>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> You're here in the Library of Congress
which is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution
and it's the largest and most inclusive library anywhere.
All kinds of books, recordings, photographs, maps, manuscripts,
music, in its multi-form collections which basically cover 470 languages
of the world's knowledge and because of copyright deposit here
in the United States it's more or less the mint record,
the closest thing we have to a mint record of American,
the creativity of the American society.
Now it's wonderful to be dealing with Brazil.
It's about dealing with them about important and unique form
of their culture, a country where the Library
of Congress has had a really major presence
through its Rio de Janeiro field office which is
for 40 years has been gathering in things of all kinds
from this very vibrant and creative society, including 10--
I guess it's what, 10 million, I never know how many zeroes this has
but it's as progress, it's about 10 million I think, isn't it?
The chapbooks of Literatura de Cordel, which is really a remarkable
and unique Brazilian form of expression.
A literature looking, really reflecting as it does its history,
poetry, iconography and its social and cultural life, yeah,
particularly the northeast but it's a wonderful, gratifying to be able
to have a full discussion and hopefully,
give a little more visibility of this wonderful bit
of Brazilian creativity, and particularly the work
with the Brazilian embassy on this project towards themselves
like the country they represent, extremely vibrant
and very much alive and very dynamic neighbors in this hemisphere.
I'm also pleased in so many divisions
of the library are working together on this symposium including,
as I mentioned, the Rio office but also which has helped acquire
and catalog the Cordel's chapbooks.
The Hispanic division with their unique expertise
in Brazilian language, Brazilian culture,
and indeed the great [inaudible] frescoes are the only real original
decoration of any subsection of the library and they shine
over these [inaudible] collections
of the library which are very unique.
The poetry office has also participated and it's--
I might also mention in terms of poetry office
that we have collected oral history, oral materials of the years
by poets, not just in English but in Spanish and also in Portuguese
so there are considerable record
of Brazilian poets reading their own poetry in Portuguese.
So this symposium is being specially coordinated
by the American Folklife Center
which is the library's main [inaudible] division
for Cordel literature that is kept in here.
Folklife Center has a wonderful collection of Cordel items
and it's certainly the largest outside Brazil to be found anywhere
and we hope this important contrast will inspire researchers
to consult and use our collections.
Our researchers have been former president of Brazil Cardoso,
former foreign minister just Saturday
in the great hall had a special meeting.
President Lula yet another former president, more recently,
of Brazil held for us, so we are very proud and happy
to be hosting something unique about Brazilian culture.
It's-- the chapbooks are interesting in that they involve all kinds
of formats just like this library itself.
And there's poetry including world and Brazilian history,
current events, political expressions, religious sentiment,
beliefs, stories of fantasy, imagination and adventure,
humor, social commentary.   So far, it's a long list here.
I think I better stop because you get the idea
and you will be telling us about it and its content
and we look forward very much to that.
The-- it's kind of-- the world of Cordel literature, it's something
like the world of libraries themselves which have material
that come from antiquity.
And our deep-- libraries are deeply respectful of literacy.
Indeed, we've just had two day, for the first time in our history,
200,000 people on the national mall
in the last two days celebrating books and reading in the eleventh
of National Book Festival.
So this of the importance of print technology
at both they're finding new ways to teach--
touch people's lives through the internet,
social media, blogs and more.
Really, you know how great congress had every reason to celebrate
and study its remarkable cultural legacy.
I have to say that when I went to Brazil
and I had a wonderful extensive visit there
in 1998 visiting our office and so forth and I was struck
with many resemblances to America.
First of all, if you look at the first map of the New World,
the Waldseemuller 1507 map,
the first map that shows the world is round.
It is also the first document of any kind, anywhere in the world
that printed out or presented in a public way the word America
and the word America is located in what is now Brazil.
And where we are now in Washington was part
of something only identified as Terra Incognita.
So it's a very fascinating thinking.
I was also impressed with the vibrancy of the culture.
The sort of, the emphasis on sports and music which is very similar
to America, to the multiethnic nature of the society
but the vibrance of their economy and their life
in general is something that we've all come to appreciate much more.
So studying this record is a great treat for us.
We have every reason to celebrate it
and the cultural legacy was my own special field and I've been--
I do some, I've done some advising over the years to Russia.
When they were introducing study late in the Soviet period,
very late in the Soviet period, they were introducing
for the first time the study of continent-wide civilizations.
Other words-- in other words, comparative study,
and they had the United States and they had Canada and Australia.
And I said, why don't you add Brazil?
This is a multiethnic as Russia Federation is.
It's a continent-wide civilization.
It's full of vibrant and interesting lessons and it's not studied enough.
So they've been, at least in the universities
that I was advising at that time.   And I think that the world
in general is becoming much more aware of Brazil.
Certainly, we are at the Library of Congress, I can mention just briefly
that the experiment that we-- more than an experiment now,
this is a project-- world digital library.
It's in the six UN languages but we added a seventh.
We added Portuguese because we were right from the beginning
on the prototype and now [inaudible] with the National Library of Brazil
and with other institutions.
And so it's-- Portuguese is now one of the seven languages
in which all of these is available.
And to us, it's very fit because URR, the larger--
the Western Hemisphere and I think we're
in the process of becoming closer.
And if we play a small role in this, we're very happy.
So I know in behalf of the American Folklife Center
which is your immediate host within the Library of Congress.
And they are looking forward to extending our understanding
of the folk culture which is part of the broader culture
or your very creative country.
So let me turn it over, thanking our dedicated library staff
and welcoming you on their behalf
to our special guest who's also a great promoter and great friend,
developer of better relations and more intimate understanding
between our 2 countries, his excellently, the ambassador
for the Brazil, Mr. Mauro Vieira.   [ Applause ]
>> Well, thank you very much Dr. James Billington,
Librarian of Congress.
I would like to say that for myself and for the Embassy of Brazil,
it's a great honor to participate in this Symposium Literatura de Cordel:
Continuity and Change in Brazilian Popular Literature here
in this famous library with the presence of the Librarian
of Congress, and also so many distinguished authorities
in Brazilian culture and literature.
I also would like to remark the presence
of Mr. Goncalo Ferreira da Silva,
the President of the Brazilian Academy of Cordel Literature.
[ Applause ]   It's very good to have him here.
I know he made this long trip to be here
and to witness this important event which will make Brazilian culture
and especially Literatura de Cordel, more known,
better known in the United States.
I would like to congratulate the American Folklife Center
at the Library of Congress for its initiative
to hold this remarkable event.
I also would like to thank the Library of Congress in general
and the Librarian of Congress in particular for once more cooperating
with the embassy of Brazil to promote Brazilian culture
and Brazilian-West cultural interchanges.
Cordel literature originated in Europe and was brought
by the Portuguese to Colonial Brazil from Salvador in the State of Bahia,
our first capital city until 1763.   It has spread to throughout the most
of the Brazilian Northeastern states.
Afterwards, it set roots in other parts of Brazil
such as [inaudible] and Sao Paulo.
Today, Cordel literature is the strong expression
of Brazilian popular culture and is well known all over the country.
Brazilian Cordel poets are responsible
for recording an important part
of Brazilian popular culture and Brazilian history.
Their poetry expresses ideas, values, beliefs and oral tradition
of the Brazilian people, especially in Northeast Brazil.
In that sense, Cordel literature is extremely important
to understand Brazilian cultural diversity and public opinion.
Cordel booklets sometime were printed in thousand
of copies surpassing the regular circulations of books, magazines
and newspapers in Brazil.
Their importance is not limited to their poetry.
The booklets also have a rich, diverse and interesting iconography
which is a vital part of them.
Although firmly rooted in the past, Cordel literature follows the pace
of the social and economic transformation
in contemporary Brazil.
On the one hand, it depicts current international and national issues
in many areas of human activity from culture and the sports
to politics and economics.
On the other hand, writers and readers were able
to adapt Cordel poetry to the internet age.
There are many websites and blogs dedicated
to Cordel literature nowadays.
Currently, Cordel literature enjoys prestige
and arouses interest both in Brazil and abroad.
It is the focus of academic research at different institutions
and in several disciplines such as literature, history and arts.
Individuals and institutions dedicated--
dedicate their attention to the ever growing collections of booklets
and illustrate the huge number at the Library of Congress archives.
Cordel literature is also the subject of exhibitions
and public debates, so today's symposium is emblematic
of the importance and the vitality of post Cordel literature
and the academic interest on the subject.
And I would like to wish you all a very fruitful period
of discussions these next 2 days.
I'm sure it will be a very promising occasion
to increase the knowledge about Brazilian culture.
And I'd like once again to thank Dr. James Billington
who is a good friend of Brazil under the Brazilian embassy who has worked
so much with us to bring to the Library
of Congress different events, seminars
and exhibitions about Brazil.
It's very good to continue to work with him and also
with the Hispanic Division in the person of Dr. Georgette Dorn
and also Professor Ieda Wiarda who is also a very good friend of ours.
So once again, Dr. Billington, thank you very much
for hosting the seminar and thank you very much
for your presence today opening the sessions.
Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]
>> Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.   Well, welcome everyone.
I'll be the last person to provide welcome before we get to the heart
of the matter but I'm Peggy Bulger and I'm Director
of the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress.
And on behalf of all of the Library of Congress staff,
many of us have been working for many, many months on this.
I want to welcome you to the symposium and we've called this
"Literatura de Cordel: Continuity and Change
in Brazilian Popular Literature".
Cosponsors of course for the event, we couldn't have done this without,
you know, many divisions in the library working together.
So with the American Folklife Center, the Hispanic Division
and the Rio Office of the Library of Congress and Georgette Dorn
over here and also Debra McKern over here are very much responsible
for what you're going to be seeing today and tomorrow.
Additional support and assistance has been provided
by the library's poetry and literature office
of which is a really vibrant office now and reaching out to all of us
to do program such as this.
And we're pleased also that this symposium coincides
with this year's Organization
of American States Inter-American Europe culture.
So if you didn't know that, 2011 is the Inter-American literature
and this is an official event of that pillar celebration.
And of course, I want to thank the Ambassador and the Embassy of Brazil
for all of their support in helping to make this symposium possible.
Today and tomorrow, though we're going
to be celebrating the library's special archival holdings,
many people have no idea that the Library of Congress has the kind
of collections that we do.
With Literature de Cordel, we're honoring this age old and vital,
really something that's continuing on as the Ambassador said
into the future, into the internet age, is a tradition that's come
to the American Folklife Center's archive in the form
of thousands of Cordel pamphlets.
For the most part, we have to thank the overseas cooperative
acquisitions program for this acquisition and it continues today.
People would be surprised how vibrant this tradition is,
continues to comment on politics and culture
up until the very present day.
In the symposium, we're going to explore on many levels.
How Cordel literature and artistry continues to find new life in Brazil
and to express the voice of the people.
We're excited by the renowned scholars who are in our presence
and you'll hear them today and tomorrow.
And we're going to explore the history, the music, the narrative,
iconography and social impact of this particular cultural expression.
And it's a special honor as we have said
to have Goncalo Ferreira da Silva with us.
He has been a Cordel poet vendor publisher for over 45 years
and he's traveled a very long way to be with us from Rio.
So please give him a hand again.   [ Applause ]
We also will have the voices of archivists and librarians.
We don't always get a lot of recognition but we are very vital
to this tradition, I must say.
We've worked hard to have the Cordel be archived and preserved
for the future and especially now we're working
with digital preservation which is the cutting edge of librarianship.
By presenting this symposium though,
the American Folklife Center is really hoping
that we will encourage new research by scholars and interested citizens
in using the vast and valuable collection that we have.
And finally, I'd like to acknowledge the inspiration and guidance
of the American Folklife Center's board of trustees
who supported this idea for the symposium from the beginning.
