa. Online video. YouTube, August 1, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. “Íntegra do comunicado conjunto da presidente Dilma Rousseff e do presidente dos EUA, Barack Obama.” O Globo. March 19, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Iotti [Carlos Henrique Iotti]. “Obama!!” September 4, 2013. Zero Hora Online. November 16, 2015. “Itamaraty pede em nota cessar-fogo na Líbia.” O Globo. March 21, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Jair Bolsonaro responde pergunta de Preta Gil.” CQC. Online video. YouTube, March 28, 2011. Web. January 14, 2017. Johnson, Davi. “Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist Rhetorical Criticism.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 4.1 (2007): 27–50. Joly, Claire. “In Search of My Father’s Garden: Kenya as the Focal Point for the Study of a New Kind of Narrative in African American Autobiography.” Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Charlene T. Evans and Michael A. Zeither. Lewiston : Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. 75–113. EBSCOhost. Web. January 8, 2015. Jorge Ben Jor. http://www.jorgebenjor.com.br. Web. August 24, 2015. Jorge, Fernando. Se não fosse o Brasil, jamais Barack Obama teria nascido. Novo Século: São Paulo, 2009. Judis, John B. The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016. Junho—o mês que abalou o Brasil. Dir. João Wainer. O2/Folha de São Paulo, 2013. Juppa, Fábio. “Clássico por carinho de Obama.” O Globo. March 18, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. Juste, Marília. “Conheça a trajetória da primeira mulher presidente do Brasil.” October 31, 2010. G1 Eleições 2010. Web. December 3, 2015. Kamalakian, Sérgio. “Uai, We Can.” Ligia Mesquita. “Estilista cria camiseta pró- Aécio com a mensagem ‘Uai we can’.” Folha de São Paulo. October 10, 2014. Web. November 20, 2015. Bibliography 191

Kamel, Ali. Nós não somos racistas. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2007. ———. “Barack Obama.” Instituto Millenium. November 20, 2008. Web. November 13, 2014. Kinder, Donald R., and Allison Dale-Riddle. The End of Race: Obama, 2008, and Racial Politics in America. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012. Kiss, Lisa. “‘O’ Canada.” Eds. Stephen Heller, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. 95. 110. Krieg, Gregory. “It’s Offcial: Clinton Swamps Trump in Popular Vote.” CNN Politics. December 22, 2016. Web. January 14, 2017. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. L. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Vol. Book XI) (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan). Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1998. Lago, Rudolfo, and Sérgio Pardellas. “Como construir uma candidata.” January 21, 2009. IstoÉ Independente. Web. December 9, 2015. Landler, Mark. “Trump Suggests Berlin Attack Affrms His Plan to Bar Muslims.” The New York Times. December 21, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Larson, Leslie. “Barack Obama of Brazil Runs for Congress.” New York Daily News. August 22, 2014. Web. October 25, 2014. Latuff, Carlos. “Obama chega ao Rio…” Contraponto: Jornal do Sindicato dos Servidores da Justiças Federais no Rio de Janeiro. March 2011. 2. Web. January 5, 2013. “Latuff: Cartoonist in Conversation.” Forward.com. December 18, 2008 (updated April 14, 2015). Web. August 14, 2015. Leahy, Joe. “What is Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff Accused Of?” May 12, 2016. Financial Times. Web. June 1, 2016. Lee, M.J. “Obama Is Keeping His Peace Prize.” Politico. March 23, 2011. Web. September 11, 2015. Lee, Spike. “Mookie, Always Do The Right Thing.” Eds. Stephen Heller, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. 15. “Lei dos Partidos Políticos: do acesso gratuito ao rádio e à televisão.” Tribunal Superior Eleitoral. Web. February 16, 2015. “Lei No 9.140, de 04 de Dezembro de 1995.” Presidência da República. Web. February 11, 2016. Leitão, Miriam. “Joaquim Barbosa: Brasil não está preparado para um presidente negro.” G1 Entrevista. July 28, 2013. Web. January 14, 2017. Lesser, Jeffrey. Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present. New York: Cambridge UP, 2013. 192 Bibliography

Li, Stephanie. Signifying Without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2011. Lima, André. “Mensch Entrevista: Sérgio K—o homem por trás da marca.” Mensch. June 23, 2011. Web. September 22, 2016. Lina, Elaine. “Casal Obama fca curioso sobre o quadro Abaporu.” Notícias Terra, March 19, 2011. Web. September 24, 2015. “Linhas editoriais.” Editora Gente. http://www.editoragente.com.br. Web. February 4, 2015. “Livro-polêmica de Ali Kamel completa 5 anos.” Livraria da Folha. August 12, 2011. Web. February 2, 2015. Lopes, Kerison. “Foto histórica traz Dilma sendo interrogada pela ditadura military.” Vermelho Portal. December 3, 2011. Web. February 12, 2016. López-Calvo, Ignacio. “Obama’s Autobiographical Writing, Critical Race Theory, and the Racializing Gaze.” Critical Essays on Barack Obama: Re-affrming the Hope, Re-vitalizing the Dream. Ed. Melvin B. Rahming. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 57–82. ProQuest ebrary. Web. February 1, 2015. Lou. “Obama no Brasil merece + 1 tirinha.” Blog Merece 1 tirinha, March 23, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. ———. “Yes, We Can/Yes, Weekend.” Blog Merece 1 tirinha, March 23, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. Lucinda, Elisa. “Obama nas alturas.” Revista Domingo. November 9, 2008. 79. “Lula diz que PSDB copia slogan da campanha de Obama.” R7 Notícias. April 10, 2010. Web. January 12, 2014. “Lula ganha estátua em bronze ao lado da Casa Branca.” Pragmatismo político. May 27, 2014. Web. January 22, 2015. Lustosa, Isabel. Histórias de presidentes: a República no Catete: 1897–1960. Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2008. Lute [Lunarde Telles dos Santos]. “Esse é o cara.” Jornal Hoje em Dia. April 4, 2009. Web. January 22, 2015. ———. Personal interview (via email). February 4, 2014. Macharia, Keguro. “Jambo Bwana: Kenya’s Barack Obama.” Qualitative Sociology 35 (2012): 213–227. Springer. Web. October 27, 2013. Maggie, Yvonne. "Pela Igualdade." Revista Estudo Feministas 16.3 (2008): 897–407. Cengage Learning. Web. January 12, 2015. “Maioria dos leitores do site do Globo acha discurso no Theatro Municipal o ponto alto da visita de Obama.” O Globo. March 22, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Maior jornal do Brasil, Folha é líder em diferentes plataformas.” Folha de São Paulo, March 30, 2014. Web. November 21, 2015. Bibliography 193

