Mixed Race Studies

The Slum [O Cortiço]

Oxford University Press
March 2000 (First published in 1890)
240 pages
Paperback ISBN 13: 9780195121872; ISBN 10: 0195121872

Aluísio Azevedo

Edited and Translated by David H. Rosenthal

Features an informative introduction by translator David H. Rosenthal

First published in 1890, and undoubtedly Azevedo’s masterpiece, The Slum is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed novels ever written about Brazil. Indeed, its great popularity, realistic descriptions, archetypal situations, detailed local coloring, and overall race-consciousness may well evoke Huckleberry Finn as the novel’s North American equivalent. Yet Azevedo also exhibits the naturalism of Zola and the ironic distance of Balzac; while tragic, beautiful, and imaginative as a work of fiction, The Slum is universally regarded as one of the best, or truest, portraits of Brazilian society ever rendered.

This is a vivid and complex tale of passion and greed, a story with many different strands touching on the different economic tiers of society. Mainly, however, The Slum thrives on two intersecting story lines. In one narrative, a penny-pinching immigrant landlord strives to become a rich investor and then discards his black lover for a wealthy white woman. In the other, we witness the innocent yet dangerous love affair between a strong, pragmatic, “gentle giant” sort of immigrant and a vivacious mulatto woman who both live in a tenement owned by said landlord. The two immigrant heroes are originally Portuguese, and thus personify two alternate outsider responses to Brazil. As translator David H. Rosenthal points out in his useful Introduction: one is the capitalist drawn to new markets, quick prestige, and untapped resources; the other, the prudent European drawn moth-like to “the light and sexual heat of the tropics.”

A deftly told, deeply moving, and hardscrabble novel that features several stirring passages about life in the streets, the melting-pot realities of the modern city, and the oft-unstable mind of the crowd, The Slum will captivate anyone who might appreciate a more poetic, less political take on the nineteenth-century naturalism of Crane or Dreiser.

(Miscege)nación en O Cortiço

Trans: Revue de Littérature Générale et Comparée
Issue 5 (2008)
10 pages (24 paragraphs)

Brian L. Price, Assistant Professor of Spanish
Wake Forest University

Written a year after the proclamation of Brazilian independence, O Cortiço by Aluisio Azevedo depicts the demographic composition of the country with a naturalistic sense of detail and examines the possible dangers of miscegenation in the new republic. Influenced by racist European theories, Azevedo and his contemporaries feared that the mixing of races would eventually result in diluting the European ancestries which had to be the base of the new society. In the novel, the cortiço—a kind of small proletarian town which abounded in the 19th century—works as a laboratory where the different racial elements converge, entangle and destroy each other. The present essay examines the historical context during which that novel was written and its critical eye focuses on the two main love affairs. In both, a European man marries (has a love relationship with) a woman of inferior race and pays a high moral price for that. In both, the man loses the purity which the author expects from the new nation. Eventually contrary to what Azevedo expected, mixed-race Brazil triumphs over the European colony and turns into a cortiço.

Read the entire article (in Spanish) in HTML or PDF format.

Decline In U.S. Whites, Rise Of Latinos Blurring Traditional Racial Lines

The Huffington Post
2013-03-17

Hope Yen
The Associated Press

Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Montfermeil, France, Jenny Barchfield in Rio de Janeiro and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Welcome to the new off-white America.

A historic decline in the number of U.S. whites and the fast growth of Latinos are blurring traditional black-white color lines, testing the limits of civil rights laws and reshaping political alliances as “whiteness” begins to lose its numerical dominance.

Long in coming, the demographic shift was most vividly illustrated in last November’s re-election of President Barack Obama, the first black president, despite a historically low percentage of white supporters.

It’s now a potent backdrop to the immigration issue being debated in Congress that could offer a path to citizenship for 11 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants. Also, the Supreme Court is deciding cases this term on affirmative action and voting rights that could redefine race and equality in the U.S.

The latest census data and polling from The Associated Press highlight the historic change in a nation in which non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority in the next generation, somewhere around the year 2043.

Despite being a nation of immigrants, America’s tip to a white minority has never occurred in its 237-year history and will be a first among the world’s major post-industrial societies. Brazil, a developing nation, has crossed the threshold to “majority-minority” status; a few cities in France and England are near, if not past that point.

The international experience and recent U.S. events point to an uncertain future for American race relations.

In Brazil, where multiracialism is celebrated, social mobility remains among the world’s lowest for blacks while wealth is concentrated among whites at the top. In France, race is not recorded on government census forms and people share a unified Gallic identity, yet high levels of racial discrimination persist.

“The American experience has always been a story of color. In the 20th century it was a story of the black-white line. In the 21st century we are moving into a new off-white moment,” says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a global expert on immigration and dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

“Numerically, the U.S. is being transformed. The question now is whether our institutions are being transformed,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

The portrait of a nation: Edgard Roquette-Pinto’s study on the Brazilian ‘anthropological types’, 1910-1920 (Retratos da nação: os ‘tipos antropológicos’ do Brasil nos estudos de Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1910-1920)

Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi: Ciências Humanas
Volume 7, Number 3 (September/December 2012)
pages 645-670
ISSN 1981-8122
DOI: 10.1590/S1981-81222012000300003

Vanderlei Sebastião de Souza
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

The article analyses the studies carried out by the anthropologist Edgard Roquette-Pinto (1884-1954) on the classification of ‘anthropological types’ of Brazil. Affiliated to the Museu Nacional, in Rio de Janeiro, the anthropologist collected data on the anatomical, physiological and psychological characteristics of the Brazilian population in the early decades of the 20th century. The racial classification put forward by Roquette-Pinto resulted not only from the ongoing national intellectual context, but also resulted from technical and theoretical influences from abroad, in particular from Germany and the United States. The anthropologist’s goal was to produce an ‘anthropological portrait’ of Brazil. His research aimed at revealing the racial characteristics involved in the formation of the nation, as well as evaluating the biological viability of the population, especially the ‘mixed race types’.

Read the entire article (in Portuguese) here.

Throughout the various media realms—television, film, news media, and the less clearly defined intersecting worlds of music, sports, and youth culture—representations of interracial sex and relationships follow certain patterns, and what emerges is a delicate dance between interracial sex sells and interracial sex alienates.  The small number of representations as well as the particular types of depictions of interracial relationships, when they are shown, reveals the lingering opposition to interracial sexuality and marriage as well as the persistent racialized images of racial Others and the protection of whiteness. Interracial representations are symbolic struggles over meaning, not only in how interracial relationships are portrayed but also in how they are received, understood, and responded to in the larger society.  In particular, interracial images are used to perpetuate negative stereotypes yet are simultaneously marketed as an example of how color-blind we have become and of the declining significance of race. Yet one may ask, Why are interracial relationships shown at all if they are still widely opposed by whites and other racial groups? The answer is twofold, as we have seen throughout the book, that showing interracial relationships is a necessary piece of the current rhetoric that asserts race no longer matters and the representations are only shown in ways that either deviantize these relationships, privilege whiteness, or support the contention that America is color-blind.

Erica Chito Childs, Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009): 177-178.