Paulo Moreira

Paul Leduc Reads Rubem Fonseca: The Globalization of Violence or The Violence of Globalization

The only contemporary Mexican filmmaker who features prominently in Cinema de Lagrimas is Paul Leduc (1942). In 2006 Leduc would reciprocate Nelson Pereira dos Santos and make a “Brazilian” movie: an adaptation of a series of short stories by Rubem Fonseca called El Cobrador—In God We Trust. The appearance of the name Leduc in Cinema de Lagrimas is not accidental nor a whimsical choice on the part of Nelson Pereira dos Santos. The initial strategy in this chapter is parallel to the one I used in the previous chapter: we shall go through three important films by Leduc to understand El Cobrador within the context of Leduc’s works and particular interests. Paul Leduc is the director of three hallmarks of post-Golden Age Mexican cinema: Reed: Mexico Insurgente (1971), Frida, Naturaleza Viva (1984), and ?Como Ves? (1986).

When Mexican Poets Come to Rio de Janeiro

The Brazilian poems of Carlos Pellicer and the Mexican poems of Ronald de Carvalho marked the beginning of a more sustained tradition of travel literature within Latin America. In these cases Latin Americans took advantage of an increase in contacts through the establishments of embassies and consulates and initiatives of cultural diplomacy to establish an important, if overlooked, line of contact between them. It only helped that several important Latin Americans worked in diplomacy and the consummate example of the multiple possibilities of such a situation is Alfonso Reyes’s large literary output in Brazil, ranging from essays such as “Mexico en una nuez” to some of his best poems and short stories and even the detailed, shrewd political analyses in his diplomatic reports.1 This production is considered eccentric only because it does not take place in Paris, the quintessential meeting place for Latin Americans in the knowledge or at least curious about cultures or languages relegated to the margins of the so-called World Republic of Letters.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos and the Mexican Golden Age of Cinema

Nelson Pereira dos Santos (1928) is arguably the most influential Brazilian film director after Glauber Rocha (1939–1981), having been cited as a reference by a number of Brazilian filmmakers, from Rocha himself to Walter Salles.1 Although Pereira dos Santos has often been identified with Cinema Novo, he actually belongs to an older generation. Since his debut, a few years before the Brazilian Nouvelle Vague of the 1960s, Pereira dos Santos pioneered themes, approaches, and aesthetic formats that were subsequently taken up by other Brazilian directors. To contain his 50-year-old career strictly within the scope of Cinema Novo is an oversimplification of the importance of his work for Brazilian cinema.

Ronald de Carvalho (and Carlos Pellicer): Modern Poets of America

Most people recognize the great importance, at least on a symbolic level, of the generation of writers, painters, architects, and philosophers that participated in the Ateneo de la Juventud,1 a society for study and lecture founded after a cycle of conferences in 1907/1908 and active until 1914, after which its members continued to participate actively in the cultural, artistic, and political life in Mexico.2 Their questioning of positivist tenets in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria against the cientificos (a group instituted as a government faction) and their defense of lay education against the interference of conservative Catholics gained symbolic momentum as these actions preceded the revolution that ended Porfirio Diaz’s rule, which had lasted from 1884 to 1911. Because of that, the Ateneo de la Juventud has become a herald (to a great extent by its members’ own account) of the new Mexico that came into being with the Revolution, even though their relationship with the old and new regimes was ambiguous.3

Undercurrents, Still Flowing

In 1991 the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco (1962) bought his first camera—an instrument that was to become a key element of his work—and spend some time in Brazil while his wife worked on a research grant. In several interviews Orozco highlighted the importance of this stay in Brazil in his artistic development: I was very impressed when I discovered the Brazilian landscape as well as Brazilian sculptural and musical traditions from the 1950s on. Those months were influential in my life and on my work; for the first time my travel and my work became complementary techniques and disciplines. (October Files, 85–86) During that stay in Brazil Orozco produced one of his first major works, Turista Maluco [Crazy Tourist]. This piece consists, as it was to become a habit in Orozco’s work, of a photograph that registered the artist’s lonely intervention in the after-hours of a street market in Cachoeira, a small colonial town on the margins of the Paraguacu river in the state of Bahia. Its name (originally in Portuguese) came from “two or three drunk guys” who amused themselves by shouting out loud “turista maluco!” while Orozco arranged a few unsalable oranges over the stalls of the deserted market and started snapping photos (To Make an Inner Time, 189).

Érico Veríssimo’s Journey into Mexico

Erico Verissimo (1905–1975) is one the most popular Brazilian novelists of the twentieth century. His trilogy O Tempo e o Vento1 fixed the image of his native state, Rio Grande do Sul, in the national imagination and Verissimo became known as one of the few Brazilians authors who could make a living out of his work in mid-twentieth century.2 He attained more critical acclaim than Jorge Amado, who also wrote a series of bestsellers, but either the sheer extent of his popularity or the large uneven corpus of novels he wrote has at times prevented Verissimo from receiving his due as a major novelist in Brazil of that time.

The Delicate Crime of Beto Brant and Felipe Ehrenberg

Beto Brant is one of the most talented of the generation of filmmakers who appeared in the 1990s during the so-called Retomada. Brant shares with other directors of his generation—not only in Brazil, but in Argentina and Mexico, the two other Latin American countries with strong cinematic traditions—some basic traits. Some experience with other forms of audiovisual production (TV advertising and music video clips); a certain reliance on the submittal of projects for foreign and/or government grants as sources of financing for self-produced movies; and the exploration of elements commonly associated with documentaries, such as relatively small, mobile crews, real locations, and nonactors. However, unlike most of his peers, Brant is willing to experiment beyond the conventional model of the well-made plot that has marked the Brazilian production, preoccupied with recovering the ground lost to Hollywood in the national box office.1

Why and for What Purpose Do Latin American Fiction Writers Travel? Silviano Santiago’s Viagem ao México and The Roots and Labyrinths of Latin America

As fiction, “Paramo” was light-years ahead of the two dreadful novels written by Brazilians and set in Mexico, which we briefly mentioned in “First Undercurrents” (Affonso Celso’s Lupe) and in the chapter dedicated to Erico Verissimo’s Mexico—Historia duma Viagem (Vianna Moog’s Toia).1 But it is typical of Guimaraes Rosa’s intricate baroque games of mirrors that his homage to Juan Rulfo was a short story set in Colombia, not in Mexico. The great Mexican novel in Brazilian literature was to be written in 1995 by Silviano Santiago, a fellow mineiro (born in the the state of Minas Gerais as was Guimaraes Rosa).