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Mestizo Memories: Hybridity, Eroticism and Haunting

Beatriz Jaguaribe Mediatic Mulatas and Martyred Slaves Mediatic Mulatas Martyred Slaves

During the carnival festivities in , the Globo television *In this essay, I will use the Portuguese network featured the mediatic samba of Valéria Valenssa, better known spelling of the word as the mulata Globeleza. Adorned only by painted designs and the tech- mulata instead of the English version. For nical paraphernalia of special effects, Globeleza dances on the flattened a definition of patiche surface of the TVscreen. Her syncopated samba flashes like a neon sign see Frederic Jameson, 87 that spells exoticism, eroticism, ecstasy. Glimmering between commer- 1991. cials and TV programs, Valéria’s glorious body announces the upcom- ing carnival and promotes the television network of Rede Globo. After all, Valéria is not just an anonymous mulata but the mulata Globeleza, the one who entices the television spectators and keeps them attuned to the carnival events as seen through the lens of Rede Globo. Globeleza’s constant smile and flawless body shine with an impenetrable superfi- ciality that does not enhance social conflict or problematize ethnic sub- jectivities. She is an apparition without any haunting: a pastiche of an archetypal mulata.*

Globeleza is one more icon in the vast mass media and consumer packaging of national culture. Together with the canned version of the traditional black bean dish known as feijoada, the fake replicas of Baroque architecture in shopping malls, the pasteurized samba groups and the televised series of historical moments of Brazilian history that range from the colonial saga to the Guerilla warfare of the Rebellious Years, Globeleza partakes of the selling of the national identity as a con- sumer commodity.

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Yet, if a staple feature of consumer culture is an incessant demand for the new, how gating eye that permeates orientalist fantasies certainly colors the gaze cast upon her body. are these narratives and icons of the nation continuously remodeled? Furthermore, how But the cultural implications of the carnivalesque mulata cannot be packaged as just an does the past resurface in a narrative of the contemporary that stresses the notion of an objectified fetish. Her eroticized body contains a repertoire of inventions and in many of unrepeatable time? If the search for a national identity has been a constant obsession of these the erotic element spells contradictory instances of silencing and empowerment, the Brazilian intelligentsia, the remembrance of the past has not had a similar force. Can pleasure and subjugation (for an analysis of master-slave erotics, see Dayan 1998). In cru- the narratives of an imagined community be sustained without resorting to the historical cial ways the evaluation of the mulata dialogues with foundational narratives, national past? Evidently, many different kinds of memory can be activated by forms of collective imaginaries and social-political disputes. As an offspring of both black and white parent- belonging that do not rely on historical narratives of the national past. But if narratives of age, the figure of the mulata distills a particular ambiguity that is often at the heart of history are muted, the hybridity of ’s culture attests to a diversity of legacies that Brazilian social and racial relations. As has been exhaustively documented and necessarily harkens to a historical displacement and encounter. In football matches, in researched, the Brazilian racial option was framed by a whitening ideal espoused by the religious practices, in carnival festivities what is constantly on display is the transcultural elites after the abolition of slavery and throughout the early decades of the twentieth cen- diversity of the nation. tury (Skidmore, 1974). Such an option was both occasioned by Eurocentrism and racism and by the sheer impossibility of ignoring the overwhelming majority of racially mixed Featuring the world’s largest black diaspora that resulted from the massive importa- Brazilians. tion of African slaves throughout a large part of its history, Brazil also saw the influx of European and Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century (see Although already present in several literary accounts of the late nineteenth century, the História 1998). Regional diversity, contrasting ethnic elements and cultural scenarios of erotic glorification of the mulata was largely undertaken in popular music. Modernist the country’s major cities and the globalized circulation of consumer goods and media paintings of the 20’s and 30’s further enhanced the appeal of the mulata as an allegorized technologies undermine the notion of a unified national identity. But, a concern with the body of cultural identity. The contemporary voices that question the fetishistic eroticiza- 88 national is still very much a part of the current agenda and a resilient imagined commu- tion of the mulata are thus debating throughout a range of representations as this national 89 nity persists although the former unifying symbols of samba and carnival no longer have allegory enters into conflict with other competing narrations that question this symbolo- the same resonance. The city that forged the national popular culture, Rio de Janeiro, is gy. Religious sectors, members of the black movement, academic scholars as well as now no longer either the nation’s capital or economic center. Yet, for many decades Rio artists and media producers all have a stake in defining their relation to the frayed sym- de Janeiro was the synecdoche of the national legacy. bology of the national mulata (see Burdick’s 1998, discussion of the definition of Black liberation icons). As capital of the nation until the 1960’s, Rio’s popular culture expressed by the samba, football and the carnival festivities was given widespread recognition by means of the What concerns me in this essay is how the representations of the mulata allegorize the new media technologies. During the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in the 1930’s, the sacred and the profane into a national memory. As an erotic and national symbol, the body imperative need to offer unifying symbols, narratives and images capable of forging imag- of the mulata evokes the historical foundational origins that made the emergence of ined communities had a decisive influence in promoting the city’s hybrid culture as mulatos possible in the Brazilian New World. It is here that the legacy of slavery comes national culture through media productions. into focus by means of these mestizo memories.

