“Brazil, Show Your Face!”: AIDS, Homosexuality, and Art in Post-Dictatorship Brazil1 By Caroline C. Landau Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts In the Department of History at Brown University Thesis Advisor: James N. Green April 14, 2009 1 Cazuza, “Brasil,” Ideologia, Universal Music Group, 1988. My translation Acknowledgements Writing this thesis would not have been possible without the help, guidance, and support of many people. While in Brazil, I had the tremendous pleasure of getting to know the archivists at Associação Brasileira Interdisciplinar de AIDS (ABIA) in Rio de Janeiro, particularly Aline Lopes and Heloísa Souto, without whose help, patience, enthusiasm, goodwill, suggestions, and encyclopedic knowledge of AIDS in Brazil this thesis would never have come to fruition. Thank you also to Veriano Terto, Jr. from ABIA for agreeing to speak with me about AIDS grassroots organization in an interview in the fall of 2007. I am grateful to Dr. Vânia Mercer, who served as a sounding board for many of my questions and a font of sources on AIDS in Brazil in the early 1990s and presently. Thank you to Patricia Figueroa, who taught me the ins-and-outs of the Brown University library system early on in the research of this thesis. Thank you also to the Brown University Department of History for the stipend granted to thesis writers. Part of my research is owed to serendipity and luck. I count as one of my blessings the opportunity to have met Jacqueline Cantore, a longtime friend of Caio Fernando Abreu’s and former MTV executive in Brazil. I owe to Jacqueline a richer understanding of the climate of the 1980s and 1990s in Brazil. Her time and willingness to share her memories with me have been invaluable. I am indebted to Jennifer Lambe, a graduate student of Latin American history, for her indispensible comments and edits on my draft. Her attention to detail, knowledge of the subject area, and keen insights have helped me to craft a more cohesive narrative. Professor Nancy Jacobs, the current director of the thesis writing program, has been a constant source of support in the process of researching and writing my thesis, both in terms of 2 discussing technicalities, such as citations and note-taking, and with regards to her general enthusiasm and guidance. Her wish to develop thesis writers into critical thinkers and careful historians has exposed to me the nuances and intricacies of telling histories, and for this I am especially grateful. Thank you to my family and friends, who throughout the research and writing process opened up my thoughts and questions to discussion, offered their feedback, and encouraged me. Very special thanks go to my uncle David Zugman, a Brazilian music aficionado who supplied me with some very valuable opinions about Tropicália and the political climate that produced it. Thank you to Dad and Brian for their constant encouragement, Jon for his patience, and most of all, thank you to my Mom, who tirelessly edited draft after draft of this thesis, helped me decipher even the most indecipherable Brazilian texts, and passed on to me my passion for Brazil. Eu te amo, mamãe. Finally, Professor James N. Green has been my most ardent supporter since my first year at Brown. Professor Green was not only the first to introduce me to Brazilian history, but also fostered in me the desire to think and dream big. His zest for Brazil, rigorous scholarship, and dedication to undergraduate students will remain with me forever as powerful lessons; without his constant enthusiasm, careful planning and editing, and belief in my project, this thesis never would have come to be. Beyond this, Professor Green has been a mentor in every aspect of my academic life, devoting countless hours to developing projects and advising me. For all of this, I am forever grateful. 3 This thesis is for Cazuza, Renato Russo, and Caio Fernando Abreu, without whom our lives would be all the poorer. This thesis is for Mom, Dad, Brian, and Jon, without whom I could not have told these stories. 4 Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………6 Chapter One: Brazil: Democracy, Authoritarianism, and Back…………………………………19 Chapter Two: The Making of a Brazilian Epidemic…………………………………………….42 Chapter Three: Cazuza: Iconoclastic Youth, Transcendental Death…………………………….63 Chapter Four: Renato Russo: Contradictions in Music and Life………………………………...93 Chapter Five: Caio Fernando Abreu: Exploring AIDS in the Gay Metropolis………………...120 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...142 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………….....147 5 “Brazil, Show Your Face!”: AIDS, Homosexuality, and Art in Post-Dictatorship Brazil2 Introduction In an interview printed on July 1, 1992 in Rio de Janeiro’s leading newspaper, O Globo, the interviewee, Renato Russo, became incensed. Russo, aside from being a Brazilian rock superstar, national celebrity, icon for youth culture, and acclaimed poet of his time, was also openly gay. Yet after Russo