Makaaroun, Bertha. “Nova investigação sobre morte de Tancredo Neves pode estar a caminho após 30 anos.” www.Em.com.br: Política. April 19, 2015. Web. February 12, 2016. Malkin, Elizabeth. “Honduran President Is Ousted In a Cup.” The New York Times. June 28, 2009. Web. August 14, 2015. “Manifestos de movimentos sociais declara Obama ‘persona non grata’.” O Globo, March 16, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. Marquardt-Bigman, Petra. “The SS-headache of Carlos Latuff.” The Jerusalem Post. December 30, 2012. Web. August 15, 2015. Marques, Pedro. “Obama foi ao Rio.” Blog do Pedro Marques, March 22, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. Marshall, Serena. “Obama Has Deported More People Than Any Other President.” ABC News. August 29, 2016. Web. January 10, 2017. Matlack, Tom. “Shep Visionary or Criminal?” HuffPost. August 22, 2009. Web. November 16, 2015. Maxwell, Kenneth. “Obama no Brasil.” Folha de São Paulo, March 17, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Memória.” Folha de São Paulo. March 6, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Mesquita, Ligia. “Estilista cria camiseta pró-Aécio com a mensagem ‘Uai we can’.” Folha de São Paulo. October 10, 2014. Web. November 20, 2015. Mia Couto [António Emílio Leite Couto]. “E se Obama fosse africano?” E se Obama fosse africano? e outras intervenções. Lisboa: Editorial Caminho, 2009. 209–214. Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. New York: Cornell UP, 1999. Mincy, Ronald B. Black Males Left Behind. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press, 2006. Mira, Gustavo Fernandes Paravizo, Luiz Ademir de Oliveira, and Paulo Roberto Figueira Leal. “Estratégias discursivas de oposição: o lugar de fala de Aécio Neves na campanha de 2014 e no cenário pós-eleitoral.” Comunicação e mer- cado 4.11 (2015): 210–223. Mitchell, W.J.T. Seeing Through Race (The W.E.B. Du Bois Series). Harvard: The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2012. ———. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Mori, Celso Cintra. “Obama: duas gafes e uma decepção.” Folha de São Paulo, March 28, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Most Diverse Congress Sworn In.” January 14, 2013. DiversityInc. Web. April 8, 2016. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Ed. Amelia Jones. New York: Routledge, 2003. 57–68. 194 Bibliography

Murta, Andrea. “Obama, Líbia e Brasil.” Folha de São Paulo. March 27, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Muzzolon, Paulo. “Eleitor jovem é o que mais apoia Aécio Neves, aponta Datafolha.” Folha de São Paulo. October 17, 2014. Web. November 12, 2014. Nakashima, Ellen, and Barton Gellman. “Court Gave NSA Broad Leeway in Surveillance, Documents Show.” June 30, 2014. Washington Post. Web. December 5, 2015. “‘Não estupro porque você não merece’, diz Bolsonaro a Maria do Rosário.” IstoÉ. Online video. YouTube. December 9, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. “Negros representam 54% da população do país, mas são só 17% dos mais ricos.” UOL Economia. December 4, 2015. Web. December 27, 2015. Ng, David. “Shepard Fairey Gets Two Years’ Probation in Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Case.” Los Angeles Times. September 7, 2012. Web. February 18, 2016. Nganang, Alain Patrice. “Et si Obama était camerounais?” Cameroon Online. June 20, 2008. Web. September 8, 2013. Nogueira, Cláudio. “Visita de Obama: a carta vascaína a Obama.” O Globo, March 19, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Noites eróticas.” Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo. September 25, 2013. Web. December 15, 2015. “No Rio, Obama monitorou a guerra de perto.” Folha de São Paulo, March 20, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Ô Obama, a sua esposa não vai gosta.” Crie sua meme. September 23, 2013. criesuameme.com. October 4, 2014. Obama II, Barack Hussein. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Crown, 2004. ———. “Introduction.” Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Crown, 2004. 14–17. ———. “‘A More Perfect Union’: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race.” The New York Times, March 18, 2008. Web. January 24, 2015. ———. A origem dos meus sonhos. Trans. Irati Antonio, Renata Laureano, and Sonia Augusto. São Paulo: Editora Gente, 2008. ———. “Presidential Farewell Address.” American Rhetoric. January 10, 2017. Web. January 14, 2017. ———. “President Obama Speaks to the People of Brazil.” Online videoclip. The White House. YouTube, March 23, 2011. Web. March 4, 2015. ———. “Transcript: ‘This Is Our Victory,’ Says Obama.” CNN. November 4, 2008. Web. January 27, 2015. ———. “United States-Brazil CEO Forum Discussion.” Online videoclip. The White House. YouTube, March 23, 2011. Web. May 11, 2013. Bibliography 195