The dancing body of Globeleza, therefore, partakes of a lengthy lineage of mulatas Does this memory of slavery haunt the contemporary? In a nation beset by the pursuit that were allegorized as the celebrating mestizo body of the nation. Overtly present in the of modernity how does the past resurface? In many ways, the consumer packaging of cul- media coverage of the events, an obligatory feature of the musical shows that tural identity is a sign of modernity. Globeleza’s samba is largely mediatic and even her cater to tourists and exported as a national icon, the figure of the mulata has been dense- body paint is usually futuristic. The replicas of baroque architecture in the shopping mall ly eroticized and exoticized, (Corrêa 1996: 35-50). Yet, to reduce the iconic mulata to a confirm a divorce between the past and the present where the past is reduced to an aes- myth in the Barthean sense of a naturalized cliché does not really uncover the several thetic ornamentation, a neutralized backdrop against the more demanding activities of interpretative wrappings that revolve around her erotic allure (Barthes 1972). The subju- buying and socializing. Finally, historical amnesia is simultaneously addressed and confirmed

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in television series that make history into palatable fiction and in the daily broadcast- In tracing a very selective reading of these mestizo memories I am also asking con- ing of everyday life where events are instantaneously registered and forgotten (see ceptual questions that are partially answered by bodily representations. These represen- H u y s s e n ’s 1995, discussion of media and memory). tations are produced by fictional narratives, artistic expressions, media productions, popular festivities and religion. They are embedded in social practices as well as aes- The past in this sense could be neutralized or museumified as one more item on thetic canons. In the pages that follow, I am limiting my discussion to two core repre- the shelf of available products. But this negates the daily practices of Brazilian social sentations of the mulata: the carnivalized mulata and the martyred mulata as versions of life and imagination where the past resurfaces constantly in religious beliefs, in this national mestizo legacy. These typologies seemingly reproduce the usual feminine authoritarian social practices, in social hierarchical distances, in the blurring of the stereotypes polarized between wantonness and virtue yet the eroticized mulata is not lines between private and public domains, in the family connections and structures of necessarily related to prostitution and the saintly virtue of Anastácia is not dependent on social favor that cancel the impersonality of her virginity. Furthermore, the profane and the sacred become enmeshed into a more modern bureaucratic managements. complex ambivalence because of their spatial and visual overlapping in the carnival fes- tivities and media culture. The methodology employed here is a partial reading of rep- The specificities of Brazil’s alternative resentations in the form of a cultural bricolage that does not attempt to provide empiri- modernities are negotiated, enacted and fab- cal data nor an overall theoretical sociological or anthropological framework. Instead, ricated in the intersections and juxtaposi- I am dealing with selective literary, mass media and carnival representations and their tions between such a palimpsest of temporal relation to a memory of the past. Specifically, I wish to introduce the figure of the slave narratives. In asking whether the past haunts Anastácia as a counterpoint to the mediatic body of Globeleza. Reproduced in paint- the present, images of the contrasting social ings, busts, statuettes, prayer leaflets, T-shirts and an assortment of trinkets, the figure relations in Brazil assemble before me as a of Anastácia depicts a beautiful black woman with astonishing blue eyes. A metal mask montage of emblematic encounters. Maids covers her mouth and an iron necklace encircles her neck. Revered as a saint and mira- 91 and their employers taking different eleva- cle worker by millions throughout Brazil, Anastácia’s cult is particularly strong in Rio tors in the same high-rise building, favela de Janeiro. Globeleza and Anastácia are images of this mestizo legacy and they speak dwellers and middle class inhabitants of: eroticism and suffering; mass media packaging of cultural icons and the mythical enclosed in fenced condominiums sharing a haunting of slavery; carnivalesque celebration and transcendental revelation. common view of each other’s dwellings. And conversely, funk parties frequented by favela youngsters and middle class youth, Anastácia, the sacred slave the public space of the beach and the min- A n a s t á c i a , t h e s a c r e d s l a v e gling of bodies of all classes, hues and con- ditions, the carnival festivities, and the cor- As a religion of images, Catholicism increased its already vast array of saintly icono- poral-cultural intimacy between peoples of differing social status in daily life. T h e graphies in the New World of Latin America. The indigenous Virgin of Guadalupe, the overlapping of the past and the present cannot summarize such contrasts and pious Santa Rosa de Lima, the black Brazilian Nossa Senhora Aparecida are all tran- exchanges. In fact, the contrary argument would suggest that certain kinds of blatant scendental apparitions whose physical traits, nevertheless, bear witness to their emblem- inequality and social violence occur precisely due to the discriminating strategies of atic representation of the hybridity of Latin America’s colonial culture. But the hybrid- modernization implemented in Brazil. Yet, in focusing on the notion of a mestizo ity of such religious iconography does not only surface in the configuration of tran- m e m o r y, I argue that the celebratory carnivalesque hybridity of Brazilian culture has scendental Virgins but also in the fusion of beliefs that wielded together African deities, also another narrative, one that harkens back to the legacy of slavery and links the indigenous spirits and catholic rites. The figure of the slave saint Anastácia partakes of problematic pair of the master and slave to the eroticized body of the mulata. this religious hybridity as she is revered both in popular Catholicism and in the spiritist