And we want to give a hearty thanks to of course our cosponsors,
grateful for the generous support of the Embassy of Brazil
for their encouragement in the symposium.
The Hispanic Division at the library for their indispensable assistance
in developing and presenting the program, their assistance
in the Portuguese language translations
and their incredible expertise on the culture of Brazil,
especially Ieda Wiarda here who has been really a wonderful
to work with over these months.
We would-- we could not have undertaken the planning
of this event or developed the archival collections of Cordel
without of course the continuing assistance
of our acquisitions efforts overseas in the Rio de Janeiro office
and I'm hoping that when I retire I will go down
and visit Debra McKern [laughter]
and experience the Cordel tradition in situ.
And we also want to take the Rio office for their vision
in helping to craft this program.
Deb has been instrumental in helping us put this all together.
And also, in addition, we want to thank the support
of the library's poetry and literature office
and the Portuguese language table which many folks have been involved
with them, they've helped us with translation.
And finally, I want to say that we would not have this symposium
if it wasn't for Cathy Kerst and David Taylor
of our staff who've been working many, many hours on this symposium
and really helping to put it together.
So finally, as with all of our symposia, this is being recorded
for the library's website
and for the American Folklife Center's collections in perpetuity.
So if you do have a cell phone or something beeps or makes a noise,
if you could please turn it off now,
so that you will not have your ring tone go global as we proceed
with the symposium, and again, I want to thank you all for coming
and I'll turn this over now to Cathy
who will introduce our keynote speaker.
Thank you.   [Applause]
[ Silence ]
>> It is my pleasure to introduce Candace Slater, who is a professor
of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley,
where she teaches courses on Brazilian literature and culture.
She has done extensive research on folk
and popular expressive traditions in Brazil, in other parts
of Latin America and also the Iberian Peninsula.
She began working with Literatura de Cordel in the 1970s
and actually sold Cordel pamphlets for several months
in an open air market in Recife in order to better engage
in conversations with Cordel artists,
poets and vendors plus their customers.
She's presently completing a book that compares past
and present versions of Cordel tales, pilgrimage, narratives
and accounts of enchanted nature.
She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,
the National Endowment for the Humanities,
and the Tinker Foundation.
The Brazilian government has recognized her work
with both the Ordem de Rio Branco and they Ordem de Merito Cultural,
an honor rarely awarded to non-Brazilians.
Among Slater's many articles on various aspects
of Cordel literature, she has written a cor--
a seminal book that many of us have read
on Cordel called "Stories on a String".
It's a Brazilian Literatura de Cordel which was published in 1989.
She has a special perspective in having studied this tradition
for so many years and seen changes and I'm sure you're all going
to enjoy her presentation.   Please welcome Candace Slater.
[ Applause ]   [Silence]
>> It is my honor to be here.
And I want to truly thank the Library of Congress.
It is not easy to organize something and it is particularly not easy
to organize something quickly.
And I think that this really has been a remarkable feat,
as we would say a [foreign language] in Portuguese, worthy,
right, of great admiration.
I'm going to do something fairly simple this afternoon
and that what I'm going to try to do is answer the question,
what is the Literatura de Cordel.
And I'll answer it for the time in which I began to work on the Cordel
as a young graduate student in the 1970s
when it was really quite different from what it is today
and to talk a little bit about some
of the changes that have taken place.
I'm going to-- maybe I should say just a little bit
about the way-- the research I did.
In the very beginning, there were still very large performances,
right, in public places and often a poet would recite work,
a work maybe that he had written or that someone else had written
and some of these poets are really great singers.
And where I started out in Rio de Janeiro,
there was a huge hold [phonetic], a big circle of people
who would gather around the poet.
And I decided that it would be really a great idea to try to figure
out why these, who these people were and why they were there.
And so I began by-- I'd memorized a series of questions and I would sort
of approach someone and begin to ask these questions,
the person would answer, I would take these things.
And this went on for quite a while.
It was-- I was certainly learning a lot but I'd always thought
that the people didn't quite notice I was there.
They answered the questions but you know what,
I seemed kind of insignificant which I certainly was in terms
of the poet's performance.
But what happened one day and this was a time
when Brazil was still under a military regime.
And what-- there the marketplace happen to be across the street
from a police headquarters.
And sure enough in a fair one day, one afternoon,
someone from the police appeared and wanted
to know what it was that I was doing.
I was terrified.
I really didn't even know what to say and suddenly,
surprisingly to me, I was surrounded by people.
People who had been-- answered my questions
but I thought really weren't paying much attention to me at all.
And they told the policeman what I was doing
and they said she's interested, right, in these stories as we are
and they said to him, you know, and she has every right to be.
[ Foreign Language ]
And I learned a great deal from this.
We too are people, right?
And we have the right, right, to speak and to hear, right,
and to be for our literature to be considered literature too.
And I learned a great deal from this which was that I would know nothing
if it had not been for what people were willing to tell me.
I could certainly read the Cordel but the first thing I'm going
to tell you about the Cordel is that it is not only a particular art form
but I think a vision, a particular vision of the world,
that it has always been, that it remains so
but that the world itself has changed, Brazil itself has changed.
And so maybe, what I should do is just show you a bag full of Cordel,
old style Cordel, right, and it looks like cheap paper illustrations
that are often woodcut, right?   The pages are kind of held together.
You have to part them with a knife because they have sheets of paper
that are folded into sheets.
And that they are written actually in a kind of poetry that comes
in part, you know, there are of course Cordel booklets
in the Iberian Peninsula
but actually the verse form here is not an Iberian verse form.
Most Iberian pamphlets like this were written in four-line stanzas.
And these stanzas are seven-line, eight-line stanzas,
six-line stanzas, it depends, but they are forms
that are taken from oral poetry.
They are taken from Brazilian oral poetry.
They are taken from the cantador tradition
which is the back-forth [phonetic] singer tradition, right,
that comes from the Northeast.   And so they are the backlands.
They are kind of an amalgam, right, of literally sources
and oral sources, right, which really only began to be printed
in Brazil in the backlands at a time following the American civil war,
why, the American, the U.S civil war?
Yes, because the British blockaded the south and the cotton had to come
from somewhere for those textile mills in Liverpool.
It came briefly and gloriously from the Northeast,
quite a bit of money poured in during that brief interlude and some
of the money went to second hand printing presses, right,
which began to print stories, stories often written
by cantadores, by the singers, right?
And again, a kind of amalgam of these things, so let me just,
this is the story of Mariana [foreign language].
Mariana, right, and the ship captain,
the captain of the ships, right?   She really looks great.
She's kind of an art deco heroine standing here, right?
And here she goes.   It says--
[ Foreign Language ]   Doesn't look good.
There was on the island of Nippon in Japan, right?
In a port of Japan, a man named Alseo [phonetic]
and he was the baron of that city.
He was rich, too rich, but he had a very bad heart, okay.
And the story will unfold from there.
This is a very kind of traditional little booklet.
It's of a time when it was not that hard to get pamphlets published.
This is 32 pages.
It would be hard to do that today, partly cases have changed.
But partly what was the first thing that the Cordel was?
It was a literary form with a particular history
with a specific oral and written facets and it was also a product,
right, a product that was sold in weekly markets and something
that people, why would they buy it?
They'd buy it because the poet would recite it.
And at a key moment, right, the poet would stop and say,
if you'd like to know what happened to Mariana
and this terrible baron, right?
There in the Island in Nippon, in Japan, you just buy my folieto.
It's right here hanging on this string, okay?
And these people would, many times who were illiterate, right,
would buy, right, a booklet to take home.
It would be reperformed by someone who could read.
And interestingly enough, the poet himself
and they were all meant in these markets.
They weren't necessarily all men who wrote them
because sometimes we know today, right?
There were actually daughters and sisters and wives, right,
who had ideas for stories.
And sometimes it appears even wrote the stories but it was always,
right, the man who traveled from fair to fair selling these things.
So, then you pause and sometimes in fact, people,
the people who wrote these things weren't necessarily literate.
They hadn't gone to school.
They might write them in their head, right?
And then they would dictate them to someone who could then write it
down and it could be printed.
But at the same time, there were people who could write.
From the very beginning, the Cordel was more heterogenous
than sometimes we think.
Do you think the people want to see some pictures?
Yes, you think that?
I had a little slideshow, a very low tech slideshow,
but I think having given this introduction, we can just--
can I press the button somewhere and it will happen?
[ Music ]   So--
[ Applause ]
So the slideshow is meant to be kind of a flurry of images
from different times and places.
It's meant to be slightly prerogative in this sense,
that you'll get a real sense of the kinds of different styles, times,
beliefs that go into the Cordel.
And the accompaniment is very clearly not a
traditional accompaniment.
It is a group, a musical group called the
"Cordel do Fogo Encantado" which is, bases itself very a loosely, right,
on sort of regional kinds of themes
but it is not traditional Cordel accompaniment, right, which I wanted
to put in there but I'm so low tech, in trouble.
So, what you see, I think also
that is particularly interesting is a kind
of imitation of tradition, right?
You'll have something that might be called traditional Cordel.
And again, we can talk about what that means.
I'm going to give you a list of things
that I think maybe one could say about this.
But also, when these people are standing around, right,
in these leather hats which are the hats that common used in the past
in the backlands in order to avoid scratches from very sharp,
thorny trees, they would not have been doing this in the past, right?
And actually, common in the present probably aren't doing it
because they're riding motorcycles instead of horses, right?
But you can certainly buy these hats, right,
at along with some very lovely handmade sandals at places
that cater to people who are interested in Northeastern crafts.
So my intention here is very definitely not to talk
about what is authentic or inauthentic.
These are very loaded and difficult words.
But my intention is to talk about the great mixture of things
and beliefs and feelings that are Cordel because I think one
of the reasons that the Cordel has survived into the past
and is extremely likely to continue to survive has to do
with its ability to symbolizings that are very profound.
And among them are not only the Northeast which itself for us
as citizens to the U.S. is a place-- is a little bit like Appalachian,
a little bit like the Wild West and a little bit like a lot
of other things thrown in because it has a deep historical importance
but has always produced a disproportionate number of musical,
literary works, great works, right, that are taken
by I think all Brazilians as part of Brazilian arts and literature.
So they talk about the Cordel as we talk in many ways
about not only the Northeast and the Northeast did exist in places
where there are Northeasterners.
Be that the Amazon, Brazilia, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, right,
and the northeast per se, and also where people are thinking
about the northeast in relationship to the rest of Brazil.
And often this has been a very complex and [inaudible] relationship
because in many ways, the Northeastern symbolize all
that is poorest and most unjust about Brazil.
And all that is most original and magical, right, and enduring.
And I think this is partly one of the reasons.
Sometimes you know right now
that there is a soap opera just reaching its conclusion.
It's been a very successful soap opera.
And the soap opera is called Cordel Encantado or the Enchanted Cordel.
Why has it been so successful?
Well, probably in part because some of Brazil's greatest musicians
like [inaudible], Cayetano, et cetera, have music in it,
partly 'cause it's a very sumptuously beautifully
colorful drama.
And partly, because the story of the Northeast and its magic.
It's a story of a kingdom.
A magic kingdom that somehow resettles in the Northeast
and it's full of kind of iconic,
if not stereotypical Northeastern figures
like outlaws and things like that.
I think they are very appealing to a Brazil that is rapidly globalizing,
a Brazil that is rapidly becoming something other
than it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.
And that the Cordel itself, much as the--
much as the Amazon many times fills in for nature
in a kind of primeval nature.
I think the Cordel many times is asked to fill in for some sort
of original authentic culture.
And again, what this means and who it means it to
and there isn't just one Cordel.
