Marcio de Oliveira, Brasilia entre le mythe et la nation.
Acevedo, Tatiana
Marcio de Oliveira, Brasilia entre le mythe et la nation
(Paris: L'Harmattan, 2014), 228 p.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In "Brasilia between the myth and the nation" Marcio de
Oliveira provides an important contribution to the literature on the
history of the city of Brasilia. Oliveira manages to offer an impressive
account of the process through which the idea of a new capital city
became the promise of a united nation. This is an important book for
scholars interested in processes of nation building in Brazil, as well
as for researchers concerned with the political struggles behind the
conception and construction of Brasilia.
Persons interested in the book should look at its tittle to
understand its focus. Oliveira is particularly interested in framing the
construction of Brasilia in a mythic narrative according to which the
nation was unfinished and the construction of a new capital along the
country's isolated highlands would complete it. For Oliveira, it
was the government of Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (1956-1961) that
spread and gave meaning to this myth, calling for the occupation and
development of the whole country. Oliveira claims that by doing so the
government promised a different future and was able to shed some
positive light on the usually pessimistic image that people had about
their country back then. But the discourse of incompleteness of the
nation was not new in Brazilian history; neither was the idea of
transferring the capital. Oliveira argues that the government astutely
took advantage of all these disjointed discourses of the past and
presented them as a coherent narrative. Within this narrative Brasilia
was a historical aspiration, and the president was in charge of
"putting an end to the long journey of the conquest of the
nation" (p. 50).
Oliveira divides his arguments into four chapters. The first
chapter of the book provides a brief biography of Juscelino Kubitchek de
Oliveira (also called by his initials, JK) and presents the political
context of his presidency. Born into a middle class family in
Diamantina, Minas Gerais, JK was trained as a medical doctor. Oliveira
suggests that his marriage to Sarah Gomes de Lemos, daughter of a former
parliamentary member, catalysed his entry into the world of electoral
politics. JK held public office on two earlier occasions. He was
appointed mayor of Belo Horizonte--where he first collaborated with
architect Oscar Niemeyer--and was elected governor of Minas Gerais. Once
elected president he launched the "Plan de metas," comprising
31 goals covering such issues as energy, transport, and base industries.
According to JK's testimony, the Brasilia idea, which became goal
number thirty-one, occurred to him when a "man of the people"
asked if, once elected president, he would respect the transfer of the
capital stipulated in the 1946 Constitution (p. 46).
But why was the transfer of the Brazilian capital a constitutional
mandate? Oliveira goes on to provide that history in chapter two. The
desire to transfer the capital to populate the hinterland can be traced
back to the eighteenth century. Oliveira presents the history of these
projects and ideas through official and alternative sources. From the
first initiative, presented in the context of a political separatist
revolt in 1789, to the constitutional mandates of 1891 and 1946, and
through the dream of Italian priest Giovanni Bosco--who never knew
Brasilia but supposedly dreamed about it--Oliveira tracks down every
reference to a new capital. The compilation of all these initiatives
reveals a significant amount of meticulous archival work.
This second chapter is by far the most interesting and pertinent to
the arguments that Oliveira is ultimately making. The author explores
the way in which JK selectively articulated the ideas that had defended
the transfer of the capital to the mythical desire of nation building.
The ideas were gathered and disseminated in official publications, such
as the Brasilia Collection, and in numerous presidential speeches. Even
if disjointed and unconnected, all the initiatives were presented as a
coherent and chronologic corpus of ideas mundacistas. JK made every
effort to link them to the construction of the city, inaugurating the
"Don Bosco" chapel before the city was even completed,
emphasizing that Brasilia was the "culmination of a process nearly
as old as the country" (p. 64).
In the final two chapters of the book, Oliveira argues that the
building of the nation was a conscious priority during the design and
construction of the new capital. Brasilia is "a myth made out of
concrete" (p. 125) and both architectural designs and daily
construction activities embodied the quest for a new Brazilian nation.
In chapter three the author analyses how the discourses of architects
Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer became well integrated into the discourse
of the construction of the nation. Structures such as the Square of
Three Powers and the Congressional Palace were intended to inaugurate a
new democratic, free and participatory society.
The final chapter presents an assessment of how Brasilia was
actually built year after year. Oliveira draws on official construction
reports and reflects on the metaphorical quality of concrete, the
quintessential modern material, easy to manufacture, transport, and
shape. Oliveira concludes the book by focusing on the perspective of
those who actually built the new capital. He maintains that despite poor
working conditions and exclusion from the city itself--their homes were
located in satellite towns--construction workers expressed "the
mythical desire to build the nation" (p. 124).
This is perhaps the least convincing part of the book. Oliveira
argues that construction workers felt that by building the city they
were contributing to the founding of the Brazilian nation, as did the
president and chief architects. However, he does not provide enough
evidence to support this claim. While Oliveira interviewed engineers and
other early settlers of Brasilia, his argument about construction
workers is based exclusively on two secondary sources: a master's
dissertation written by Gustavo Ribeiro in 1980 and the book Brasilian
Builders written by Nair Souza in 1983. He does not explain why he did
not interview construction workers or what kind of challenges drove him
to use secondary sources instead. Besides, although he relies heavily on
those two secondary sources, he does not provide any information about
them or about the context in which the construction workers'
testimonies were gathered: who exactly was interviewed? When? Where? By
whom?
Tatiana Acevedo
Departement de geographie
Universite de Montreal