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*Combining the Afro- cults of the Umbanda*.Yet, in a city dense with patron saints guarding powers, her bust is flanked by the figures of the black saint São Benedito holding the baby Brazilian candomblé, bakeries, bars and butcher shops, in a metropolis where many of the Jesus and a bust of the anonymous slave. Inside the church filled with icons, images of the Catholicism and Spiritism, Umbanda is façades of working class houses are adorned with favored saints and in Bi z a n t i n e Anastácia and writings in Cyrillic, Anastácia’s face appears surrounded by pink a very popular reli- an urban scenario filled with altars, she was absent until the late 1980’s. roses and next to it is a painting where she is seen without her iron mask or collar. This very gion throughout Brazil. Anastácia was not even to be seen in the churches that pay homage to same image of the beautiful Anastácia without the instruments of her torment is also to be traditional black saints such as São Benedito or Santa Ifigênica . She found in the Anastácia Beauty Salon in the working class district of was also absent from the multitude of umbanda shops that sell images Penha. In a back of Catholic, Afro-Brazilian and Spiritist deities. At the beginning of the room of the salon, twenty-first century, Anastácia’s image is found in many sites of the in the midst of the city. Her plaster bust is sold in most umban- vapors of hair da shops. In natural food stores that also sell dyers and fumes of esoteric relics, Anastácia’s image can be hair dye, An a s t á c i a ’ s purchased stamped on a refrigerator magnet oil l a rge portrait together with an assortment of equally mag- glorifies her as a netized guardian angels and gnomes. paragon of beauty. Her face is lovely In the Museum of the Negro, an ample and serene, the yet modest room annexed to the Church of thick lashed blue the Rosary in downtown Rio, Anastácia’s eyes contrast to her bust is covered with photographs and mes- dark skin, her hair sages of the faithful. In the torrid tempera- is artfully permed tures of the suburban square in Benfica, her and her mouth is bust is protected from the sun and rain inside frosty pink. In the a thatch hut. A sign admonishes that those front room of the who come to pray must only plead for the same beauty shop, good. In front of her pedestal, a stone heart is prints displaying sculpted so the faithful can place their knees representations of inside its charmed circumference while they black beauties con- pray. As in Vaz Lobo where a dissent trast to the masked Anastácia church has a splendid full-length image of Anastácia figure of the saint, the first official Anastácia on the T- shirt of church, The Greek Orthodox Church of the salon atten- Anastácia also has a profusion of her images. dants. From her Encased in a glass box, a full-length man- enslaved figure on the t-shirt to her liberated and glorious portrait, the beauty salon nequin of Anastácia features her wearing a precincts offer an illustrated trajectory of the emblematic saint in a covert message that bejeweled white dress, her hands heavy with rings and her wig coifed in seems to reduplicate the famous cosmetic advertisements of the before and after transfor- the hairspray style of the 50’s. Facing her from the other corner of the mation of homely creatures into beautiful women. entrance is a full-length statue of the Bizantine saint Anastácia also encased in glass. In a room devoted to her miracles, ex-votos that testify to her healing