And let me run through this really briefly and I hope
that you will have questions either about the slides
that were put together or about the things I'm going
to rapidly say about Cordel.
The first is, again, a literary form with a particular history
and very specific verbal, right, poetic, a number of syllables,
number of lines, et cetera.
But it's also a performance as you saw in many
of those slides via the performance in a marketplace
where people are trying to attract buyers,
and they need to attract buyers because they depend
on the Cordel for a living.
Or in festivals today, in other kinds of settings, right,
and in a kind of music and art that clearly is related in some way
to the Cordel but it's not Cordel per se, okay?
Big, colored block prints, right, that people sell on their own
and can make much, much, much money, more money for, right,
than selling tiny little [inaudible], tiny little woodcuts
for small booklets, right?   And also, the song arts, right,
where very much there's money in music today.
And a kind of music that can be inspired in part by the Cordel
but is not certainly traditional Cordel.
Again, whatever that means, a commodity
and a livelihood that in the past, right?
One of the very rare alternatives
to subsistence farming was to become a poet.
And if you were a poet, you had something that was
so deeply important which was the written word.
It was so hard to have schooling in those old days,
particularly in isolated places and the people who were poets had access
to a world that was accessed through the word.
And for this reason, you can still find old people who have trunks full
of Cordel that have been carefully put together, held together often
by a string or sometimes even by ribbon, right?
And then which people have laboriously written the names
of children, right?   Almost like the family Bible.
And you can still find, right, people who can recite Cordel.
This Cordel is also a vast store of themes, love and adventure stories,
news accounts, poetic duels.
But it was also at the same time a kind of vision of the world.
And so you'd often have Cordel accounts of TV things that have been
on TV, a terrible crime that was committed against a small child.
There would be a Cordel version of this, why, to make sense of it,
to in some way make this meaningful.
How could this have happened, how could just God have let this be,
how could you explain this?
Well, the Cordel was there to explain it.
And often the details that he introduced were not
in the new stories, sometimes they weren't actually factually true
but maybe they were metaphorically true because it turned out,
didn't you know, that the murderer was the estranged brother
of the father of the child and to his hatred and his jealousy
of his brother, he have been induced to do this terrible thing, okay,
and that was bad, but it somehow made sense, right?
It made sense the people could feel like this
and it didn't make any sense that the world was crazy, right?
And so this kind of I think structure
that is not only simply a literary structure
but that is a moral structure and an explanation,
right, of how things work.
Even he knew it didn't really always work that way,
was something that was very much a part of an older kind of Cordel
and that people demand it.
And in fact, I had poets explain to me that people, you know, well,
once I wrote a Cordel that wasn't quite like this.
And wouldn't you know, and again
and I knew couldn't sell it, so I gave it away free.
And still the people ripped it up and stomped on it, right?
Because it wasn't the world that they wanted to believe in, right?
And the whole idea of what is a poet I think
to a certain degree has endured and has changed
because in the early Cordel, right?
An earlier Cordel, the poet was, the best poet was the one
who knew what people were thinking before they themselves could say it
and could say it succinctly and beautifully, right?
But it wasn't necessarily someone,
if it wasn't someone who was original, right?
It wasn't someone who could say best what he was thinking
and let alone she, because again there were not female poets, right,
on at least on the covers of these books.
So it wasn't that.
It was another aesthetic and if you didn't understand that,
you could think the Cordel was very child like, you could think
that the Cordel was all the same.
But what it was, again, was the voice of the people
who had a different way of thinking about things.
One could also say that the Cordel
of the past was a markedly regional expression, that it had to do
with the Northeast and that it had to do with the language of wonder
and the violence in which it was very difficult to separate the two.
One of the greatest studies of the Cordel by a Brazilian scholar,
historian named [inaudible] is called Memorial [inaudible],
Memory of Struggles, right?
And it partly goes back again to the back-forth rhythm of the Cantador,
right, always is answering back and forth a little bit like that, right?
And that also, this, this was the property and the joy in many cases
of the very poor people, the people who had nothing often but words.
And they did a lot with those words that were priced possessions.
What else is the-- was the Cordel of the past?
It is beginning to become and had always been in some sense a bridge
between the rural and the urban, right?
The Cordel originated, well it was in many different places in Brazil
but the Cordel as we know it really rose out of the backlands
in the later part of the-- latter part of the 19th century,
but it went immediately to cities
because where was it always going to be published.
Not, right, way the heck out, right, in the middle of nowhere.
It was going to be published in a city
where it could have a printing press and a distribution system
and that you could sell to the vendedores,
people who would resell it, right?
So again, a bridge between the rural and the urban,
a bridge between the spoken and the written word,
a bridge between social classes to some extent
in that there was always someone who thought these things were kind
of nifty and would collect them, right?
Or the rancher who had to read it for his workers
and a bridge very early on between the past and the present, right?
What people were becoming, what they thought they were
and what they wanted to be.
Now then, we could speak in more detail about these things
but I think there won't be time.
So maybe you can ask me questions and what I'll try to say
to you is what I think the Cordel has become over time.
It remains of course a literary form and with a particular history
and specific oral and written facets.
But the facts that the Cordel is rarely sold
in open air markets today, that when it is, it's often sold as a kind of,
almost like a kind of souvenir sort of thing.
Again, there's still poets who sell Cordel in the Feira de Sao Cristovao
in Rio de Janeiro but they're wearing this little hat, right,
this funny little leather hats.
And they're often selling to tourists or they're often selling
to high school kids whose teachers told them to go learn something
about Brazilian culture and so there they are at the fair.
They're selling to an audience that is not that thick audience, right,
of construction workers basically who were listening to the poet
when I first [inaudible] out to do my research.
And also, the written form, the whole entry, right, of the internet
into the world of the Cordel.
The whole question of who the poet is writing for,
poll question of orality in terms of orality on TV
and festivals complicates what was once a somewhat easier
to define tradition, right?   It's no longer the open air market.
And it's no longer the traditional press
that are publishing these things.
It remained a performance and a locus for an inspiration
for the graphic arts and for oral performances.
It certainly remains.
In fact, it's more this than ever, right?
Because once again, you make money, you can be an artist by--
you can live from making, if you're very good,
from making these block prints that then can be sold, right,
in book fairs or even over the internet.
And you can make money by being on a TV program or again being
in a festival or performing for a school, right?
Maybe you get a contract with a school that you come in
and you teach workshops, right, in either how to make woodcuts or how
to or even what the Cantador tradition is.
But, and it's not that somehow--   some people do this simply
because they want to, but they have a day job.
They have a day job because they've gone to school
or they have a day job because that's what they did
and then they fell in love with the Cordel.
I think that in terms of who produces the Cordel today is a much,
much greater variety of social identities.
And the same thing is true for the public, right?
Because there is a high school student,
because the teacher made them go
and by the way he liked it, so he goes back, right?
Or there is the-- are the people who are nostalgic for the past, right?
"I remember when my dad recited the mysterious peacock.
I love the mysterious peacock when I was 7."
And there is this person, right, buying the mysterious peacock,
and tripled right to take home right to his or her kids.
And ascertain this was the past, this is my childhood.
And then there are people, right, who are interested and maybe--
maybe they're interested in getting a Cordel poet to write something
in Cordel form about environmental devastation, right?
Maybe they're interested in setting up a clinic for dengue fever
and that would be a really good idea to have something
in Cordel about dengue fever.
So what I'm trying to say is that it's not somehow
that the Cordel is total-- from the past,
if it where it will be easier to talk about.
It's the past together with a present that do not-- before this.
And the variety, it seems to me, a heterogenous collection of people
who are both producing and consuming Cordel using media
that may be very traditional and that they also, they,
right over the internet, et cetera, TV, et cetera.
Okay, it's a lot of themes.
Alright, we still have, right, the equivalent
of the great [foreign language].   We still have, right?
Together with [foreign language], man and nature, right,
telling you all about the environment
and you have here a love story, right, that must be like a lot
of other love stories, right, from early on somewhere in here, okay.
Old style, the mysterious peacock with the kinds of slides
that you saw, right, of brightly colored glossy mysterious
peacocks altogether.
So how would you, if you wanted to be a Cordel poet and couldn't go
to the fair and sell these things and couldn't chant them
because there was just too much of a loud noise and not only that,
you would probably have to pay a really huge tax to be in the fair
and it was just too expensive, what would you do?
Well, maybe you join an association, right?
Goncalo is here to talk with us as the head of association in Rio
and what are Cordel associations?
They're organizations, they're groups of people, poets,
who have banded together in order for both artistic reasons, right,
to help each other write, to think about each other's works,
but at the same time, where is the money going to come
from to publish folietos.
It's coming more and more from cultural institutions.
It's coming, right, from state and federal government.
It's coming from the ministry of culture.
It's coming from schools.
It's coming from foundation X. It's coming from a local business
which wants everyone to wear t-shirts
that say local business supports Brazilian tradition.
It's coming from a lot of different sources but it's not coming
from where it came from in the past.   And so to a certain extent,
and I'm not saying associations are simply a means
of collecting funding.
They are important also in ways of poets getting together is in a way
that maybe they did in the past in a rustic, a more rustic press
or in the marketplace itself might collect and come together--
talk to each other, right?
So they have both I think poetic purpose and is certainly a forum
for thinking about what poetry is.
You think of my poetry and what I think of yours, right?
But they are also are a way that the Cordel can continue to function
in terms of getting itself published because you and I and all
of this lineup of a foundation and said, could you please publish,
right, my great story about fill in the blank.
It's going be to hard, right?
But if you have something that represents you, right,
and that something speak for you and that can act for you
in many ways, educationally, right?   It's going to be more possible.
So this begins basically in the '80s, it happens first in Rio
and then it moves on into the Northeast and other places.
And so there are a number of associations today.
And one of the more interesting examples perhaps is in the backlands
of Fiera in Brazil du Norte [phonetic] where you had at least
at one point two associations that biometrically disagree
with each other about what the Cordel was, right?
And so you had certain people who believe
that the Cordel should be totally faithful to tradition,
use only verse forms that were used in the past
that the Cordel should take about certain kinds of themes
that were adequate for poetry and should avoid other kinds of things.
And then you had another association that was just
about to let it rip, right?
They thought, a number were fairly militant
and you know women should be included,
certain kinds of themes should be all over the place.
Did it really matter if there was a little bit
of jiggling about with the poetry?
They said no, the other said yes, and it was quite a discussion.
And it remains, I think, a larger debate,
not necessarily a debate quite as, how can I say this, clearly framed
as it was in Rio de Janeiro where some people thought one thing
and the other thought the other, right?
But certainly, a debate, what is tradition?
What does it mean to be faithful to the Cordel?
Does it mean to say the same things that were said in the past?
Does it mean to say them in very different ways?
Does it mean to be loyal at any cost to the present?
Does it mean, right, to remind people of what their roots are?
This is a huge discussion, right?
It doesn't have a single answer, nor should it?
But it certainly can have an answer that is expressed not only in words,
I think, you think, let's fight, but in poetry and bringing forth stories
and visions that do not necessarily agree, right?
And ideas also about what the past should be, right?
If there was a past that excluded women, does this have to be
in some way in, what's the word, pushed aside, rebuffed?
Should it be included, should it be discussed?
What is it?   What does it mean?
How should it be expressed?
How can we be faithful in a Brazil, right, that is not the same
as it was even three, four years ago, right?
Let alone 30 or 40, or 100 years ago, right?
Okay, an art form with an initially non-middle class aesthetic
and today, I think, an art form that has various different aesthetics.
More and more, even in supposedly traditional Cordel who the use
of the word "I" is becoming increasingly common.
The idea that I speak for myself that I exhort you to do such
and such a thing, right, that I feel
that this is wrong, I feel this is right.