“Obama com armário renovado.” O Globo, March 21, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Obama diz que vaga na ONU pode demorar.” O Globo, March 21, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “Obama elogia ‘pragmatismo’ de Dilma.” Folha de São Paulo, March 21, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Obama Go Home!” Blog of Partido Socialista of Trabalhadores Unifcado, March 18, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. “Obama: ‘Lula Is the “Most Popular Politician On Earth”.’” The World Post. Web. January 24, 2015. “Obama recebe camisa do Flamengo das mãos de Patrícia Amorim.” O Globo, March 20, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. “Obama, volte para casa!” Página do MST, March 18, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. O’Boyle, Brendan. “Jair Bolsonaro: Pro-Torture, Anti-Gay and Brazil’s Future President?” Americas Quarterly. April 19, 2016. Web. January 13, 2017. “O fator Clinton.” O Globo. November 15, 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. November 12, 2014. “O fenômeno Obama.” Editorial. Veja. November 12, 2008. Acervo Digital Veja. Web. January 22, 2015. 12–13. Oliveira, Emanuelle K.F. Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro- Brazilian Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2007. Oliveira, Sérgio. A era Lula: a visão geral do governo mais popular do Brasil. São Paulo: All Print, 2011. Olivola, Christopher Y., and Alexander Todorov. “Elected in 100 Milliseconds: Appearance-Based Trait Inferences and Voting.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 34 (2010): 83–110. “Onda de revoltas: Brasil rejeita “ação aguda” contra Líbia.” Folha de São Paulo. February 25, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “O que é o Movimento Passe Livre.” http://www.tarifazero.org. Web. November 12, 2014. “O que está na agenda de Obama e Dilma.” O Globo. March 13, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “Outras lendas.” Desciclopédia: a enciclopédia livre de conteúdo. September 25, 2013. Web. December 15, 2015. Padrão, Márcio. “Dilma e Aécio fazem último debate; encontro pode defnir eleição?” UOL Eleições 2014. October 24, 2014. Web. September 23, 2016. “Para Dilma, encontro traz dividendos políticos.” O Globo. March 20, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 20, 2015. “Para Jean Wyllys, Marina Silva ‘brincou com as esperanças de milhões de pessoas’.” Revista Fórum. August 30, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. 196 Bibliography

Passarinho, Nathalia. “Dilma diz na ONU que espionagem fere soberania e direito internacional.” September 24, 2013. G1 Mundo. Web. December 5, 2015. ———. “Ofcializada candidata, Dilma diz que vai ‘continuar Brasil de Lula’.” G1: Eleições 2010. June 13, 2010. Web. November 20, 2015. Pelicano [César Augusto Vilas Bôas]. “Jantar com Obama.” Jornal Bom Dia. March 20, 2011. Web. January 5, 2013. Peniel, Joseph E. “Barack Obama Forever Changed Black America.” The Guardian. January 7, 2017. Web. January 10, 2017. Pereira, Sonia Cristina Pedrosa. Obama in Time and Lula in Veja: A Case Study of Presidential Campaign Coverage in News Magazines of the United States and Brazil. Diss. University of Maryland, 2011. Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM). Web. September 9, 2014. Perry-Zucker, Aaron. “Preface.” Eds. Stephen Heller, Aaron Perry-Zucker, and Spike Lee. Design for Obama, Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology. Köln: Taschen, 2009. 9. “Petrobrás foi espionada pelos EUA.” Online video. O Globo G1, Fantástico. September 8, 2013. Web. December 5, 2015. Petry, André. “Obama entra para a história.” Veja. June 11, 2008. Acervo Digital Veja. Web. January 22, 2015. 92–101. ———. “Obama: a resposta.” Veja. November 12, 2008. Acervo Digital Veja. Web. January 22, 2015. 77–82. Phillips, Tom. “Now for Brazil’s Barack Obamas—All six of them.” The Guardian. September 14, 2008. Web. October 24, 2014. Pires, Teresinha Maria de Carvalho Cruz. “A construção da imagem política de Dilma Rousseff como mãe do povo brasileiro.” Revista Debates (2011) 5.1: 139–162. Planas, Roque. “We’re Starting To Get A Bad Feeling About Brazil’s New Interim President” The World Post. May 19, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Poole, Thom. “Why Has the Nobel Prize Chairman Been Demoted?” BBC News. March 5, 2015. Web. September 11, 2015. “Popular Online Search Engines in Brazil as of May 2014, Based on Market Share.” Statista. Web. November 15, 2015. “Por nova relação, Obama deve visitar Brasil em março.” Folha de São Paulo. January 25, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Por que protestar contra Obama?” Blog of Partido Socialista of Trabalhadores Unifcado. March 18, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. Power, Timothy J. “Brazilian Democracy as a Late Bloomer: Reevaluating the Regime in the Cardoso-Lula Era.” Latin America Research Review 45 (2010): 218–247. Prada, Paulo. “White Male Cabinet Raises Fears of Backsliding in Diverse Brazil.” Reuters World News. May 16, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Bibliography 197