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Anasácia’s increasing fame in popular Catholicism of Rio de Janeiro caused her story ing the issue of the Abolition of Slavery, the Historical and Artistic Patrimony organized an to be transformed into a radio opera in 1986 and a major television series in 1990. As her iconographic exhibit in the Museum of this church attending to the request of the director of images multiple in a diversity of media, including the carnival parade, Anastácia’s histo- the Museum, Mr.Yolando Guerra” (Schubert 1987:11, author’s translation). ry is the subject of controversy and dispute. The illustration that caused the greatest interest among the visitors was an engraving Her figure is a compelling emblem in the cross roads between the experience of by the French traveler Arago. According to Schubert, Arago had, observed with a quite haunting and the demands of agency. Although reverence for the departed dead and the negative and critical spirit, the Brazilian-Portuguese society of that period and he had belief in the return of ailing or benevolent spirits has a lengthy trajectory in Brazilian been mortified and scandalized by the suffering of the slaves. Arago, according to religiosity, the cult of the slave Anastácia is fairly recent and dates to the late 1960’s. As Schubert depicted in one single engraving the punishments he had witnessed being narrated by John Burdick in his book Blessed Anastácia (1998) and also by the research inflicted in two distinct male slaves. Monseigneur Schubert terminates his article with undertaken by Monseigneur Guilherme Schubert, the origins of Anastácia’s image are the dismissal, traced to an engraving contained in the nineteenth century memoir Souvenirs d’un aveu - “Therefore, we must arrive at the conclusion that no matter how just it is to have compassion gle: voyage autour du monde (1856) by the French traveler Jacques Arago who visited for the sufferings of the black slaves, we cannot accept the liturgical cult of a figure that did Brazil in 1817. In 1968, this engraving was included as part of an exhibit at the Museu not exist and that is based on an engraving that does not depict a woman but a man (rather: do Negro, located at an annex of the Church of the Rosary in downtown Rio. The two men). A popular movement emerged due to the inventive fantasy of Mr.Yolando Guerra. engraving depicts a slave wearing a Flanders Mask and an iron collar. Burdick details This fantasy can serve for a novel, a film, if one wishes. If the Umbanda accepts this, we do how the Museum’s director Yolando Guerra chose the image “as a good illustration of no know. The Catholic Church does not,” (Schubert 1987:11, author’s translation). torture, and included it in the exhibition,” (Burdick, 1998:67). Arago’s engraving reached a wide public when in 1971 the remains of the official liberator of the slaves, Framed by the press as a polemic, the responses to Monseigneur’s Schubert’s curt dis- 94 Princess Isabel, were placed for a two week vigil in the Museum of the Negro. missal revolved around both the testimony of believers and on the arguments of histori- 95 According to Burdick, his informants assured him that when people saw the engraving ans such as Joel Rufino who placed the contention as “the historical conflict between they recognized it as an image of the slave Anastácia. In Burdick’s account, Guerra, orthodox Catholicism and popular Catholicism of which she (Anastácia) is a represen- spoke to an old slave who told him that the image was indeed that of a slave who had tative. The church was an accomplice of slavery and the cult of Anastácia denounces that been known for a long time: she was called Anastácia (1998:68). Guerra then wrote sev- complicity.” The actor Milton Santos who was responsible for the radio opera based on eral articles for spiritist magazines focusing on Anastácia. Burdick describes how A a the slave Anastácia expressed the belief that, “If today Anastácia is not venerated by the member of the Brotherhood of the Rosary, a white woman with spiritist leanings named church, it could happen that in a couple of years she will be...... The opinion of Maria Salomé, was moved by Guerra’s writings and instructed by the spirit of Anastácia Monseigneur merits respect. But the people who encounter comfort in the figure of herself to compose a history of the slave. In Monseigneur Guilherme Schubert’s version Anastácia and identify with her spiritually also deserve respect,” (O Globo, 21 Mar of the cult of Anastácia, the same events are listed but with quite distinct interpretative 1998:1 author’s translations). connotations. In Burdick’s view, Athrough two years of research, Schubert never hid his contempt for the devotion; it is thus not surprising that he arrived at the conclusion, in S c h u b e r t ’s research was undertaken by the express wish of the Archbishop of Rio 1987, that Anastácia had never existed (1998:74). In an article published in the Jornal who had to provide an adequate response to the movement of the canonization of do Brasil in 1987, Monseigneur Guilherme Schubert gives a compact account of his Anastácia begun in 1984. Although couched in scientific historiographical language, research and states: M o n s e i g n e u r’s position reveals the anxiety of the catholic clergy to assert its authori- ty and jurisdiction over what can legitimately be considered sacred and therefore reli- “...1971 there was solemnity, that with all due reason is dear to men of color: the transposi- gious from what is fantastical and therefore mythical. Schubert’s comment on the fig- tion of the mortal remains of the Princess Isabel and her husband the Count d’Eu to the mau- ure of the Princess Isabel as being dear to men of color makes plain that his ecclesi- soleum in Petropolis. Before arriving there on the 29 of July of 1971, they remained for a astic authority is also bound to the official interpretations of Brazilian history that lay civic vigil at the Church of Rosário. In order to accentuate the merits of the Princess regard- great stress on the redeeming figure of the Princess Isabel as the liberator of the s l a v e s .