And yet at the same time,
I think that the Cordel retains a very strong collective urge.
Who that collectivity is and whose name I speak, ight?
Why I am speaking varies but I think that the idea
that the Cordel is a language still of wonder and violence
but of a very different sort of wonder and violence than it was
in the past is very strong.
And I think in many ways are way beyond nostalgia, right.
The Cordel somehow summons this urge to say something
and to say something in the name of a Northeast
that I would argue again has a very special relationship to the rest
of Brazil as an imagined space, be it in the Cordel Encantado
where this is where European princesses go to hide, right?
Among swash baffling outlaws or a place that also is changing
but speaks in a special way in the name perhaps of the Brazilian poor.
It's a place where urban violence is increasingly as common
as it might be in Sao Paulo and Rio,
though it takes different forms, right?
And it plays where poetry remains a language.
So again, the backlands in many ways,
the Northeast is an icon for tradition.
The Northeast present is no place else in the city Sao Paulo.
What is the largest Northeastern city in Brazil?
Well, of course, the Metropolis of Sao Paulo has more Northeasterners,
right, than any Northeastern capital, right?
And so who claims the Northeast and what is a region?
Is it just something that I showed you on the map, right,
with these nice little lines around it?
Or is it something that is far more elastic and far more symbolic
at the same time than it is concrete?
And if it is that, right, if it is something that varies according
to who is speaking, much as the word [foreign language], right,
in Portuguese can mean those people, people in general or can mean you
and me let's later go and have a, you know, a cup of coffee together.
[ Foreign Language ]
Is very much I think the same kind of idea as a region
that it is not just one thing and that it is useful for talking
about other things in ways that localities are not, I think.
I think regions are different from localities.
Even though the local and the global are often--
the regional is often used as a kind of synonym for the local,
I think it's something else, okay.   Finally, my point, is this okay?
Yes? Is that of that bridge again,
I think the Cordel remains a hugely important bridge between the rural
and the urban, between the Northeastern and other corners
of Brazil, either with or without Northeastern migrants.
It remains a bridge ever more, I think, between social classes
because who is watching the Cordel Encantado and the global?
It isn't just people sitting around, right, in the backlands
and it's not just, right, people sitting
in their apartments in Rio de Janeiro.
It's a really huge cross section of Brazilians, right, who are watching,
either liking or not liking it, right.
It doesn't really-- that's not so much the point as it is
that this is something, right, that has been seen as potent enough
to be a national bestseller, a media success, but is also seen
as something that touches upon things
that are and remain Brazilian.
The fascination goes on in Northeastern culture, right,
remains I think in very special in terms
of production in a globalizing age.
And I think that the whole question of wonder
and violence also remains ever shifting definition,
ever relating one to the other in different ways but deeply strong.
One of my very favorite stories, I was going to bring it
up on the computer but I told I'm low tech,
so I'll just tell it to you.
It's a great story about when Jesus and Saint Peter were out walking
in the world and visiting people
and they did this a lot in the Northeast.
They were particularly fond of walking through the Northeast
and just kind of you know showing up at people's doors,
often asking for food and lodging
because where else were they going to stay?
You know there wasn't the divine hotel.
They had to take lodging with the poor.
So, knock on a door one day and this guy who answers,
who comes to the door is so poor, he is incredibly poor, he is--
how do you call it, a blacksmith
who his house is, he has two little kids.
And his house has one sleeping mat for the three of them
and he has almost nothing to eat and he's an inveterate gambler
and every night gambles away, right, with these people
who clearly are cheating him.
He knows they're cheating him but he just can't seem to stop gambling
and also he gets madder and madder and madder.
But when Jesus and Saint Peter show up, no problem, he invites them in,
he [inaudible] with the one sleeping mat.
He gives them that night's bread.
And they say "No, we couldn't take this."
He says, "You must take it, you are my guests."
And when they walked away in the morning and Saint Peter says "Jesus,
we have to give this guy something."
And Jesus says "You know, I'm so-- yeah, I know Peter but you know,
I'm so upset by the injustices
of this world I couldn't even think about it.
I just forgot to offer them something because it's too much."
And Peter says "I'll take care of it, don't worry."
And so he goes back, right, to the blacksmith's house and se says,
Blacksmith, what would you rather have eternal salvation
or would you rather be the world's best gambler?
He says "give me the gambling."
He says "Oh, Blacksmith, no, this is a bad idea.
You know, you've been offered eternal salvation."
And the Blacksmith says, "No, the world is just too terrible,
you know my children are starving and these people are cheating me,
I know they're cheating and so I want
to be the world's best gambler."
Well, one thing leads to another and you know,
he actually does some pretty good deeds and but so he goes back
up to heaven trying to get someone who is going to be condemned
by the devil, right, in to heaven.
And they turn him away, they say "no, no, no, you've chosen here,
remember, you want to be the world's best gambler."
And all of this of course in 8-syllable verses
that are really terrific, but anyway just telling you the story.
So they say "You have to go back down to hell."
So he goes back down to hell
and in hell the devil says, "Aha, I've got you now."
But he creates such a ruckus that the devil finally says "Out, out,
I can't stand it anymore, just get out of hell, go away."
So he goes back up to heaven and sure enough things end as they would
in the Cordel story at this time and age happily,
but what about the story?
Is this story about happy endings and miracles?
Or is it about the world's injustice, right?
Where was wondering?   Where was violence?
Where does one begin and the other end?
It's pretty funny when the devil kicks a guy out of hell, right?
But this is a serious story in some ways, right?
It's about something that Christ himself couldn't handle, right?
Peter, take care of it.   I'm going crazy with this, right?
And so, is this a reactionary story told
in a deeply religious language in a little folk way?
Or is it something that's saying a great deal more, right,
about life in a way that one could laugh at and one could recite
without getting in trouble, right?
Without being worried if there's some person
from the police who's going to stop you and ask you what you were doing.
This is the past and the present, I think, is often more head
on in terms of there's a beautiful folieto.
I have spoken for 45 minutes and I have 15 minutes left,
so I'll tell you very quickly that there's a beautiful,
there's a beautiful present day folieto that asks the same kinds
of question often in a different language of wonder and violence.
It's a lovely story about a woman who sings to her child talking
about all of the terrible things in the most beautiful language
that could happen to a woman in the Northeast today.
But it's told so beautifully, right, that it's very hard to find this
to be-- it's jarring but it's not more jarring I think
than the story of the blacksmith.
It's about, among other things, many other things, right,
what our lives are about, what justice is about, right?
What the language of wonder
and violence can accomplish and what poetry can do?
What it has done [inaudible] magnificently in the past
and what it continues to do today under very different definitions
and conditions of debate where not everyone agrees what tradition is
or what the Cordel is or what it ought to be.
It speaks about something that is alive, speaks in the end not simply
about the Cordel or about the outlaws or about young lovers
or old lovers or fables that speaks
about what [inaudible] is constructed in great part
through ideas about wonder and violence is and speaks
about a Brazil that remains inalterably complex,
marvelously demanding, full, right,
of a grandeur that is often shot through with injustice.
So, I think that this might be a place to end.
I'm sure that I have rushed through many decades and many points
of genre that I hope that it makes some sense
that the Cordel today is not altogether different
from what it was.
It builds upon elements and tradition that are very old,
150 years old but, and beyond that of course,
reaching back to the roots of the Cordel.
But that remains alive.
I think they call the talk here today, right?
Here tomorrow because I believe that this power, right,
which is the power in part of poetry,
but which is also the ability to register transformation and to speak
through speaking about the Northeast, right,
of something that goes beyond the Northeast is something
that endures and that will endure.
So if you have questions, I will welcome them.
And in the meantime, I will thank you for your attention.
[ Applause ]   >> If there are any questions,
Brock [phonetic] has the mic, so we can be heard.
[ Silence ]   [Inaudible Remark] Yes.
[Inaudible Remark] Wait, wait until you have the mic.
>> Just speak.   >> Thank you.
And this, the slideshow was absolutely terrific.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah, and it was really wonderful and there it came
and the great performance because you're like the poets
of Jesus [foreign language].   That was absolutely wonderful.
Thank you very much.   [Applause]
>> It's always a bad thing when there are no questions,
so you have to ask me so I won't feel like
"Oh-oh, what's the matter here?"   [ Silence ]
>> Okay, I have a quest-- I have a, first of all, a comment
and I wanted to, I had not known about the tradition before hearing
about this symposium and so it was a really wonderful introduction.
So thank you very much and thank you to the Library of Congress
for organizing this as well.
I am interested in whether contemporary artists,
whether in Brazil or in other parts of the world,
inspired by the Cordel tradition have been taking it up
and I'm wondering whether there are books of translation
so that we can read some of the literature for those of us
who don't speak Portuguese.   Thank you.
>> I think that the Cordel is part of a larger tradition, alright,
that shows up in different places within the Iberian world, right?
I mean the most closest cousin would be the Mexican corrido.
And much of-- I mean it's taken many different terms
but there are really very useful comparisons that one could make.
And I think, you know, one of the joys I had of there's a new--
there's a program through the Brazilian Ministry
of Culture now called the Pontos de Cultura, the Cultural Points,
and these organizations are basically community arts
organizations that are linked through digital web.
It started out with something like 300 and now they're like 4,000.
And many of them are in marginalized places and some
of them were interesting experiments that I've seen.
Some of them were devoted just to the Cordel.
But some of them are devoted to bringing together like rap
and the cantador tradition, it's called [foreign language], right?
And it's a kind-- and this is especially important to communities
where there are Northeastern migrants.
And so this is not a super direct answer but it's that--
you know there are enough points of contact with other traditions
that have an improvisational background.
There are other traditions that have like as the corrido,
right, a written broad side.
I mean, there are certainly American, US broad sides.
But the tradition did not live on in the same way as it did in places
like Brazil, Mexico, to a certain degree Argentina, right?
In oral form, maybe Venezuela, right, and so,
but I think that I had one
of the more wonderful experiences I had with-- in New York.
There was a festival organized of improvisational and pamphlet poetry
and I invited someone from Brazil who actually is a very short,
very kind of prepossessing looking person who arrived
in kind of his regular clothes.
And there are these improvised, looked like super impro, you know,
wearing this like white uniforms and they had gold stuff on them
and you know and they were really tall
and they had some you know fancy blue ribbons hanging off
their guitar.
So they decided that they would, even though some spoke Spanish
and he spoke, obviously, Portuguese, they would try to communicate
and so they started communicating with these guys
in the white uniforms, you know, were doing their thing
and they had really great electronic guitars.
And here came the poet from Brazil and he really kind
of looked a little rustic compared to anyone.
I looked a little rustic compared to these people, right,
who were performing and what happened was not only was he able
to answer them and this back forth duel.
He outshone them.
They said you're a little guy, right,
and you're going to sing a little song.
And he said I may be a little guy, right, but my song is huge
and Brazil is bigger than any of your countries.
He said it in rhyme in a great and friendly way but the point was made.
And so the answer here too is that there already exist
to a ceratin degree, I think, a kind of bridge that,
both between the past and present and things like rap and things
that looked very, very contemporary and the tradition of improvisation.
But also the existence of similar traditions in other countries,
right, which could be marshaled to create a kind of poetic language
that people could communicate, right,
in ways that pushed them beyond their own formula.
So, I don't know if that's good enough.
>> Thank you but excuse me, I work here at the library and I'd
like to say in answer to your question, you know,
in addition to what she said.
We have in the rare book collection and also in the collections--
general collections of the library, we have literally hundreds,
maybe thousands of books in Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese,
English here about Literatura de Cordel.
So if you go to the second floor, the Hispanic division.
We have a very, very brief bibliography of some
of the books that we have here.