“Pre-salt.” Petrobrás website. http://www.petrobras.com.br. Web. November 5, 2013. “Presidente Obama: Brasil—Março 2011.” United States Diplomatic Mission to Brazil. February 18, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. “Presidential Approval Ratings—Barack Obama.” Gallup. Web. January 11, 2017. “Pressionada por pastor, Marina Silva muda plano de governo.” ZH Eleições 2014. August 31, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. “Protesto de petistas contra Obama irrita Planalto.” O Globo. March 17, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. “Protestos de junho de 2013 atraíram 1 milhão no auge.” Folha de São Paulo. March 15, 2015. Web. January 11, 2016. “‘Queria saber se meu cabelo é igual ao seu’, disse garoto a Obama.” G1 Mundo. May 24, 2012. Web. January 10, 2017. Ramalho, Renan. “TSE registra Rede Sustentabilidade, partido fundado por Marina Silva.” G1 Política. September 22, 2015. Web. January 13, 2014. Regi [Reginaldo Moreira]. “Não adianta se esconder Obama…”. September 11, 2013. Humor político. Web. December 2, 2015. Rho’Dess, Todd. “From Hope to Change? Obama’s 2008 Deracialized Campaign in the Context of the African American Struggle.” Race, Gender, and Class (2011) 18.3–4: 110–122. Risen, James, and Eric Lichtblau. “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” Washington Post. December 16, 2005. Web. December 3, 2015. Rocha, Carolina. Personal interview (via email). January 23, 2015. Rodrigues, Fernando. “Campanha de Dilma na rede mobilizou 200 mil e-mails.” Folha de São Paulo. January 25, 2011. ProQuest. Web. November 15, 2014. Rodrigues, Sattu. “Dilma Rousseff.” Marina Rossi. “Dilma Coração Valente: PT terá de pagar multa por uso indevido de desenho de Dilma Rousseff.” El País Brasil. April 28, 2015. Web. November 16, 2016. Rosendall, Richard J. “Debasing the Peace Prize.” HuffPost. September 13, 2013. Web. September 11, 2015. Rossi, Marina. “Dilma Coração Valente: PT terá de pagar multa por uso indevido de desenho de Dilma Rousseff.” El País Brasil. April 28, 2015. Web. November 16, 2016. Sá, Nelson de. “EUA: Acionista minoritário.” O Globo. March 14, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Sadi, Andréia. “Dilma decide cancelar viagem aos EUA em outubro.” Folha de São Paulo. September 17, 2013. Web. December 5, 2015. Sampson, Toni D. Virality: Contagion Theory In the Age of Networks. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012. 198 Bibliography

Samuca [Samuel Rubens de Andrade]. “G 20: Peça ao barbudo, ele é o cara.” Diário de Pernambuco. April 4, 2009. Web. January 22, 2015. ———. Personal interview (via email). February 4, 2014. Santana, João. “Dilma, Coração Valente.” YouTube, uploaded by Revista Fórum. June 20, 2014. Santoro, Maurício. “Os sonhos de Barack Obama.” Todos os Fogos o Fogo Blog. Web. November 12, 2014. Santos, Gislene dos. A invenção do ser negro: um percurso das ideias que natu- ralizaram a inferioridade dos negros. São Paulo: Educ/Fapesp; Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2002. Santos, Leonor Maria Pacheco, Romulo Paes-Souza, Edina Miazagi, Tiago Falcão Silva, and Ana Maria Medeiros da Fonseca. “The Brazilian Experience with Conditional Cash Transfers: A Successful Way to Reduce Inequity and Improve Health.” All For Equity: World Conference on Social Determinants of Health. October 19–21, 2011. Rio de Janeiro: Brazil. 1–12. Santos, Myriam Sepúlveda dos. “The Brazilian Remake of the Orpheus Legend: Film Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension.” Theory, Culture, and Society 20.4 (2003): 49–69. Sage Journals. Web. January 12, 2015. ———. “Black Orpheus and the Merging of Two Brazilian Nations.” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 71 (2001): 107–116. JSTOR. Web. January 12, 2015. Santos, Renato Abramowicz. “Pretos e pardos, metade da população brasileira, são menos de 10% no Congresso.” n/d. Transparência Brasil. Web. April 8, 2016. Schneider, Monica C., and Angela L. Bos. “Measuring Stereotypes of Female Politicians.” Political Psychology 35.2 (2014): 245–266. Seidman, Steven A. “Barack Obama’s 2008 Campaign for U.S. Presidency and Visual Design.” Journal of Visual Literacy 29 (2010): 1–27. Selzer, Linda F. “Barack Obama, the 2008 Presidential Election, and the New Cosmopolitanism: Figuring the Black Body.” MELUS 35.4 (2010): 15–37. Senra, Ricardo. “Única presidenciável negra, Marina sofre resistência entre afro- descendentes.” BBC Brasil. September 11, 2014. Web. January 14, 2017. “Shepard Fairey Sentenced to Probation Over Obama ‘Hope’ Poster Case.” The Guardian. September 7, 2012. Web. February 18, 2016. Silva, Fellipe Elias da. “Obama no Brasil!” Blog Felldesign. March 21, 2011. Web. November 5, 2013. ———. Personal interview (via Email). November 7, 2015. Silva, Fernando de Barros. “Yes, we créu!” Folha de São Paulo. March 21, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. Silva, Nelson do Vale. “Updating the Cost of Not Being White in Brazil.” Race, Class, and Power in Brazil. Ed. Pierre-Michel Fontaine. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1985. 42–55. Sims, Shannon. “Brazil’s New President Michel Temer Fills Cabinet With Only White Men.” Forbes. May 12, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Bibliography 199