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Nevertheless, he does offer substantial evidence of the fabrication of A n a s t á c i a ’s origins body does not occupy the same position as the eroticized mulata. Yet, she *For accounts of the several versions of by the Museum director Yolando Guerra. represents a legacy of hybridity that casts into perspective also the body Anastácia’s life see of the erotic mulata. Many accounts of her story stress that she was born Burdick (1998) and Antonio Alves The battle over Anastácia’s historical existence and the conflicting interests that under- in Africa of Bantu origin. In the African born version, Anastácia is sold Teixeira’s version in lie her reception obscures the symbolic relevance of Anastácia’s figure as a memory of slav- into slavery, suffers numerous ordeals, is raped, bears children but refus- Anastácia, escrava e ery and as the haunting of past woes. Similarly to the cultivated figure of the unknown slave es the advances of white men. In the versions where she is born in Bahia, mártir negra, Rio de Janeiro, Eco, no date. whose bust also adorns the Museu do Negro, Anastácia speaks of the power of myth dis- Brazil, Anastácia often is cast as the daughter of the white master with a rupting the linearity of a historical chronology. A live myth that addresses historical con- black slave. In the media renditions she tends to be more rebellious and flicts and brings the past into a haunted present. But equally crucial, Anastácia’s tremendous vocal about the sufferings of the slaves. Yet, in all versions she retains a popularity was also fomented by the mass media productions that reproduced versions of stoic bearing in the face of adversity, torture, rape, exploitation and she her history. nurtures absolute solidarity with the black slaves. In some narratives, the iron mask was placed on her face because she spoke against slavery and Initially broadcast as a radio opera in 1986 that was heard by thousands of listeners, the white masters feared her oratorical powers. In other accounts, she was Anastácia soon became a media phenomenon. Globo network gave extensive coverage to punished for having tasted the sugarcane juice that had been extracted by the petition for Anastácia’s canonization on its hugely popular program Fantástico. In 1990, her endless labors. Many believers stress an acutely poignant-sentimen- the television network Manchete aired the mini-series “The Slave Anastácia.” Designed as tal moment of her narrative when they speak of how she cured the mas- part of a mystical series entitled the Frontiers of the Unknown, the four chapters of the mini- ter’s children as she lay dying on her deathbed suffering from the infect- series were a mega production that cost millions and involved a cast of prominent actors. ed wounds inflicted on her by the iron collar around her neck*. The primary mystical focus, however, soon became embroiled in torrid sexual scenes where 96 the beautiful Anastácia is disputed by a plethora of masculine figures that range from an Despite her intense visual beauty and the unleashed lust she evokes in 97 insatiable Friar to an oppressive plantation owner. her cruel master, Anastácia is not a figure of sexual enticement. Neither is she asexual as the catholic virgins. Rather, Anastácia’s beauty mirrors In his extensive interviews with women devoted to Anastácia, Burdick recounts how the extraordinary loveliness of her soul. Her beauty contrasts with the many worshippers told him they had become believers after seeing the television series. brutality of her masters, the vengefulness of her mistress and the overall (Burdick 1998:76). Even before her apparition on the screen, Anastácia had made her degradation that the slave system afflicts on the very beings of the slave appearance on the carnival floats of the samba schools Mangueira and the champion Vila owners. Her tale is also a narrative about how the dehumanization of the Isabel in the carnival of 1988, the year that celebrated the 100th anniversary of the abolition slave by the white master transforms the master himself into a soulless of slavery. In 1998, the Caprichosos de Pilares paid homage to black leader- object. Her character displays fortitude, magnificence, strength and a ship in the figures of the soccer king Pelé and the politician Benedita da Silva. An allegor- physical and spiritual beauty that empower her to such a degree that she ical float entitled A Black Struggle held the image of Anastácia. Dancing next to the float transcends into sainthood and performs miracles. The wondrous blue and followed by a series of prominent black media stars was the mulata Globeleza who was eyes contrasting against the dark skin are said to have telepathic, sooth- wearing a new hair style and was dressed for the first time with a single adornment on her ing, and healing powers. neck, (O Globo, 24 Feb 1998:10). Melodrama, consumption, fetish, politics, faith and haunting all From prayer leaflets, radio operas, mini-series, carnival floats and the narratives of the revolve around the tortured figure of Anastácia. Sold by the millions as faithful, Anastácia’s story has many versions. In practically all of her images and stories, a plaster bust and an image in a prayer leaflet, Anastácia is also revered Anastácia is portrayed as a singularly beautiful black woman with extraordinary blue eyes. in her different shrines. Anastácias’s multiple representations speak of a The intense blueness of her eyes against the darkness of her skin positions her in an ambigu- re-enchantment of the world in a post mortem dialogue between the dead ous racial zone. If the blue eyes attest to a non-African heritage, the emphasis on Anastácia’s and the living, white and black, men and women.