But we have literally thousands, come to us,
and we'll be more than happy to help you.
You'll be more than welcome.
We'll show you some of our treasures.
>> Thank you so much.
That's a great thing to say.   Thank you.
Anything else?
>> I think maybe we should-- oh Mary Jane.
There's a question.   >> Thank you again.
I learned a great deal this afternoon.
It was really wonderful.   I wanted to ask you.
Are there in those stories recurrent figures?
Are there mythical heroes or heroines who reappeared again?
Is there magic when solutions cannot be found then somehow,
you know someone comes in and solves the problem.
So are there mythical-- myths and mythical heroes and heroines
and that's my question that recur in different times,
in different places and--
>> In-- there are a couple of answers
which I'll try to give quickly.
One of them is you know if you want your basic mythic heroes,
they are everywhere.
You know, Charlemagne still shows up in some of these Cordel stories.
But if you want archetypal kinds of figures, they too, I mean,
today one of the more interesting facets I think
of Cordel is its ability to stimulate conversation again
about what, about the present.
And you know you could have outlaws like the cangaceiros,
the outlaws called like lampiao, right?
But you could also have huge debates about drug dealers, alright?
You could have debates about whether they were like lampiao
because lampiao was really violent or whether they were very--
they're very unlike lampiao because that violence is totally different.
Or no, you-- they get a bad rap but there is-- there--
you know for some people they'd be a Robin Hood figure, it's a debate,
right, again, and so I think that one of the things
that the Cordel does is to bring into the present heroes and heroines
and more and more heroines, right, who have some sort of answer.
There are lots and lots of folietos about Lula, right.
In fact, there's a whole book about folietos about Lula the president,
the past president, right.
And so to a certain degree, I mean sometimes Lula acts as viciously
like lampiao and, you know, and sometimes,
I'm not saying in real life.
I'm saying in the pages of the Cordel.
So I think it's really hard to--
you know, it depends whether you're looking for someone who acts in ways
that are recognizable, someone who really is from way back in the past,
or someone who bec--
who's intentionally a kind of polemical figure.
Because sometimes too, you know, the Cordel when people are reading it,
right, and sometimes often and still people read among themselves,
it's something that's fun.
I've seen kids on a street corner, you know, one's reading aloud,
people are laughing uproariously
but it could also trigger a discussion, right?
I don't think lampiao was a hero at all.
No, I think he was because my father says, I don't know what.
Yeah, but my uncle knew him and you know it wasn't that way at all.
Yeah, but look at the police today, they are so corrupt
and lampiao, he was honorable.   Honorable?
What do you call honor-- you know, if you have a lot
of tape you can get a lot of discussions for it goes on and on
and again, I think that's part of what makes the Cordel vivid
and alive because it is able, alright, to harness things
that do with the present.
To you these figures at first glance might look extremely traditional
or extremely from some other time and place.
So, okay.   >> Thank you so much.
>> My pleasure.
>> This has been a very, very informative, moving,
entertaining presentation that's setting the stage for two days
of discussion about Cordel.
>> It's a great pleasure and an honor for me to be here
and especially, I'm thankful for you being here
and you honor us with your presence.   I'm already learning many things.
This is one thing about the Library of Congress.
You always, always learn something new.
In fact, I have been here about 21 years but who really started me,
she doesn't know about this, who started me
on Cordel was really Candace Slater.
Was one of first books, that I've read here and also coming
from [inaudible], I have known nothing, I have never heard
of Cordel and then I came to the Library of Congress and find
out that this is the treasure throve of Cordel literature.
We have-- we are now nearer-- nearing about 10,000 pieces.
It's really, really incredible and we have
to thank not only the Library of Congress
but especially the Rio office.
The people who have actually gone and more often than not
on their own expenses and so on collecting, collecting, collecting,
collecting and every month that we would get some, sometimes more,
sometimes less but we always got them.
So we are very, very thankful for the Rio Office.
And we're also very thankful for people such as Goncalo that comes in
and brings us some gifts, some things that believe it
or not we still do not have.
So he is going to be-- at the end he's going to be passing out some
of the things that he brought.
As far as I know are not in our collection yet,
but it's always a pleasure for me to be here and also
to be part of these programs.
As has been said already and I don't want to take too much time,
this is really a collaboration between beginning with the Embassy
of Brazil and the Library of Congress
and between the Hispanic division and the Folklife Center.
Tomorrow I'll be speaking more about this collaboration,
but right now what I would like to do
so that I don't spend too much time encroached on my speakers.
I like to speak a little bit, give a little biographic sketch
and I already asked for forgiveness for being very, very brief on that.
I'll be speaking about each one and then I will open up for them
to speak then in order beginning with Mark Curran.
Mark Curran is a professor emeritus of the School
of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University.
He taught Spanish and Portuguese languages
and their respective cultures at Arizona State from 1968 to 2002.
He was born in Abilene, Kansas and grew
up on the farm, wheat farm near Abilene.
He earned his BSBA degree at Business Management with a minor
in Spanish at the Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri 1963.
He had then earned a PhD in Spanish and Latin American studies
with a minor in Luso, Luso-Brazilian Cultures.
And he has also been very, very active with Brazil
and we have his books, in fact.
They-- all of you, if you can, go upstairs later on
or tomorrow upstairs to Hispanic division.
One of your books is there on display and then you have it
in Portuguese, Spanish, English and so on, so it's there.
The second speaker is going to be Mr. Chestnut.
Chestnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies
in professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
He's currently serving as the coordinator
of the Latin American Studies Association Programs on religion
and conducting research on miracle working saints.
I believe on those, I believe in them [inaudible].
Working saints of the Americas and Europe.
A leading specialist in Brazilian and Latin American religion,
he's the author of Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint,
these are very recent, recent books.
Competitive Spirits-- New Religious Economy, this just came in 2003.
And Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens
of in Brazil and this was 1997.
The third one is my good friend Goncalo Ferreira da Silva and I want
to tell Candace that he's just delighted to see the show
that you had because he kept touching me
and saying I know him-- I know her, you know.
He was very excited about that.
He has published-- his first work was in 1966, the first volume
of short stories of Northeastern region of Brazil, Um Resto de Razao.
And he also has published his first poem the Rigid Fist
in a Cordel chapbook.
He was editor of the newspaper A Voz do Nordeste, The Voice of Northeast,
and the journal Abnorte-Sul between 1980 and 1988.
He was one of the founders
of the Academia Brasileira de Literatura de Cordel
that you spoke about.
And was its first president from 1980 to '88 and continues to serve
on its Board of Directors.   Goncalo is the author of such
as Meninos de Rua e a Chacina da Candelaria,
some of you may know that, and we have Cordels telling that story.
The Street Children and the Massacre at Candelaria, Mahatma Gandhi,
which earned him recognition at the Embassy of India
and his work has been translated in English, into Spanish, in Japanese,
French and many other languages I'm sure.
So I don't want to take any more time
and I would invite then our first speaker to come up to the podium.
>> Alright.   [ Pause ]
>> Thank you all it's a pleasure to be here.
Cordel bibliotech at the congress, [inaudible].
Okay, thank you.
Title of the paper and a lot of the papers over the years
in academia I would quote in poetry
and as Candace knows that's the best part.
You know it's the poets that are the best, but today that's not the case
but I will try to-- it's pretty intense.
I hope you had a couple of coffee.   We're going to stay awake.
This is called A Debt to Pay, a portrait of 20th century Brazil
in the Literatura de Cordel.   The debt is my debt.
I spent 40 years in Brazil.   Brazil has treated me wonderfully.
I met all kinds of Brazilians and this is
In the past years of retirement and part time teacher
on the state university my love affair with the Brazilian people,
their country and especially the Literatura de Cordel did not
go away.
Study and research on the Cordelian poetry continued.
In the last years before retirement I dedicated myself
to my most ambitious project.
And the best I hoped as a result of 40 years
as a fan and believer in Cordel.
The resulting portrait of Brazil and the 20th century in Brazil,
that's the English title.
The Portuguese is here, I'll show it to you later,
is the topic of this presentation and a summary of this book,
700-manuscript pages, 370 pages,
in 15 minutes you're going to get it all.
[Laughter] In some fashion my experiences and times shared
in Brazil, the vocation that turned into a passion,
all this needed to come to a conclusion.
What remained was the desire
to share what I had learned over the years.
And there is only one way, a writing that would summarize 40 years
of the love affair of Brazil and its people.
It would be a project I would dedicate to the participants
of Cordel but would share with all Brazilians interested
in the Cordel tradition.   It was in effect a debt to be paid.
The importance of the Literatura de Cordel to me, stranger and guest
in Brazil, was always what the Cordel said and told
about Brazil and the Brazilians.
This would the focus of the portrait.
It was a version based on personal taste
and background shared with themes of Cordel.
Much in common, that of growing up near Abilene, Kansas,
a town known for its history and linked to the cowboys
and the cattle drives in Texas.
That of the boy having lived through the times
of precarious economic survival on a family farm,
that of a boy loving the drama of old country music and finally,
a boy steep in Irish Catholic tradition.
So you can see the parallels, so I did not want
to do another classification of Cordel,
I wanted to retell the Cordel.   Ah, we shall see.
During the several years prior
to retirement I reviewed my entire collection
which is pretty significant, rereading
and reading all manners of stories and verse.
As a result I came to the idea of retelling the Cordel
but with the realization that it may be termed,
and I really believe this, the folk popular epic of Brazil.
Using common phrases describing these important basic aspects
of life I arrived at the 10 chapters of the epic.
In effect, 10 large slices of Brazilian life,
I would like to speak a bit of this vision.
If I run out of time I'll stop, okay.
One, God above and below, in this we believe.
The religion of the Brazilian people, what they believe
and how they live is important.
Holy Scripture, especially the New Testament, in the accounts
of the evangelists is the basis for the story forms about Jesus Christ,
the Virgin Mary, the apostles and saints
and the mischievous devil that is not far behind.
Prophecies and stories of the end of the world complete this vision
but religion in Cordel is not just biblical.
What makes Cordel a true jewel, a poetic expression and a pleasure
to read is its folk popular religiosity, and I don't know
if that exists in English.
The multitude of poems dealing with sacred
and at times mysterious places always enchanting
like Bom Jesus da Lapa, [phonetic] in Salvador,
the Festival of Nazareth and Belen
and of course Aparecida in Sao Paulo.
Besides entertaining the Brazilian public they also inspire,
inform and teach.
The Cordelian classic author of the Arrogant Soul adapted
by Ariano Suassuna and his famous the Rogue's Trial includes
in my opinion almost an encyclopedic vision
of the Old Catholic beliefs in Cordel.
The gambling soldier is not far behind.
Other poems based on legend and the folk popular memory
like the travel adventures of Jesus and Saint Peter, the machinations
of the devil and Saint Peter and others like Saint Peter
and the Devil's Farm, it's a great story, make readers fall
on the ground laughing but always with a moral story within them.
Two, the manifestations of God in the people.
Here we have a cast of characters which tells us of the old Brazil,
of the backlands with messianic visions inherited from the age
of Jesuit preachers like Antonio Vieira.
Story poems on Brazilian messianic leaders
like Good Jesus Anthony the Counselor,
Bom Jesus Antonio Conselheiro and later Padre Cicero
for number one personage in Cordel
and his successor Friar Damian presented highly entertaining story
poems like Father Cicero and Nuclear War.
You got to read it.
And the example of the girl who spoke about topless to Friar Damian
and was turned into a vulture.
The cast of God and the Devil, Saints and Sinners,
the Brazilians themselves does not end there.
Protestant missionaries and their discussions and debates
with the old traditional Catholics bring yet another vision,
a mixture of life lived and imagined by the poets.
