UC Berkeley

This dissertation broadly focuses on Inter-American relations and the concept of political utopia. It argues that Brazilian literary and cultural productions that portray progressive revolutionary pursuits ambivalently produce the no-space, or "ou-topos," where Brazil meets Latin America. Brazil's major national essays written by authors such as Eduardo Prado and Sergio Buarque de Holanda developed an argument concerning Brazilian identity and difference by highlighting the positive consequences of its peaceful imperial past compared with Latin America's early tumultuous attempts to implement democracy. Tracing two competing historical narratives, I argue that the Brazilian national essays have overlooked progressive revolutionary events such as the Revolução Praieira (1848), the War of Canudos (1897), and the Intentona Comunista (1935) and made them secondary/regional to Brazilian identity even though they were portrayed in the work of major Brazilian writers and artists Castro Alves, Euclides da Cunha, Jorge Amado, and Glauber Rocha. While highlighting the efforts to abolish slavery and implement a more egalitarian and democratic system, these writers and artists established a network of solidarity with Latin American intellectuals who shared a similar ideology. These connections contradicted the narrative of difference and isolation in the Brazilian national essay. For the republican and abolitionist poet Castro Alves, this ideological connection with Latin American intellectuals is apparent in his references to the Andean region as a space of desired democracy. In the case of Da Cunha, the same link is observed in his unfulfilled desire to write a book on Latin America, and in the letters he exchanged with Latin American intellectuals. Amado's connection with Spanish-speaking countries led him to build friendships with Pablo Neruda and Diego Rivera. For Rocha, this proximity is visible in Terra em Transe (1967). Through the voices of these writers and artists, I follow the thread connecting the abolitionist and republican condoreiro Romantic school (to which Castro Alves belonged) to Latin America across time.