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Memories of Slavery: Erotics of the Master and Slave The memory of slavery is imprinted in his body and his body is a *For an analysis of source of conflict because it neither conforms to European criteria nor this episode see M e m o r i e s o f S l a v e r y : Antonion Candido’s Erotics of the Master and Slave does it offer the possibilities of an exotic allure. In the same diary where evocative essay, he registers his intellectual and artistic ambitions, Lima explores the con- (1987: 41-42). Slavery was an all pervasive presence during the greater part of Brazilian history. Modernity struction of his social persona and sees himself as a victim of bovarism. and the acceleration towards the future would not only bestow the nation with material Inspired by Jules de Gaulthier’s book, Le Bovarisme, Lima synthesizes wealth, technical means and political supremacy but it would also redeem the legacy of bovarism as the gap between self-image, desire and social fulfillment. slavery. For people of African descent, the remembrance of slavery was inscribed into their This cleavage is most blatantly felt in the frustration of his amorous-erot- very bodies. In a poignant passage in his diary the writer Lima Barreto (1881-1922) refers ic desires. In the tramway a young Italian woman bestows him a glance to a visit to the rural landscape shadowed by ruined plantation houses on the outskirts of full of flirtatious intent but the possibility of an encounter is thwarted as Rio. Contemplating the wreckage of this former wealth, Lima exclaims A I remembered she is led away by her jealous brothers. Nevertheless, Lima ponders: A that the great family from whose slave quarters my grandmother had come was extinguished With that I acquired a certainty, despite being mulatto, my glances may and that from them, directly, by ties of blood or adoption only a handful of mulatos interest ladies and make their brothers suspicious, (Lima Barreto remained, several, thirty or more, of differing conditions and I was the one who promised 1995:73, author’s translation). the most and had the greatest ambitions.The pride of having survived while the slave own- ing family did not is tainted by the historical remembrance of his connection to the slave In another passage of the diary, Lima visits a young Portuguese owners. Such a connection is revealed in his racial configuration as a mulatto. woman who is his friend’s mistress. The friend is not at home but the Miscegenation and the Aties of blood that link him oppressively to a history of disposses- young woman invites him to share an evening meal. They converse pleas- sion activate historical remembrance. Yet, since he is the one to survive he can attempt to antly. Lima enjoys her spontaneity and the placidness of her blue eyes. As 98 transcend his historical plight and intellectually interpret this historical memory. they sit down for their meal they partake of the black beans they both pro- 99 fess to like. Lima remarks, A Black beans do have one thing though, they In fact, the very beginning of Lima Barreto’s diary is marked by this declaration: I am are ugly. But they are tasty, she replied gaily, like a lot of ugly people that Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto. I am twenty-two years old. I am the legitimate son of are ugly but tasty, * (Lima Barreto 1995: 128, author’s translation). The Joao Henriques de Lima Barreto. I was a student at the Polytechnic School. In the future I analogy between Lima’s complexion and the ugliness of the black beans will write the ‘A History of Black Slavery in Brazil’. Two years later, in 1905, Lima once is somewhat softened by his redemptive tastiness. Lima’s own specific again registers his wish to interpret the plight of slavery and asserts; I intend to write a configuration and his personal response to his social circumstances can- novel that describes the lives and works of black people in a plantation. It will be a kind of not be generalized. But at the level of artistic representations and con- black Germinal, with more psychology and greater epic breath, if I manage to achieve this sumer products, the promotion of an erotic allure in black or mestizo men ideal, what a glory!!! Enormous, extraordinary and who knows maybe I will even gain a was heavily censored. Arthur Azevedo’s novel, O mulato (1881) is an European fame. The glory and the immense service I will render to my people and to part exception, as the protagonist is ardently desired by the heroine because of the race that I belong to, (Lima Barreto 1995:84, author’s translation). of his physical charms. Yet, the marriages that took place between mesti- zo men and white women within the circles of the upper classes attempt- Lima never did write either the black Germinal or the history of slavery in Brazil. He ed to whiten the man and emphasized his appeal as pertaining to the did, nevertheless, write a number of novels, short stories and newspaper articles that were domains of knowledge, erudition, and entrepreneurship. openly critical of Brazilian discriminatory practices and social hierarchies. Yet his own self- fashioning was ambiguously positioned between his common cause with people of color The inventor of the mulatto in social theory, the much debated and his intellectual distance as a man of letters. Lima’s social dilemma is further intensified Gilberto Freyre would voice many of the prevailing prejudices when he because in his particular case the mulato condition is internalized as an aesthetic obstacle. emphasized the unaesthetic dimensions of miscegenation. Such a preoc- cupation with the national physique is framed in a sequence that became

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an important theme in the preface to Casa Grande e Senzala(1933). Written in his diary and not to discuss the historical implications or reworked in the preface, Freyre narrates his encounter with a group of Brazilian sailors he specificities of Brazilian slavery but to stress sighted ambling along the snow in Brooklyn. Freyre quotes an American traveler and stress- how in the fabrication of the mestizo legacy, es the words used to characterize the Brazilians: “the fearfully mongrel aspect of most of the opposing pair of the master and the slave the population,” (Gilberto Freyre, 1992). Miscegenation becomes tantamount to mongre- presents both a hierarchical distance and sub- lization. As a denial of the misgivings expressed in his diary, Freyre offers in his preface a jugation and a focus of erotic and cultural different conclusion. The uncomeliness of the mestizo sailors was not due to their mestizo contagion. The cultural practices and lega- physique but to their social circumstances. Centuries of hunger and abuse resulted in an cies of the slaves were not to be confined to ugly people. the slave quarters. African beliefs, cuisine, rhythm and bodily expressions circulated The mestizo body recalls the foundational origins of Brazil and its lengthy legacy of within Brazilian society. slavery. Such foundational origins foreground the dramatic pairing of the master and the slave. Yet, in this dialectic another dimension is added that is usually not accounted for in Hybridity and transculturation thus evoke the classic Hegelian discussion. In the Hegelian confrontation the subjugation of the slave this two-way contact zone that relies on the entails forced work, a chaining of his body to labor and a distancing of the master from the porousness of this cultural fabrication. Such realms of nature and necessity. The master asserts his freedom over the imprisoned body of cultural contagion and transcultural encoun- the toiling slave. While keeping the slave bowed to the ground, the master distances him- ters, however, do not imply either a disman- self from the working body and suffers no direct contagion from the enslaved subjects tlement of hierarchy, nor do they dispel acute although he depends on their subservience in order to be recognized as a master. But the antagonisms and social conflicts. The glaring 100 emergence of the mulato/mulata attests to another type of contact and subjugation. It jolts social disparities between blacks, whites, and the antagonistic pairing of the master-slave into another direction. The sexual encounter mestizos in Brazil are confirmed in every sta- between the enslaved black woman and her master brings forth another form of subjugation tistical study. The debunkment of the myth of where the body of the enslaved woman is physically possessed yet the master places him- racial democracy has been so complete that self into direct contact with the body he subjugates. There is no mediation between these to denounce it has become part of a standard two bodies and the potential offspring bear the evidence of this contact. formulaic rhetoric. At the level of a social imaginary, Alba Zaluar has suggestively argued that the menacing social figure that threatens wealth and life is usually associated to the The nature of this contact was summarized by the polemical anthropologist Gilberto black bandit. But the fluidity and circulation of representations allow for many contradic- Freyre in his study of the influence of the African slave in the patriarchal family in Brazil tory typologies to coexist (Alba Zaluar, 1998:245-318). as: A There is no slavery without sexual depravation. That is the very essence of the regime, (1992: 372). This depravation translates itself as sadism. But such would be the pervasive Carnivalized Memory and Haunting of the Past nature of this domination that it was not limited to the body of the afflicted slave, but was C a r n i v a l i z e d M e m o r y also expressed in the treatment that the patriarchal lords granted to their wives and children, and Haunting of the Past and in the torments the oppressed wives inflicted on their female slaves. As has often been argued, the figure of the mulata represented in the arts, mass media, and Generations of historians devoted to the study of slavery in Brazil have variously docu- the scenarios of the carnival celebrations lacks subjectivity and is overtly displayed as an mented how slaves resisted being cast as victims and sought their freedom by fleeing to erotic body. As a celebratory icon of hybridity, the mestizo body evokes ambiguity. An quilombos, by cultural resistance in the cultivation of African legacies and religious rites, ambiguity that is transformed into seductive allure by means of a bodily erotics. The car- by working within the system in order to purchase their freedom, and finally by open revolt nival celebrations of Rio’s samba schools frequently revolve around both the legacy of and the elimination of their masters. My point in bringing forth this historical evocation is slavery and the explosive enticement of the mestizo body. In the year 2000, as the carni-