Among the best of such story poems is the classic attributed
to Leandro Gomes de Barros' Debate
of the Protestant Preacher and Master Vulture.
And the vulture is the paladin of catholic beliefs, it's great.
And the corollary of stories about cachaca, sugar cane rum,
is another aspect of this vision.
The reader learns not only of religious beliefs
but of social morays in Brazil.
Cordel also tells a much smaller slice of the cake important
for completing the vision of Brazil and the Brazilian and the religion.
The few story poems about Kardec Spiritism and those
about the religion originally of the African slaves but now scattered
across Brazil about [foreign language].
And the vision closes with a return to orthodoxy.
The mass of poems dedicated to the popes of Rome, their lives,
their deaths, their great deeds.
None is more important than the Odyssey of Guandu, Brazil,
Pope John Paul the Second.
Cordel relates his visits to Brazil and Latin America and his great love
for the underprivileged of society and the youth.
Three, what not to do, the recompense of sin.
If religion reveals what the Northeasterner
across this huge Brazil believes and what many
of his fellow countrymen believe the poems also treat morality which tell
of examples of evil, the transgression of man, disobeying
or disrespecting the word of God for his believers.
This completes the religious and moral vision
of this Northeastern popular epic.
Such story poems number in the hundreds, if not thousands,
teach us not only the delicacies of sin, that is, the day at the beach,
the party of carnival, even the procession of the novena.
But the terrible punishment of sin, largely fictitious
but still a revelation of what could occur told
through the amazing creativity of the Northeastern bards.
These same stories and verse tell us of the social morays
of the 20th century of the daring ladies in 1910
who abandoned their petticoats and bathed in the ocean in long dresses.
And the young ladies in mini skirts [foreign language] swinging it
down the avenue in Rio or Sao Paulo and even the Northeast.
One should remember Cordel always existed above all to entertain
and these stories and verse,
although theoretically teaching good morals performed on the poet stand
in the marketplace, a rule similar to the sexy tabloids
on the liquor stands in the big cities.
Both Cordel and the cheap magazines reveal the Brazilian popular life.
The girl who beat up her mother on Good Friday and was turned
into a dog by the great [foreign language] not only put bread
on the table during terrifically bad economic times for the poor
but open the hole in the dam bringing in an indentation
of imitators and imitations.
That poem sold nearly 1 half million copies.
Another example of-- another type of example were the themes based
on true life, the fenomeno, the phenomenon.
And they completed the vision of sin.
None was as important on the national scale as the cowboy
who gave birth in the Alagoan backlands in 1966.
Was it a case of a hermaphrodite among [foreign language],
the cowboys.
It was not just the Northeaster who wanted to find out.
Great national magazines like [foreign language],
National Television invaded the Northeast to discover the truth.
A Northeastern vengeance brought subsequently another headline,
a local cowboy knifed one of the poets who dared
to make crime of Northeastern cowboys.
Four, our heroes, a model for life.
If one does not want to do evil and suffer the consequences the flames
of hell being sin's recompense, a hell described in a similar way
to real life in the arid backlands.
The guide to a life of goodness was that of the great hero.
Without doubt, the largest number of the [foreign language],
the romances of old Cordel treat the heroic
in a kaleidoscope of variance.
The old romances of chivalry, of love, adventure, the animal hero
in the backlands, of the cleaver rogue, the anti hero of Cordel,
and not last are these, the real live hero.
Here the Cordelian public reads the epic of the bandit of the Northeast
and of the heroes of national, political and economic life.
And secondly comes to know the enormous quantity of poems
which treat the valiant outlander, [foreign language], the most famous.
It is in these lengthy narrative stories of 32 pages that at times 48
or even 64 that the creativity
of the Northeastern bard is most apparent.
One only has to read the death of the 12 Knights of France,
the Romance of the Mysterious Peacock,
the Romance of the Mysterious [inaudible],
the Deeds of John Cricket and later in real the life
of Antonio Sevino [phonetic] or the deeds of lampiao
and the stories relating the feats of [inaudible] du Vargas,
Juscelino [phonetic] and others and the most valiant
of them all, [foreign language].
These are the great romances which teach us of the heroic vision
of the Northeasterners but also of their taste and preferences
in reading and the values.
Life is a struggle, life is an odyssey.
Carestia de la vida, the high cost of living, poverty, suffering.
Huge amount of stories in Cordel.
The earliest were Leandro Gomes De Barros the beginning
of the 20th century, a great document of Cordel.
But guess what, the topic did not go away, life got worse.
Life became more expensive so it became a topic to the date.
That's life as a struggle.
Life is an odyssey is the entire story
of the migration of the Northeasterners.
[Foreign language] to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Cordel documents this better
than any book you can read, any newspaper, any film.
They tell the story of the odyssey.
[Foreign language] who came by foot, by train, by boat.
I took it upon the gayola [inaudible] San Francisco back
in 1967.
Many came via the boat and then the little [foreign language].
I'm moving along here through some of these things.
Anyway, they arrived in Rio and Sao Paulo
and so what was your problem, you had to survive.
Cordel is replete with stories of trying to survive in Rio de Janeiro.
But then something happened what if you did survive,
guess what you face next.   Preconceito, prejudice.
I ran into prejudice, I can't tell you as being a researcher of Cordel,
I'd ran into such prejudice then.
Times have changed in the large cities in the South
and I saw prejudice from [foreign language] talking
about the [foreign language].
Anyway, this tells their story but guess what, it's not at all sad.
There's great jokes, there's great stories
and I'm sure the library has some.   Chapter 6 is on entertainment.
We have our distractions.   I've hit on some of it.
You got to keep in mind the concept of-- is.
First of all, above all, entertainment.
Then-- then if you went for more, good, but you better entertain.
The [inaudible] would say how do you know if it's a good poet?
How do you know?   He sells lots of books, okay.
Some of the most famous stories
of Cordel estimates of 1 million copies.
[Foreign language], the dog of the dead and others, [foreign language].
Anyway, so it's those stories
but what else Cordel does is [foreign language],
traces the whole day of that quest
for the Copa del Mundo which is coming up.
And when they won the trophy for third time,
the trofeo [foreign language], they put it, they showed it off
in a glass case in Rio de Janeiro and somebody stole it.
So, Franklin Maxado just rails about it in a couple
of his stories in Cordel.
But next there's hundreds if not thousands of-- stories in Cordel,
[foreign language], can't begin to tell them all.
Every attic of life and then there's a little [inaudible] side too,
minority, but it's double, [inaudible].
There's a lot of sex, sex sells.
This chapter I'm going to say a little bit more about.
Seven, in politics we believe but do not trust, okay.
Cordel is not lacking in the theme of current events, that is,
everyday stories, happenings by the poets who claim to be the voice
of the people and the newspaper of the people,
although a small percentage in the Cordel tradition production,
these journalistic story poems have value far beyond their number.
In a recent book History of Brazil and the Cordel.
Did in Sao Paulo in 1998, we explained the phenomenon,
traced its evolution throughout the entire 20th century.
For those of you hopefully who are cognizant of the little bit
of the Brazilian history we start
with the word Canudos, Guerra de de Canudos.
Then Cordel documented everything since then.
The military lottery in World War I by Leandro Gomes.
The whole odyssey of banditry, [foreign language], that followed.
Among the great reporters were Leandro
and Francisco das Chagas Batista, so important [foreign language].
Then the revolution of 1914 which Candace dealt with greatly
and her stories on Padre Cicero,
then the time of the tenientes, 1920s.
Then the first appearance of Luis Carlos Prestes,
el Caballero de la Esperanza, the Knight of Hope then Getulio,
the whole saga of Getulio then afterwards Juscelino [inaudible]
then the pax military, the 25 years of the military rule in Brazil.
What followed with the struggle for free elections,
the gradual political opening and the great victory of Tancredo Neves.
Cordel concluded its great century with the return to normal.
Normal, the stories of Jose Sarney.
The hope and disillusionment of Fernando Collor de Mello.
The ante regnum of Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
And now in the new century, the victory of the PT and the workers
and today the promise and the condemnation of corruption
in the regime of the Lula.
So what else is new on the Cordelian sun?
The poets would say it's no big deal.
[Foreign language] They're used to it.
But what remains is the fascinating chapter of politics
and the national economy.
Chapter 8, there's a big world out there.
In the same vein, the same reporters,
they talk about anything outside of Brazil important to Brazil.
The main protagonist is the United States
of America for whatever reason.   Time has changed.
Anyway, summarizing, World War I, totally documented.
World War II, even more documented.
The World War II was made for Cordel, why, good and evil.
The Axis, the bad guys, Hitler, Mussolini, they made such fun
of Mussolini [foreign language], I'm sorry.
And Hirohito, he was enigmatic and who were the heroes?
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, General de Gaulle
and even Stalin to some degree, okay.
So that was that.   After World War II, what happened?
They continued, the crisis in Egypt, the Korean War,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
the war in the Middle East ending today in terrorism,
the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and the uncertainty and fear
of the world that struggles yet today between good
and evil all reported in Cordel.
And this is the most important part, the cast of characters changed,
the medieval knight, the valiant backlander,
the good bandit were replaced by General Eisenhower,
Winston Churchill, and maybe General de Gaulle.
The vile [inaudible], the more, the terrible duke,
the cruel plantation owner are now Hitler, Mussolini, Juan Peron,
Saddam Hussein and most recently Osama bin Laden,
terrorists par excellence but entertainment, information,
moral instruction did not disappear.
Great stories, great reporting and the vision remained.
Nine, this is the sad chapter, the times are getting difficult.
When the Northeaster, the voice of the port [phonetic]
of Cordel laments the changing times, sad economics,
financial realities, his voice turns melancholic saying [foreign
language], times are getting difficult, it's true.
So the chapter is sad but the poets always find a way to inform,
to entertain so sometimes a story you check to be sad is not.
The poems basically are about human rights.
They wrote of abortion along with the women's right
to choose what is best for her own life and her baby.
The right of both men and women through divorce, this in a country
that prohibited divorce until 1977.
The right of the child to life, especially the abandoned children
that Goncalo wrote about, okay.
The right of a man or a woman to live a sexual life that he
or she prefers and not that dictated by society,
the rights of gays and lesbians.
And one story of the ages, one of my favorites, the phenomenon that is
and was Roberta Close, you may or may not know of him/her.
Famous in Brazil, Roberta was elected woman of the--
in Brazil in 19-- Roberta originally was not a woman, okay.
Brazilian sense of humor, Cordel, it's great.
One of the poems that most caught our attention,
a poem that reflects the changing times was a great satire
by Maxado Nordestino, the Debate of Lampiao with an American Tourist.
It turns out the American tourist is Betty Freidan.
So it's a whole satire of machismo, Nordestino,
and feminismo Norte Americano and they both gave each other hell.
The chapter also demonstrates unhappy changes in Brazilian life
in the 20th century, violence, crime, but there's also another kind
of violence, violence out in the country from the landholders
who are defending the life, the land-- it's theirs, it's mine,
I own it against the people who did not have land.
And then came the [inaudible] and then came a movement [inaudible],
the movement of those without land and she commend this.
Finally, got to get this one
in because it's the most optimistic, this is not the end.
It is here that the story form of Cordel returns to its roots
and speculates on the finally of man in these hundreds of titles.
The Northeastern bard reflects on life and death,
eternal life or paradise in hell.
Before seeing what happens after death, the poet has see to life,
thus the hundreds of stories about morte e vida, life and death
which are really Cordel's homage to the great figures of history.
This is the biography in Cordel, thousands of times.
The poets told the life and death of most
of the protagonist mentioned thus far and many more.
The Cordelian poet aside
from remembering life had to remember death.
Here he must return to the roots of faith.