patiently answered several questions about his sexuality, he bristled for a different, albeit related, reason. When asked if there was any truth to the spreading rumors that he was HIV-positive,3 Russo erupted, “Such bad vibes! I don’t have AIDS. What an idiotic question. They once asked me that at Circo Voador [an avant-garde venue for Brazilian artists in Rio], and I never went back there.”4 Russo’s outburst underscores more than mere irritation at the interviewer’s prodding question. After all, celebrities by virtue of their public exposure must forever worry about how they project images of themselves and about how their public receives and interprets such images. The interviewer’s question about Russo’s serostatus therefore reflected a more pressing reality: a host of factors, the most prominent of which was Russo’s homosexuality, incited speculations that he was HIV-positive. While Russo attempted to broadcast the representation of himself as a healthy gay man, his fans suspected quite another truth. As it turns out, Russo’s fans 2 Cazuza, “Brasil,” Ideologia, Universal Music Group, 1988. My translation 3 The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) causes Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which includes a wide spectrum of physical ailments that are ultimately fatal. The term “HIV-positive” denotes that someone is carrying the HIV virus. 4 “Mas que baixo astral! Eu não estou com AIDS. Que pergunta idiota! Uma vez, no Circo Voador, também me perguntaram isso, e eu nunca mais voltei lá.” Renato Russo, Júlio Vasco, Renato Guima, ed., Conversações com Renato Russo (Campo Grande: Letra Livre Editora, 1996), 150. My translation. were correct. Russo was HIV-positive at the time of the interview, but he denied his illness until the day he died, of complications due to AIDS.5 Renato Russo is merely one person, albeit a famous one, who was forced to navigate his way through the intersecting spheres of AIDS and homosexuality in Brazil during the 1980s and 90s. The arrival of AIDS in Brazil in 1983 threw many established customs into chaos, most notably the spirit of sexual liberation that had preceded it. AIDS arrived in Brazil during a slow process of political re-democratization. This process of re-democratization, called abertura (political opening), officially occurred from 1974 to 1985. Abertura was a centralized but lengthy effort to retreat from and reverse Brazil’s brutal twenty-one year authoritarian military dictatorship (1964-1985). The period of the military dictatorship is difficult to categorize. During the military dictatorship, Brazil saw many advances, including a World Cup victory in 1970 and the Brazilian “economic miracle,” a gross domestic product growth of an average of a staggering 11.2 percent yearly with relatively little inflation, from 1968 to 1973.6 At the same time, however, the period of the dictatorship was one that severely restricted the rights and civil liberties of Brazilian citizens. Abertura was the Brazilian government’s attempt to re- democratize, which segments of civil society pushed to the limits. Yet just when the country enjoyed the new growth of many social movements that had been silenced under the dictatorship, AIDS brought many elements of Brazil’s social progress to a standstill. Initially referred to as a “gay cancer” or “gay plague” because its first victims in Brazil were gay men, HIV/AIDS caused widespread panic and fear because it was poorly understood, 5 Arthur Dapieve, Renato Russo: o trovador solitário. (Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, 2000), 11. 6 Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil, trans. Arthur Brakel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 293. 7 incurable, and virtually untreatable, traits people customarily ascribed to cancer and plagues.7 Because AIDS became synonymous with homosexuality, many gay men felt the need to re- examine the consequences and implications of being openly gay in the face of AIDS. Some men who had once proudly declared their homosexuality abruptly crept back into the closet, fearing that being openly gay would label them as carriers of HIV and, consequently, as social pariahs. Some gay men mobilized to fight against AIDS, strengthening their communities and uniting against the clearest threat to have ever descended upon them.8 They demanded rights for the ill and decried the commonplace notion that homosexuality implied AIDS, and vice-versa. While many men who were seropositive shrunk from admitting to their disease, others openly did, encouraging dialogue and refusing to live and die as outcasts. This thesis presents the cases of three Brazilian male celebrities and artists—Cazuza, Renato Russo, and Caio Fernando Abreu—who died of complications due to AIDS in the 1990s and were all in some way connected to gay communities. Cazuza, Russo, and Abreu, moreover, were strong voices for their generation in which their stories were paradigmatic of the events through which Brazil was living.