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val festivities culminated with the commemoration of the 500 years of the A discovery of must be taken into account, the emphasis that is placed on the motifs associated with Brazil and the samba schools invested heavily in themes of national history. A particular slavery, pride in the Afro-Brazilian heritage and the exaltation of negritude are a very float of the samba school Beija-Flor called the attention of the media and its photographs central feature of the Rio carnival. The decisive figure of the carnavalesco and the spe- were reproduced in the major Rio newspapers. Beija-Flor featured an allegorical float cific political tradition of the samba school will also influence on how bland, creative or shaped like a slave ship. Inside the ship, bare breasted men and women tore at their chains satirical the samba theme and the choreography will be. and hurled cries of freedom towards the public. In a culminating sequence that magnified The choreographed rape scene on the Beija-flor float was contextualized in a broad- the plight of the slaves, a rape scene of an African woman by three white men was enact- er allegorical narrative that detailed the violence and oppression inflicted upon the slaves ed. According to the printed press, the rape scene galvanized the sympathy of the public in their captivity. This narrative also cannot be grasped without reference to the orches- and the theatrical performance was much applauded. tration of forces, mediations, and agents that surround the carnival celebration and prepa- ration. But the point to be made is that the scene itself laid bare an act of violent posses- The fact that these violent and exploitative national origins were retold in the carnival sion and subjugation in a context of festivity, merriment and explosive celebration. The parade amidst an orchestrated explosion of a delirious yet organized festivity could be site of its enactment is crucially significant as it brings forth a retelling of history as a symptomatically read as a particular way of negotiating a haunting of the past and its rela- cathartic spectacle. Is this cathartic spectacle in any way related to the experience of a tion to complex social conflicts. The past is once again revisited and made present by the haunting of the past or the return of the repressed? emergence of social conflicts that continue to shadow daily existence. Yet, the disparity between the rich and the poor, black and white people, men and women is played over and In her evocative account of haunting in sociological imagination, Avery Gordon sug- dissolved by the fusing of categories into the very dynamics of the huge organized folly. gests that: AIf haunting describes how that which appears to be not there is often a An oppressive history emerges but this history is also reinvented by the experience of the seething presence, acting on and often meddling with taken-for granted realities, the festivity itself. ghost is just the sign, or the empirical evidence if you like, that tells you a haunting is 102 taking place. The ghost is not simply a dead or a missing person, but a social figure, and 103 In the particular case of the samba festivities in Rio, a plethora of forces are at work investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life. composing the representations, allegorical floats, costumes, and choreographies that each The ghost or the apparition is one form by which something is lost, or barely visible, or samba school will perform. Alongside the favela communities that may have originally seemingly not there to our supposedly well-trained eyes, makes itself known or apparent constituted the popular basis of the samba schools and that continue to provide its com- to us, in its own way, of course. The way of the ghost is haunting, and haunting is a very posers, percussionists and dancers, the samba schools recruit outsiders known as the particular way of knowing what has happened or is happening, (Gordon 1997:8). Acarnavalescos, middle class professionals to choreograph the parade, design the cos- tumes and allegorical floats (see Vivieros de Castro Cavalcanti, 1999). In this account of sociological haunting, the tenuous visibility of the ghost is a key marker of its near effacement by the codified norms, practices and banalities of daily life. Constellations of celebrities and media stars exhibit smiles, costly costumes and When the ghost emerges it upsets the neutralized narratives of history and disrupts the bronzed bodies in a frenzied competition for the attention of the cameras. A substantial chronology of time as an unrepeatable unfolding. Its presence is uncanny because it number of the participants in the samba school parades are middle class members and brings to light what had been forgotten, purposefully erased or buried. It posits a shad- tourists that have no direct connection to the cultural ambiance of the carnival commu- owed connection between the daily consumption of our lives with an unreckoned past. nities. Furthermore, the samba school festivities are a very profitable business that The emergence of the ghost also distills a web of awe and enchantment as its presence involves the participation of a myriad of municipal authorities, touristic agencies as well defies the narratives of modernity as progress, discardability and incessant acceleration as the substantial influence of the outlaw figures of the Abicheiros who usually are the towards the new. As a figure of memory it probes hidden recesses and erodes the fron- presidents of the majority of samba schools. Such a medley of distinct social forces and tiers between past and present. agents entails that although the samba tunes and lyrics are chosen in a contest between the composers of the samba community, the choice of the choreography, theme, designs When the statesman Ruy Barbosa ordered the burning of the archives related to the and costumes is undertaken by a variety of specialized people. Although such mediations transactions of slavery in Brazil, his gesture was imbued with a progressivist republican