Singer, André. Os sentidos do lulismo: reforma gradual e pacto conservador. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012. “Site do Flamengo diz que Obama quebrou protocolo e pediu uma camisa do clube.” O Globo. March 20, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 22, 2015. Sivak, Martín. Evo Morales: The Extraordinary Rise of the First Indigenous President of Bolivia. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2010. Skidmore, Thomas. Black Into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought. New York: Oxford UP, 1974. Sklar, Rachel. “Shepard Fairey, Poster Boy Of The 2008 Election (And For The Rise Of The New).”HuffPost. November 8, 2008. Web. November 15, 2015. Snowden, Edward. “Carta aberta ao povo do Brasil.” December 17, 2013. Trans. Clara Allain. Folha de São Paulo. Web. December 5, 2015. Soares, Antonio J. “História e a invenção de tradições no futebol brasileiro.” Eds. Ronaldo Helal, Antônio Jorge Soares, and Hugo Lovisolo. A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolotria. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2001. 13–50. ———. “O racismo no futebol do Rio de Janeiro nos anos 20: uma história de identidade.” Eds. Ronaldo Helal, Antônio Jorge Soares, and Hugo Lovisolo. A invenção do país do futebol: mídia, raça e idolotria. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2001. 101–119. Sodré, Muniz. “Um particular sobre Obama.” Observatório da imprensa. November 11, 2008. Web. November 12, 2014. Solda [Luiz Antônio Solda]. “Vale a pena ver de novo: Burrice: passado glorioso, futuro promissor.” Solda cáustico Blog. February 23, 2013. Web. February 17, 2015. Sontag, Susan. “Afterlives: The Case of Machado de Assis.” Where the Stress Falls. New York: Picador, 2001. 30–40. Sreeharsha, Vinod. “Sérgio Cabral, Ex-Governor of Rio de Janeiro, Arrested on Corruption Charges.” The New York Times—Americas. November 17, 2016. Web. November 30, 2016. Stein, Daniel. “Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father and African–American Literature.” European Journal of American Studies 6.1 (2011): 2–14. http:// www.Revues.org. Web. February 1, 2015. Stein, Sam. “New York Post Cartoon Compares Stimulus Author To Dead Primate.” HuffPost. March 2, 2009 (updated May 25, 2011). Web. August 22, 2015. Stirland, Sarah Lai. “Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency.” Wired. November 4, 2008. Web. September 21, 2015. Sweig, Julia. “Dilma vai decidir onde Lula será politicamente útil.” O Globo. January 2, 2011. Factiva. Web. August 21, 2015. Sweney, Mark, and John Plunkett. “Ad Watchdog Powerless to Act on Controversial Brexit Campaigns.” The Guardian. June 28, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. 200 Bibliography

Tankersley, Jim. “How Trump Won: The Revenge of Working-Class Whites.” The Washington Post. November 9, 2016. Web. January 11, 2017. Tardáguila, Cristina. “Justiça de São Paulo manda PT deixar de usar ‘Coração Valente’ de Dilma.” O Globo. April 30, 2015. Web. November 11, 2015. Telles, Edward. Race in Another America: The Signifcance of Skin Color in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Tesler, Michael, and David O. Sears. Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. “That Cartoon.” New York Post. February 20, 2009. Web. August 22, 2015. “The 2010 Time 100: Leaders.” Time. Web. January 27, 2015. “To obamize.” Urban Dictionary. Web. November 11, 2015. Traynor, Ian, Philip Olterman, and Paul Lewis. “Angela Merkel’s Call to Obama: Are You Bugging My Phone?” October 24, 2013. The Guardian. Web. December 5, 2015. Turner Jr., Albert U. “‘In No Other Nation Is My Story Even Possible’: Collective Narrative, Self-Narrative, and Prosthetic Memory. In Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.” Critical Essays on Barack Obama: Re-affrming the Hope, Re-vitalizing the Dream. Ed. Melvin B. Rahming. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. 3–21. ProQuest ebrary. Web. February 1, 2015. “Use bem seu voto.” Leslie Larson. “Barack Obama of Brazil Runs for Congress.” New York Daily News. August 22, 2014. Web. October 25, 2014. Ventura, Manoel. “‘Eu sou um homem livre,’ diz Joaquim Barbosa sobre pos- sível candidatura.” O Globo. November 9, 2016. Web. January 14, 2017. Venturini, Lillian. “Por que João Doria foi eleito de forma tão surpreendente na maior cidade do país.” Nexo. October 2, 2016. Web. January 14, 2017. Visentini, Paulo Fagundes. “Autobiografa ajuda a entender o fenômeno Obama.” Folha de São Paulo Ilustrada. April 5, 2008. Web. November 12, 2014. “Visita deve deixar para trás “rusgas” com Lula.” Folha de São Paulo. March 19, 2011. ProQuest. Web. August 21, 2015. “Você é muito mais gata do que a Ângela Merkel.” Pitombas Blog. September 23, 2013. Web. October 24, 2014. “Was Shepard Fairey’s use fair?” Ethics in Graphic Design. September 18, 2012. Web. February 18, 2016. Watts, Jonathan. “‘A Lot of Testosterone and Little Pigment’: Brazil’s Old Elite Deals a Blow to Diversity.” The Guardian. May 13, 2016. Web. January 10, 2017. ———. “Brazil’s Evangelicals Become a Political Force to Be Reckoned With.” The Guardian. October 1, 2014. Web. January 10, 2017. ———. “Dilma Bolada: Brazilian President’s Digital Alter Ego Is More Popular Than She Is.” May 9, 2016. The Guardian. Web. May 29, 2016. Bibliography 201