Evil deeds bring the punishment of hell,
a good life brings the rewards of heaven.
The poet will first treat the pain and punishment of the evil ones,
lampiao, Antonio Sevino, Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein,
and more recently Osama bin Laden and yes, George W. Bush
in the Cordelian hell, okay.   Maybe more recent ones too.
Jose Pacheco's A Chegada de Lampiao no Inferno is the prototype,
you got to read that one.
More important are the good folks, the Cordelian heroes who arrive
in heaven to receive their just reward,
thus we have all the story forms of the arrival in heaven,
the letter to heaven, the letter from heaven to the Brazilians
and we hear from a posthumous [inaudible],
Tancredo Neves [inaudible] and many other admired personages
from the annals of Cordel.
If there's one poem that for us epitomizes the vision of the end,
the life that was before and in its unique vision summarizes the essence
of Cordel, it's a marvelous poem, a worded prize,
a publication by Ariano Suassuna and his colleagues [inaudible].
[Foreign language] terra termina, everything on earth ends
by the Alagoan born but long time resident
of [foreign language], Rodolfo [inaudible].
I have a book on that guy.
Within a historic context which seems
to mention almost all the great figures of Cordel,
the bard wrote his masterpiece.
If you've not read the poem, make a point of getting it and reading it.
It summarizes not only the religious and moral vision of Cordel
so important to the poet but its cast of characters,
God and the devil, saint and sinners,
Brazilians and non-Brazilians.
Thus we pay our debt in the very large book which has come
out in Brazil, a book that summarizes 40 years of study
and appreciation of the poets, printers and public of Cordel.
It's a book that expresses our love affair with Brazil
and the Brazilians which still continues [inaudible].
3   [ Applause ]
>> Now, Professor Chestnut.   [ Pause ]
>> [Foreign language], my talk today is entitled "God, Goals, and Guns,
Pentecostalism and soccer and violence as Brazilian vox populi.
I like to express my gratitude to Dr. Billington, Peggy Bulger,
and Katherine Kerst, all of the staff
of the American Folklife Center for inviting me to participate
in such an intriguing symposium.
Well, I'm not a specialist in Cordel,
I'm a specialist in religion.
We've already seen how religion has come up numerous occasions
and talks already and so 2 of the 3 themes that I'll be speaking
to are religion, Pentecostalism, anyone who spent time
in Brazil knows that football
or soccer is the one great true religion of Brazil of course.
There are several other institutions and social manifestations
in addition to Cordel that give voice
to the Brazilian popular classes.   Among three of the most important
on a national scale are Pentecostalism,
soccer, and violence.
Over the past half century Pentecostals has mushroomed
in Brazil, particularly among the urban popular classes.
A type of secular religion, soccer has provided an important avenue
for advancement for many poor men of color, increasingly women as well,
especially African Brazilians.
And violence, especially in the form of organized crime
in the cities is an expression of the marginalization
of significant sectors of the urban population.
For most of its 5 centuries of history,
Brazil like Spanish America has been Catholic.
Like their Spanish cousins, the Portuguese at the beginning
of the 16th century claimed a newly discovered land on behalf
of their king in Catholic faith.
Papal [inaudible] granted the new world to the new Iberian crowns
and charged them with evangelizing the indigenous people
of the Americas.
The evangelization of Brazil's indigenous population
and African slaves was generally carried
out in a more relax laissez faire manner
than in much of Spanish America.
The great sugar plantations of the Northeast were the center
of colonial life and if there happened to be a resident priest
on the plantation, his pastoral activities were primarily focused
on the owner and his family not the African slaves.
On the Amazonian frontier, the Jesuits made heroic efforts
to evangelizing indigenous peoples and protect them from slave raiders
but their new faith afforded them little protection from the ravages
of small pox and other lethal diseases brought
to the new world by the Europeans.
On the eve of independence from Portugal in 1822,
Brazil was thoroughly Catholic but the predominant type
of faith practiced there was a full Catholicism
that syncretized elements of African religions,
medieval Portuguese Christianity and indigenous beliefs.
Catholicism remained the official state religion during the new
nation's first 6 decades following the lead of Mexico
which had separated church and state 3 decades earlier in 1859
and for Don Pedro II, this established the Catholic Church
in 1888 and thus set the legal foundation
for the growth of Protestantism.
Main line Protestant denominations from the U.S. were the first
to take advantage of the new religious liberty
and sent missionaries to proselytize Brazilian Catholics
at the end of the 19th century.
In general, Brazilian Catholic showed little interest
in the gospel preached by North American Presbyterians
and Methodists.   The Pentecostal message of healing
and spiritual rebirth however was received with such great enthusiasm
from the moment it arrived on Brazilian shores in 1910 and 1911
that in less than a century, it has become the predominant form
of Christianity practiced in Latin America's most populous nation.
After a half century of explosive growth,
charismatic Christianity has attained hegemonic status
in Brazil's religious economy.
The great majority of church-attending Christians
in the country worshipped its services
in which the Holy Spirit takes center stage.
Among Protestants, Pentecostalism has enjoyed such success
that 75 percent of all evangelicos, the preferred term for Protestants
in Brazil and indeed throughout Latin America,
75 percent of all Protestants in Brazil belong
to Pentecostal denominations such as the Universal Church of the Kingdom
of God or the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus whose temple is
showed here.
Across the Christian divide, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal
or the CCR has proliferated to the point that in just 4 decades
since arrival in Brazil, the largest Catholic nation on earth,
it can claim at least half
of all practicing Catholics among its ranks.
Such is the hegemony of charismatic Christianity that those Catholic
and Protestant groups that do not offer some sort of pneumacentric
or spirit-filled worship face stagnation and even decline.
In present day Brazil, 80 percent
of Protestants practice spirit-centered form of faith mostly
in Pentecostal and Pentecostalized main line churches.
Likewise, some 60 percent of Catholics
and is the largest Catholic nation on earth are charismatic.
Catholic religion in Brazil,
Pentecostalism has been the primary religious architect and developer
of the country's new free market of faith.
If Brazilian popular consumers are now free to chose
and consume their religious goods that best satisfy their spiritual
and material needs, it is largely due to the unparalleled growth
of Pentecostal churches since the 1950s.
This charismatic branch
of Protestantism single-handedly created religious and social space
where Brazilians from the popular classes were
and are free not to be catholic.
Given Catholicism's historic role as one of the constituent elements
of Latin American national identities,
Pentecostalism's construction of an alternative religious identity
for those unhappy with their inherited faith is no
minor achievement.
For more than 4 centuries to be Brazilian was to be Catholic.
The tiny minorities who converted to historic Protestant denominations
such as Methodism and Presbyterianism in the latter half
of the 19th century, and then to the faith missions around the turn
of the century risked social ostracism
and sometimes even violence at the hands of Catholics
who viewed Protestant converts as traders to the one true faith,
The archetypical Brazilian Pentecostal is Marcia Lopez
[phonetic], a poor married woman of color in her 30s
or 40s living on the urban periphery.
She works as a domestic servant in the home of a privileged compatriot
and was a nominal Catholic before converting to the Assemblies
of God during a time of personal crisis related to her poverty.
Of course, Charismatic Protestantism is so widespread
and differentiated now that there are hundreds of thousands
of believers who possess none of these constituent elements
of the Pentecostal archetype.
Most salient among the socioeconomic characteristic of crenches
or believers as they're often known in Brazil are poverty,
a nominal Catholic background and gender.
Historically, the great majority of Pentecostal converts have been poor,
non-practicing Catholics.
Numerous studies including my own in Brazil has shown
that not only are Pentecostals poor but they tend to have lower incomes
and less education than the general population.
In addition to social class,
most Brazilian Pentecostals share a common former religious identity.
Majority of crenches had been nominal cultural Catholics
before converting.
Most would have been baptized in the Catholic Church
and perhaps even had taken first communion but their contact
with the institutional church was minimal.
However, their weak or nonexistent ties to the church no way meant
that their world view had become secularized or disenchanted.
In times of the celebration, nominal Catholic
like their practicing co-religionist would send prayers of supplication
or thanks giving to the Virgin Mary or one of the many saints.
Thus, their estrangement from the church and the perennial shortage
of clergy, no priest or pastoral agent would likely be present
at the time of their poverty related crisis
which so often leads afflicted individuals
to the doors of a Pentecostal temple.
It is among this vast field of nominal Catholics
who compose the majority of the Brazilian population
that Pentecostal evangelists have reap
such bountiful harvests of converts.
While the third conspicuous characteristic
of the Pentecostal consumer market,
the great female majority among believers is not peculiar
to the faith, it merits mention because of the religion status
as the most widely practiced faith among women of the popular classes.
Hence, product develop--
product development and marketing strategies naturally must take
into account the fact that women believers outnumber men
by a ratio of 2 to 1.   In one of Brazil's largest
and fastest growing Pentecostal denominations, the Universal Church
of the Kingdom of God, the ratio climbs to 4 to 1.
Male believers of course continue to monopolize the pastorate
and high ranking church offices but Pentecostalism is largely sustained
and spread by the irma [inaudible] fe or the sisters in the faith.
The utilitarian nature of Pentecostalism
and popular religiosity itself, yes,
religiosity is a good word in English.
In general means that spiritual products offered to consumers
of the divine must prove useful in their daily lives.
Products that do not relate
to believer's quotidian existence will find few purchasers
in the popular religious marketplace.
This doesn't mean that consumers
of the popular classes are only religious instrumentalist
who evaluates spiritual products solely on their basis
of their capacity to provide relief
from the afflictions of everyday poverty.
But spiritual products that hold little relevance
to the social reality
of impoverished believers will collect dust
on the lower shelves of the market.
Since most Brazilian religious consumers are much better acquainted
with Catholic products, rival spiritual firms in order
to compete must offer goods that are simultaneously familiar and noble.
That is the non-Catholic product must provide sufficient continuity
with catholic doctrine or worship
to maintain the potential consumer's comfort level.
At the same time, the product must differentiate itself
from the Catholic brand.
Pentecostalism possesses exactly this type of product in its doctrine
and practice of faith healing.
More than any other of its products, it is the Pentecostal belief
that Jesus and the Holy Spirit have the power to cure believers
of their spiritual, somatic and psychological ills
that impels more Brazilians to affiliate with crenche churches.
Pentecostal churches are what took me to Brazil for the first time
in the early 1990s to conduct dissertation research
on this booming religion.   I quickly discovered however
that the country's real true religion especially for men
and boys is football or soccer.
Long before Pentecostals built mega churches in which thousands
of believers could worship in unison, soccer stadiums seating more
than 100,000 served as gargantuan temples
in which fans could freely express their devotion
to the beautiful game [foreign language] and its exponents.
Along with Pentecostalism, Brazil's iconic sport is one
of the main cultural venues in which members of the popular classes,
particularly males, are able express themselves.
This of course doesn't mean that soccer is the exclusive domain
of poor uneducated males.
Au contraire, the beautiful game is actually one of the few institutions
that have the power to temporarily unite Brazilians
across the steep divides of class and race
that normally separate them.
I was living in Belem [phonetic] during the 1994 World Cup
and was amazed to see how the city of more than a million came
to a halt each time Brazil played.
Even my Pentecostal friends who were not supposed to be engaging
in such ungodly pursuits could not resist the temptation
to watch the samba boys drive to win an unprecedented fifth cup.
When they actually did and here on U.S. soil, the celebration
that erupted involved a palpable sense of unity,
the likes of which I have not experienced again,
at least on such a massive scale.
Swept up in the euphoria of the moment I too felt Brazilian.
Despite its current mass appeal soccer originated in Brazil
as the game of the elite, brought over by British merchants at the end
of 19th century football during its first sew decades was a gentile
pastime, mostly played in upper class private clubs among the same
social set who played tennis and badminton.