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faith. The effacement of slavery implied a tabula rasa for the nation and in political terms man in blackface and Afro wig. She wears a golden tinsel mask binding her mouth and it attempted to thwart any claims of reparation or ownership by the former slave owners over a heavy collar around her neck. The collar is closed by a heavy lock engraved with the the millions of descendents of slaves that were then supposedly about to be incorporated as word: Brazil. the new citizens of Brazil. Yet, not only was a considerable amount of documentation sal- vaged from the bonfire but the remembrance of slavery was kept alive in the subsequent peri- ods of Brazilian history. It is alive in the umbandista cults that rever the spirits of black slaves School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro known as preto velhos (old black men), who return to earth and impart advice and protection Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the living. It is alive in the cult of the revered ancestors at the candomblé rituals. It is alive in the cult of the slave Anastácia and in the homage paid to the figure of the rebellious leader of the quilombo de Palmares, Zumbi. Yet, can the memory of slavery as visualized in the carnival festivities and in media productions be viewed as a form of haunting or rather the opposite? Does it assert agency over the past or a domestication of those traumatic origins? References

As with the invention of the mestizo legacy, the memory of the past both consolidates Barthes, R. 1972. Mythologies, London: Johnathan Cape imagined communities and posits their conflicting origins. Once a cause of Brazilian cele- Barreto, L. 1995. Diário Íntimo, São Paulo: Brasiliense bratory pride, the notion of cultural hybridity has been widely incorporated and updated as a Burdick, J. 1998. Blessed Anastácia: Women, Race and Popular Chiristianity in Brazil, form of multiculturalism. The mestizo legacy was fashioned as a form of collective binding London: Routledge and it implicitly implied a homogenization of the protagonists of the nation allegorized by Candido, A. 1987. Os olhos, a barca e o espelho, Educação pela noitre & outros ensaios, the mestiço body. The portrait of mestiço Brazil has splintered into class; regional and racial São Paulo: Ática, 41-42 104 disparities and even the insistence on nationalist canons and discourses are at odds with the Corrêa, M. 1996. Sobre a Invenção da Mulata, Cadernos Pagu 6-7, Campinas, 35-50 105 imperative forces of economic and cultural globalization. Even the figure of the rebellious Dayan, J. 1998.Haiti: History and the Gods, Berkeley: University of California Press slave leader Zumbi can be viewed as a cultural icon very much attuned to the diasporic con- Freyre, G. 1992. Casa Grande e Senzala, Rio de Janeiro, p.XIVII sciousness raising of black movements influenced by the United States. Yet, in the figures Gordon, A. 1997. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, of the erotic mulata and the suffering slave Anastácia the contradictions and the seductions Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press of the mestiáo legacy resurface. As seen in the outmoded architecture of Brasília, national História da Vida Privada no Brasil. 1998. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras projects for the future of Brazil have the staleness of dated utopias. In the crisis of the future Huyssen, A. 1995. Twilight Memories, London: Routledge and in the ever increasing amnesiac commodification of the present by the media and con- Jameson, F. 1991. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: sumer culture, the carnivalesque mulata and the sanctified slave are mythical entities that sur- Duke University Press face in daily contradictions. They offer catharsis and epiphany, consumption and redemption, O Globo. 1988. March 21, p.1 eroticism and transcendence, the body and soul of life and death. ______. 1998. February 24,p.10 Schubert, G. 1987. A Escrava Anastácia, Jornal do Brasil, September 15, p.11 As an ending to this discussion of the sacred-profane mestizo body, I would like to Skidmore, T. 1974. Black into white: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought, New focus on a particular carnival image captured by the lens of the photographer Rogério York: Oxford University Press Reis. For many years, Reis has been photographing the periphery of the Rio carnival Teixeira, A.A. Anastácia, escrava e mártir negra, Rio de Janeiro: Eco in black and white images. He has chosen to document what remains of the homemade, Vivieros de Castro Cavalcanti, M.L. 1999. O rito e o tempo, Rio de Janeiro: non- officialized street carnival in Rio. To capture these images, Reis sets up a canvas Civilização Brasileira cloth and the interested street revelers position themselves against that backdrop. Zaluar, A. 1998. Para não dizer que não falei de samba: os enigmas da violÍncia no Amongst his fabulous images of robots, live trees, baby skeletons, and street children Brasil,História da Vida Privada, 4:2, 46-318 dressed as bandit street children is an image of Anastácia. Anastácia is a slender young

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