West, Cornel. “Pity the Sad Legacy of Barack Obama.” The Guardian. January 9, 2017. Web. January 10, 2017. “What Are the Top 10 Most Popular Search Engines?” Search Engine Watch. August 8, 2016. Web. September 25, 2016. “What Donald Trump Has Said About Mexico and Vice Versa.” CNN Politics. August 31, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Wisnik, José Miguel. Veneno remédio: o futebol e o Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008. Yanes, Nicholas A. “Conclusion: What Happened to Obama-Mania?” The Iconic Obama, 2007–2009: Essays on Media Representations of the Candidate and New President. Eds. Nicholas A. Yanes and Derrais Carter. Kindle ed. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2012. Zeitler, Michael. “An Image of Africa: Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Rewriting of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Race and Identity in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father: A Collection of Critical Essays. Eds. Charlene T. Evans and Michael A. Zeitler. 115–132. EBSCOhost. Web. January 8, 2015. Zillman, Claire. “Brazil’s New President Just Selected an All-Male Cabinet.” Fortune. May 13, 2016. Web. January 12, 2017. Index

A Birtherism, 14, 21, 51, 107, 143 “Abaporu”, 69, 162 Bishop Edir Macedo, 178. See also Abject, 11, 30, 96, 169. See also Church of Kingdom of God Abjection; Creed, Barbara; Black Lives Matter, 2 Kristeva, Julia Blackmore, Susan, 11, 104, 105, 160, Abjection, 11, 96, 169 161. See also The Meme Machine; “A esperança venceu o medo” [hope Neo-Darwinism conquered fear], 8, 47, 158 Black Orpheus, 6, 7, 24, 26, 28, Affrmative action, 20, 21, 102, 148, 31–34, 38, 39, 40, 42, 48, 69, 149 75–77 Affordable Care Act (ACA), 142 Bloom, Harold, 153 Amaral, Tarsila do, 69, 130, 162. See Bolsa Família, 151, 176 also Abaporu Bolsonaro, Jair [Jair Messias “A More Perfect Union”, 49, 115, Bolsonaro], 146, 179 136, 153 Boopo [Roberto Alvarez Fabregat], Aroeira [Renato Luiz Campos 96, 168 Aroeira], 89, 96–98, 108–112, “Boundless Informant”, 90 166, 167, 171 1988 Brazilian Constitution, 107, Asō, Tarō, 43 148, 171 Associated Press, 175 Brexit, 146 BRIC, BRICS, 88, 110, 112, 171 Buchanan, Pat, 144 B Bullets, Bible, and Beef caucus, 178 Bhabha, Homi, 29–31 Bush, George W., 90, 156, 167

C Dilma Rousseff [Dilma Vana Campos, Eduardo, 148 Rousseff], 13, 14, 78, 79, 91, Camus, Marcel, 6, 7, 24, 25, 28, 31, 103, 107, 110, 126, 135, 145, 32, 34, 35, 42, 69, 77. See also 165, 178. See also “Dilma, Black Orpheus Coração Valente”; impeachment; Candomblé, 156 “Mãe do Povo” [mother of the Capoeira, 65, 66, 69, 156 people]; pedaladas fscais Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 127, Dória, João, 147 128, 137, 165 Dreams From My Father, 6–8, 17, 19, Castration, 29, 96 20, 22–24, 26, 31, 34, 38, 40, Cerino [André Cerino], 93, 94, 168 76, 124, 153, 155 Christ, the Redeemer, 32, 63, 66, 72, Du Bois, W.E.B., 153 161 Dunham, Stanley Ann, 6, 7, 22, 24, Church of Kingdom of God, 178 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, Classism, 7, 8, 41, 42, 118, 150 42, 48, 69 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 88, 101, 119, 138, 143, 144, 167, 177 Coelho, Paulo, 77 E Coletivo Fora do Eixo, 129 “Ecosystem Perspective”, 136 Comey, James, 167 Embaixada, 163 Conrad, Joseph, 27, 28, 154. See also Embaixadinha, 69, 163 Heart of Darkness Emphatic virality of love, 68 Contamination, 12 Enlightenment, 160. See also “Social “Cosmopolitan mulatto”, 5, 18, 20, Contract” 51, 108, 112, 118, 153 Estatuto da Família [Family’s Statute], Creed, Barbara, 11, 96, 169. See also 146, 179 Masculine symbolic order; “mon- Estatuto da Igualdade Racial [Statute strous feminine” of Racial Equality], 102 “Cultural mulatto”, 20, 154 Eugenics, 106 Evangelical caucus, 146, 148. See also Evangelicals D Evangelicals, 146, 148, 178 DaMatta, Roberto, 72, 94–96, 159, Evolutionist theories, 11, 12, 36, 107 160 Evo Morales Ayma, 157, 158 Dawkins, Richard, 11, 12, 160, 161, 170. See also The Selfsh Gene; Neo-Darwinism F Deferred Action for Childhood “Fable of three races”, 159 Arrivals (DACA), 142 Fairey, Shepard, 14, 132–134, 175, Degler, Carl, 5 176 Delomas, Sean, 84, 85 Felldesign [Fellipe Elias da Silva], 69, Dilma Bolada, 103, 170 71, 163 “Dilma, Coração Valente”, 128, 130, Fernandes, Florestan, 5 131, 174 Fetishism, 29, 30 Index 205

