Brazil: The Once and Future Country

Marshall C. Eakin. BRAZIL: THE ONCE AND FUTURE COUNTRY. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index, 301 pages; hardcover $35.

Vanderbilt University's Marshall C. Eakin has written a fast-moving analysis of what makes Brazil tick, aimed at readers who want a single book to cover the spectrum from colonial settlement to television soap operas to African spiritualist religion to Brazil's international trade. The author notes that the last general introduction to the country, by the late Charles Wagley, was first published in 1963 and last revised in the 1970s, although he might also have mentioned Joseph A. Page's 1995 work The Brazilians, a breezier and more journalistic volume covering similar themes. Ronald M. Schneider's incisive Brazil: Culture and Politics in a New Industrial Powerhouse (1996) is another worthy competitor.

In any case, if one were headed for Brazil and faced the usual nine to twelve hours in the air before landing in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo, Eakin's would be a good book to bring along. Like his late UCLA mentor, E. Bradford Burns, Eakin does not shy away from addressing the "big picture," something from which most scholars, in today's age of pigeonholed specialization, maintain their distance.

Although the pink-and-green book jacket-the colors of one of Rio's leading samba schools-promises a "thrilling and informative" introduction to Brazil, the book's focus is straightforward. It is divided into five somewhat overlapping chapters on history, regional geography, culture, politics, and a final overview of the main problems facing Brazil today. Eakin, who occasionally shifts into first-person narrative, maintains that Brazil "bears the `burdens of history' more visibly than most [other countries]," but in the end he opts to take the "longer view," and therefore argues that although Brazil has faced severe crises in the recent past, its fate remains in the hands of its citizens, and the country has more of a chance to shape its own future than ever before. In a book published in mid-1997, one would like to have seen more analysis of the Cardoso administration, in power since January 1995, and more attention to the investment boom that has accompanied Brazil's measured commitment to free market economics. Readers need to be aware, moreover, that Eakin has analyzed Brazilian reality as it is visible "above the surface" of things. It would seem equally important to learn how things work below the surface and behind closed doors: the vast underground economy; the sway of patronage, clientelism, impunity, and political dealing; the endurance of antiquated legislation; police violence; the passive judicial system; the historic weakness of Congress; the role of the armed forces. On the other hand, no short book written for the nonspecialist can do everything, and the author is to be congratulated for fitting so much into a compact, deftly written package of fewer than three hundred pages.

Robert M. Levine

University of Miami

Copyright Journal of Interamerican Studies Winter 1997-1998
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