title: “Beauty And The Beast” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Mildred Cook”
Robb, who has journeyed extensively in the country, has a sharp eye for both the beauty and the beast in Brazil. In a visit to Canudos, where the Brazilian Army slaughtered a 19th-century rebel community, he writes that the flooded ruins poke up “like a dreadful memory returning.” Still, in its stylish torrent, “A Death in Brazil” dredges up some cliches. Colonialism was never a chaste affair–least of all in Brazil, where the Portuguese slave masters left a messy mestizo legacy. But in this fevered narrative, Brazil is a bacchanal–“a riot of polymorphous perversity,” “a people of bastard voluptuaries”–where the settlers slept with anything that walked, waddled or mewed. For all his erudition, Robb hasn’t overcome exoticism, just added more syllables.
There are few things more piquant than a good conspiracy theory, and “A Death in Brazil” pulses with them. Brazil wasn’t discovered by errant Portuguese navigators, as the history books say, but seized by Lisbon’s imperialists bent on pre-empting Spain in the New World. Likewise, the popular Brazilian soap operas, or telenovelas, were invented by the dictators to keep the natives quiet. No matter that these tales are all unproved; they make for good copy. Yet much of this copy is borrowed–Robb often helps himself to the thoughts of others, paraphrasing for pages or vaguely using italics instead of quotation marks for clear attribution.
Robb calls his story “a book of omissions.” That might be a disclaimer. The brief presidency of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-92), who nearly ruined the economy and then was impeached on corruption charges, was a low point in Brazilian politics. Robb retells this sordid tale in lascivious detail, as if it were Brazil writ small. What he misses is that the lawful ouster of a president was also emblematic of renascent Latin American democracy.
That’s not all Robb omits. Former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who launched crucial reforms, gets three pages. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the burly union man turned president, gets kinder treatment, but, oddly, is scolded for reaching out to moderates and executives–the very gestures that got him elected. Granted, that sort of detail doesn’t make for tantalizing stories. But it goes down better than tripe.
