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Brazil's Northeast has traditionally been considered one of the country's poorest and most underdeveloped areas. In this impassioned work, the Brazilian historian Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. investigates why Northeasterners are marginalized and stereotyped not only by inhabitants of other parts of Brazil but also by nordestinos themselves. His broader question though, is how "the Northeast" came into existence. Tracing the history of its invention, he finds that the idea of the Northeast was formed in the early twentieth century, when elites around Brazil became preoccupied with building a nation. Diverse phenomena-from drought policies to messianic movements, banditry to new regional political blocs-helped to consolidate this novel concept, the Northeast. Politicians, intellectuals, writers, and artists, often nordestinos, played key roles in making the region cohere as a space of common references and concerns. Ultimately, Albuqerque urges historians to question received concepts, such as regions and regionalism, to reveal their artifice and abandon static categories in favor of new, more granular understandings.
List of contents
Foreword / James Green ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. Geography in Ruins 14
The Regionalist Gaze 15
The New Regionalism 21
Regionalist Literature 25
North versus South 29
2. Spaces of Nostalgia 36
Stories of Tradition 36
The Invention of the Northeast 44
Northeastern Pages 74
Northeastern Brush Strokes 109
Northeastern Music 114
Northeastern Dramas 124
3. Territories of Revolt 131
The Inversion of the Northeast 131
Controversy and Indignation 151
Portraits of Misery and Pain 176
Images That Cut and Pierce 184
Seeing through the Camera Eye 192
Conclusion 220
Notes 233
Bibliography 255
Index 269
About the author
Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr.
Summary
One of Brazil’s leading historians denaturalizes the country’s Northeast, showing when, by whom, and for what reasons the region was invented as a region with a particular identity.