Filho, Mario, 73, 163. See also O Horário Gratuito Político Eleitoral negro no futebol brasileiro [Free Political Advertising Time], Flamengo, 73, 74, 163, 164 127 Fluminense, 73, 164 Fome Zero [Zero Hunger], 151 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act I [FISA], 90 Imagined communities, 164 Freud, Sigmund, 29. See also Impeachment, 146, 170, 172 Castration Imperialism, 9, 10, 77, 78, 80, 84, 89, Freyre, Gilberto, 5, 55, 101, 107. See 93, 113. See also U.S. Imperialism also Lusotropicalism; Lusotropical International Monetary Fund, 43, 171 civilization Iotti [Carlos Henrique Iotti], 96, 168 Fuller, Matthew, 12, 152 Futebol [soccer], 69, 72–75, 117, 163. See also Embaixada; J Embaixadinha; Flamengo; Joaquim Barbosa [Joaquim Benedito Fluminense; Vasco da Gama; Jogo Barbosa Gomes], 148 Bonito Jogo bonito, 69, 163 Johnson, Davi, 12, 152 Jorge Ben Jor [Jorge Dullio Lima G Menezes], 75, 164 Gabeira, Fernando Paulo Nagle, 118, Justus, Roberto, 147 172 Gaze, 11, 26, 29–31, 53, 96. See also Male gaze; Voyeurism K General Carlos Alberto Brilhante Kamel, Ali, 20, 21. See also Nós Não Ustra, 147 Somos Racistas Gilberto Gil, 102, 114 Kristeva, Julia, 11, 96, 169. See also Globalization, 9, 77, 102 Patriarchal societies Google, 15, 152 Greenwald, Glenn Edward, 90 L Lacan, Jacques, 30, 155 H Latuff, Carlos, 82–84, 165, 166 Haddad, João, 147 Law of the Disappeared, 130 Haitian immigration, 147, 179 Li, Stephanie, 8, 54, 56, 176. See also Hasenbalg, Carlos, 5 “race-specifc, race-free language” Heart of Darkness, 28, 154, 155 Lula [Luiz Inácio Da Silva], 7–9, Hélio De La Peña [Hélio Antonio do 11, 41–43, 46, 47, 50, 63, 78, Couto Filho], 28, 64, 154, 155, 87–89, 98, 99, 102, 118, 126, 162 127, 135–138, 146, 148–151, Hollande, François, 167 155–158, 169, 173. See also “A Hope and change, 8, 57, 60, 68, 115, esperança venceu o medo” [hope 131, 138 206 Index

trumped fear]; lulismo; “Pai do Miscegenation, 7–8, 20, 41, 54, 56, Povo” [father of the people] 72, 77, 90, 101, 102, 117, 163 Lulismo, 127, 173 Miscigenação, 77. See also Mestizaje; Lusotropical civilization, 107 Miscegenation Lusotropicalism, 101 Misogyny, 171 Lute [Lunarde Teles dos Santos], 43, Mitchell, W.J.T., 56 44, 156 Monstrous feminine, 96, 169 Moraes, Vinicius de, 24, 25, 33, 34, 69. See also Orfeu da Conceição M Movimento do Passe Livre [Free Pass Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria, 73, Movement], 135 77, 153 Mulatto, 4, 17, 18, 20, 24, 31, 38, “Mãe do Povo” [Mother of People], 41, 48, 55, 56, 70, 77, 96, 117, 127 118, 160. See also “Cosmopolitan “Mistaken identity hypothesis”, 173 mulatto”; “Cultural mulatto”; Maggie, Yvonne, 21 “Tragic mulatto” Male gaze, 11, 96 Multiculturalism, 7, 8, 54 Mandela, Nelson, 46, 118 Multiracialism, 7 Marina Silva [Maria Osmarina Marina Mulvey, Laura, 30, 31 Silva Vaz de Lima], 146, 148, 180 Muslim ban, 144. See also Muslim Masculine symbolic order, 169 registry McCain, John, 53, 68, 119. See also Muslim registry, 144 Wardrobegate Media ecology, 152 The Meme Machine, 11, 161, 170 N Meme/memes, 6, 10–13, 15, 64, 85, National Security Agency (NSA), 103–105, 112, 117, 152, 160, 10, 90, 167. See also “Boundless 162. See also Memetics informant” Memetics, 6, 10–13, 15, 64, 85, 103– Neo-Darwinism, 11, 12, 104, 105, 105, 112, 117, 152, 160, 162 170 Mensalão, 149 Neo-fascism, 144, 177, 178 Mercadante, Aluízio, 146 Neoliberal, neoliberalism, 2, 14, 57, Merkel, Angela, 13, 88, 90, 105, 106 102, 142, 144, 177 Mestiçagem, 7, 10, 13, 20, 24, 38, Neves, Aécio, 13, 14, 126, 127, 72, 90, 101–103, 105, 107, 108, 131–133, 135, 138 114, 115, 117 Neves, Tancredo, 126, 131, 175 Mestizaje, 1. See also Miscigenação; Nganang, Alain Patrice, 3, 5, 151 Miscegenation Niemeyer, Oscar, 161 Mia Couto [António Emílio Leite North American Free Trade Couto], 3, 5, 151 Agreement (NAFTA), 143, 144 Millenials, 14, 119, 134, 135 Nós Não Somos Racistas, 20 Index 207

O Perot, Ross, 144, 177 Obama-love, 9, 68. See also Emphatic Petismo, 127 virality of love Petrobrás, 92, 93, 113, 147. See also Obama-mania, 13, 15, 120, 121, 139 Pré-ItalicSal [Pre-Salt] “Obama phenomenon”, 49, 117, 120, Phallocentric, 96 122 Plano de Aceleração do Crescimento “Obama project”, 19, 57, 58, 124, [Plan of Growth Acceleration], 87 173 Populism, 143, 146 “Obama revolution”, 120 Post-racial, post-raciality, 1–3, 20, 21, “Obama-sign”, 51, 56–58 51–57, 141 Obama Sr., Barack Hussein, 34, 35, Pré-Sal [Pre-Salt], 10, 80, 83, 93 37, 38, 40, 43 Pre-Salt, 93 Obamization, 13, 117, 121. See also Presidencialismo de Coalição [Coalision To obamize Presidentialism], 137 Obamize, 13, 117, 118 Protestos de Junho [June’s Protests], O negro no futebol brasileiro, 73, 163 135 “Operação Bandeirante”, 128 Putin, Vladimir, 13, 108–112 Orfeu da Conceição, 24, 33, 34, 39, 69

R P Race-specifc, race-free language, 8, Paes, Eduardo, 63 54, 55, 56 “Pai do Povo” [Father of the People], Racial contract, 56, 160 127 Racial democracy, 5, 6, 8, 22, 28, 31, Palin, Sarah, 53, 101, 169. See also 38, 46, 56, 73, 77, 84, 85, 102, Wardrobegate 112, 147, 163 Parnovov, Georgi, 107 Racial diversity, 8, 55, 56 Partido da Social Democracia Racial eliminativism, 160 Brasileira [Party of Brazilian Racial medium, 57 Social Democracy], 14, 126 Racial tensions, 2, 3, 8, 49, 54, 119 Partido do Movimento Democrático Racism, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 21, 22, 32, Brasileiro [Brazilian Democratic 40–42, 47, 50, 54, 57, 62, 73, Movement Party], 122, 146 84, 85, 102, 118, 147, 150, 160, Partido dos Trabalhadores [Workers’ 163 Party], 8, 14, 41, 69, 80, 87, Rede Sustentabilidade [Sustainable 102, 122–128, 131, 132, 139, Network], 146, 148, 180 147, 148, 156, 170. See also Regi [Reginaldo Moreira], 93, 168 Lulismo; Petismo Reverend Al Sharpton, 84 Partido Verde [Green Party], 118, 122 Reverend Jeremiah Wright, 21, 49, Pasquim, 162, 165 158 Patriarchal societies, 169 Roberlan [Roberlan Borges], 58–60, Peçanha, Nilo, 41, 155 161 Pedaladas fscais, 172 Rust Belt states, 143 208 Index

S U Samba, 6, 9, 24, 65, 66, 72, 123, 164 2008 U.S. economic crisis, 43, 88, Sampson, Tony D., 9, 11, 12, 68, 118 105, 152. See also Contamination; 2008 U.S. elections, 1, 5, 15, 17, 20, “Emphatic virality of love”; Viral 53 contagion; Virology U.S. imperialism, 9, 10, 77, 78, 80, Samuca [Samuel Rubens de Andrade], 84, 89, 93, 113 43, 157 UN General Assembly, 91, 167, 168 Sanders, Bernie, 143, 144, 177 União Nacional dos Estudantes Santana, João, 99, 127, 130, 169 [National Students Union], 80 Sarkozy, Nicholas, President of France, Unidades de Polícia Pacifcadora 43 [Pacifed Police Unities], 69 The Selfsh Gene, 11, 161, 170 United Nations (UN), 64, 78. See also Scopic drive, 30. See also Scopophilia UN General Assembly Scopophilia, 30 Senegalese immigration, 147, 179 Sérgio Cabral [Sérgio de Oliveira V Cabral Santos Filho], 63, 73, 118, Vasco da Gama, 70, 73–75, 163 172, 173 Viral contagion, 12 Serra, José, 127, 131 Virology, 11, 105 Silva, Nelson do Valle, 5 Voyeurism, 30 Skidmore, Thomas, 5, 20 Snowden, Edward, 10, 90, 91, 167, 168 W “Social contract”, 160 Wardrobegate, 169 Social Darwinism, 107. See also West, Cornel, 142–145, 160, 177, Evolutionist theories 178 Solda [Luiz Antônio Solda], 84, 166 Whitening, 4, 20, 24, 101, 153, 155, Sontag, Susan, 153 160 Wikipedia, 112, 171, 172 Wisnik, José Miguel, 72, 73, 164 T World Trade Organization (WTO), Telles, Edward, 5 143 Temer, Michel, 146, 178 “Tragic mulatto”, 20, 153, 154 Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP), 143, Y 144 Yahoo, 15, 152 Trump, Donald, 14, 142–145, 147, Yes, We Can, 3, 66, 67, 120, 126, 177, 178 133, 135