Unlike these two other sports which are also brought over by the Brits
and are still mostly customarily played at elite social clubs,
soccer quickly descended the steep pyramids of social class and race.
A few major factors account
for its relatively rapid spread among the popular classes.
First, it's one of the cheapest and easiest sports to play.
All that's really needed is a ball and some space
and if a ball is beyond the purchasing power
of potential [inaudible], one can be fashioned from rags.
Compare this to the expensive equipment needed for tennis
or American football, baseball and other team sports.
Second, at the time of its initial expansion in the first decade
of the 20th century there was no nationally played sport in Brazil
such as baseball was in the United States.
Soccer had no competitors to slow its growth.
Third, as it professionalized in the 1930s
and '40s it offered athletically gifted men from the popular classes
and particularly African Brazilians a rare chance
to significantly improve their economic and social positions.
Football joined the music industry and the military to a lesser extent
as one of the very few social arenas in which poor men
of color could improve their lot on the basis of merit.
Racism was certainly not absent from the playing field,
especially in the early years but the beautiful game provided one
of the few national arenas
where African-Brazilian men could not only shine
but often outshine their lighter complexioned teammates
and opponents.
Both the elite pedigree of this sport and racism meant
that in the 19's and into the 20's African Brazilians had
to play separately and unequally in their own impoverished clubs.
Such was a prevailing racism of the day that the few players
of color were able to play on--
team often took the field where the base is lightened,
generous applications of [inaudible].
Trailblazing team-- from Rio smashed the color barrier
by fielding a racially mixed team
which won the national championship in 1923.
An increasingly competitive
and lucrative sport demanded talented players no matter their
skin color and as a sport became a national past time in the 1930s
with major games broadcast on the radio from Belem to Santa Catarina,
Brazilian soccer produced its first countrywide idol Leonidas da Silva
a.k.a. the Black Diamond was a star African Brazilian forward.
Here he is on the screen.
Who was a top goal scorer in the 1938 World Cup hosted by France
and also the purported inventor of the acrobatic maneuver known
as the bicycle kick and those of you who speaks Spanish know
that the bicycle kick in Spanish is actually the called the Chilean
kick, go figure, Chileans inventing this, I don't think so.
Anyway, and a generation later it was the beautiful game
that gave Brazil its first African Brazilian hero whose fame
and popularity transcended the sport.
Edson Arantes do Nascimento, affectionately known as Pele,
helped transform Brazilian soccer into the best in the world
through his pivotal role in three World Cup victories
in 1958, '62 and '70.
Probably still the most recognizable Brazilian in the world,
Pele's rags to riches stories has inspired countless poor boys,
especially African Brazilians to try to emulate his success.
Among those who have come close are fellow African Brazilian soccer
stars, that's the 19-- 1970 World Cup championship team.
Are fellow African-Brazilian soccer superstars Junado [phonetic]
and Junajenio [phonetic], among others.
Only a tiny percentage of players are able to achieve the kind of fame
of the aforementioned stars, however,
there are 18,000 [inaudible] boys and mens
who play professionally both at home and abroad, have the opportunity
to significantly improve their standard of living.
Those who are able to resist temptations off the field can carve
out a fairly comfortable lifestyle for themselves.
Thus far we will consider one aspect of the beautiful game, the players,
as integral part of this sport as they are,
the number of professional players fails in comparison
of course to the number of fans.
It is his fans at the great majority of Brazilians
from the popular classes and a deed from all walks
of life actively participate in soccer.
The most passionate ones joined fan clubs associated
with the major teams such as Corinthians and Sao Paulo,
or here we see Flamingo from Rio de Janeiro,
the fans themselves actually ran the clubs
which operate independently from the teams.
Some of them have even served as informal mutual aid societies
in which members helped each other with job contacts,
housing, and other necessities.
And it is these fan club members will leave the cheers and chance
of the games, and who in occasionally engaged in violent acts
against opposing fans, a passionate and exuberant,
and well-organized fan based can have a significant impact
on the success of a team.
In the best of cases, players and fans engage
in an almost symbiotic relationship in which the drums
in chants reverberating throughout the stadium inspire the team
in a rhythm of victory.
As part of the fan club or even just as occasional aficionados,
the relatively cheap stadium bleachers provide a comfortable
social space where man, women or few in far between,
where men from the popular classes can freely express themselves.
TV and radio of course allow millions more to participate
or be at least directly in the beauty of the game.
I decidedly less positive but significant type
of vox populi is violence.
Brazil like most nations in the America's was birth in bloodshed.
On a divine mission to discover gold in the New World,
the Portuguese enslaved about Indian and African, and drove the former
to the brink of extinction.
Despite of carefully cultivated myth of a kindler and gentler form
of slavery and the part of the Brazilian elite,
the shocking reality was a life expectancy of no more than 21 years
for African slaves in Brazil.   Both the indigenous people of Brazil
and indeed the higher western hemisphere and the Africans
who were worked to death on the sugar and tobacco plantations,
the European conquest
in colonization was nothing short of a holocaust.
Despite the pattern of systemic or tedium violence,
the Brazil elite also prove the myth of a peaceful nation particularly
in relevance to its Hispanophone neighbors.
The myth was built on the reality of the relative lack
of bloodshed during epic, during periods of epic political transition
such as independence, the abolition of slavery,
and the founding of the republic.
Brazil largely avoided the bloody wars of independence
and fracticidal struggles that plaque much
of his Hispano-America during the first half of the 19th century.
Obviously, this focus on the absence
of large scale political violence conveniently ignored the everyday
brutality, perpetrated first by the Portuguese colonial state
and then by the Brazilian.
Of course the Tupis and Guaranis as well
as the African slaves didn't possibly accept their play.
At times the Indians fought,
attacking early Portuguese settlements,
and when European firepower proved too much, they fled further
into the dense tropical forest.
Likewise, African slaves organized periodic mass uprisings especially
during the first decades of independence.
Sugarcane field were burned to the ground and plantation masters
and their families were slaughtered.
And following the Indian lead, African slaves
when they could escape into the vast anterior and formed maroon community
or Quilombos where they governed themselves and strove
to revitalize their native cultures.
Zumbi, the African-Brazilian hero was a leader of the largest
of all Quilombo dos Palmares, in the back lands of Alagoas,
they're in a later part of the 17th century.
Since violent rebellion often resulted in death,
everyday forms a resistance were much more common than and raids
and uprisings, slacking off at the job, damaging tools and crops,
and continuing clan destined devotion to African religions
where easier and far less dangers ways of resisting bondage.
Less than a decade after the abolition of slavery in 1888,
the land of the Cordel, the anterior of the north east,
more specifically the back lands of Bahia presents us with one
of the most spectacular cases of organized counter violence
on the part of the popular classes in Brazilian history.
By the mid 1890s the millenarian folk Catholic community lead
by a messianic lay preacher known as "Anthony the Counselor",
Antonio Conselheiro, had attractive close to 20,000 back landers.
The progressive in egalitarian community offered its members
aminities that were in short supply for the great majority
of impoverish back landers, portable water, coed schools,
and a lack of prostitution crime and alcoholism came along
with the strong dose of apocalyptic preaching,
which projected the end of the world in 1900.
As the 2nd largest time in the state of Bahia at that time,
Canudos with its progressive socio order was seen as a direct threat
to the socio economic status quo of the region.
Local colonels who were also upset about the loss of labor
that thousands of agricultural peons living
at Canudos represented called the local and state police
to erase the community from the face of the Brazilian map.
Sharpshooter jaguncos or roughnecks steeled
by their faith easily repelled the local
and state police sin against them.
In one of the epic stories of Brazilian history,
we counted of course in many Cordel verse,
Canudos withstood 3 state leads assaults against it,
only the overwhelming firepower including recently invented machine
guns of the newly formed army of the republic could raise the town
for the ground and the 4th and final assault of 1897.
Thousands of believers died defending their back lands utopia,
troops disintered the corpse of Antonio Conselheiro, decapitated it
and took it to the state capital Salvador where it was paraded
through the streets as a warning to poor back landers who sought
to chart their own destiny free from domination by world bosses.
Violent opposition to the semifeudal sociostructure of the back
and to northeast continued in the commercial banditry.
Cangaceiro Lampiao and Adolfo Meia-Noite reigns large back
by getting wealthy world bosses
and their henchmen for robbery and murder.
Some must narratively Lampiao
and his wife Maria Bonita became folk heroes,
violent defiance [inaudible] of the rural bosses
and the nascent Brazilian republic.
The ex-- Lampiao and fellow cangaceiros of course--
in Cordel literature especially since both back lands are bandits
in chapbooks had their hay day in the 19th and 30s.
As Brazil urbanized during the middle of the 20th century,
its mushrooming has became the new loci of violent crime.
Violent crime rates began to soar in the 1970s
and have remained high since.
Brazil currently ranks number 8 in the world and murder rates,
with a figure that is 5 times that of the United States
and of course you must know how our homicide rates are outrageously
compared to Europe and Japan.
Interestingly the entire top 10 list post of Latin-American
and Caribbean nations such as Honduras in El Salvador who topped,
and Mexico who comes in it in number 10.
The murder rate for Brazilian youth between ages 15
and 24 is even grimmer at 2 and a half times the national average.
Time constraints preclude a discussion of the complexity
and enormity of violent crime passed decade so I will conclude
with the final observation.
[Inaudible] developments as been a proliferation
of organized drug gangs since the late 1980s, entire favelas
in Rio have been taken over by 20 something and teen drug Mafias
who manufactured, distributed crystal meth and other drugs.
Fernando Meirelles gripping 2003 films City--
Ciudad de Dios graphically illustrates the life and death
of young drug traffickers
who are disproportionally poor, an African-Brazilian.
Neglected by families and agencies of the state and often exposed
to brutality at very young ages, they're willing
to employ extreme violence against anyone
who threatens their business including rival traffickers
and the police and army.
And like their cangaceiro cousins of yore,
some invest a small portion their profits in their communities
in the form of daycare centers, food, clothing, and medicine.
Such acts of charity don't go unnoticed in the favelas.
When a drug lord of the favela of Hosina in Rio was captured
by police, angry residents closed down the high way tunnel at the foot
of their hill, and protest.
And much as the poems and songs of Cordel immortalized the life
in times of the cangaco, Brazil's own style of gangster rap
and funk known as proibidao--
here we have an album cover of a gangster group associated
with the Red Command, Commando Vermelho,
one of the big drug trafficking gangs in Rio, Brazil's own style
of gangster rap and funk know as proibidao memorializes
and often glamorizes the exploits of Carioca
and polista narco trafficking gangs.
In short, the legacy of Cordel as a voz do povo or the voice
of the people lives on in Pentecostalism, sucker,
and certain forms of violence.   Thank you.
[ Applause ]   [Pause]
[ Foreign Language ]   [ Applause ]
>> I understand that there will be-- either today or tomorrow for sure,
distribute the-- his remarks in English.
He's confused speaking in Portuguese,
and then if you have questions using Portuguese
or in English, I will try to translate.
And one of the best things of having him here, he brought some
of his books and that he also taught me when Professor Slater
who was showing her-- have shown there--
that's so many of these people who was very excited.
I know him, I know her, and was very, very good so thank very much.
[ Foreign Language ]   [ Pause ]
[ Foreign Language ]   [ Pause ]
[ Foreign Language ]   [Laughter]
>> It was-- indeed everybody understood but it's just so rich
and so wonderful that what he's trying to say
and which is really the-- no--
the way that Literatura de Cordel is now being used in schools,
it's being used for health but as he said, the favor or the flavor,
the flavor of the Cordel is still basically the same,
so we really appreciate your question.
Do you have any questions
for our other speakers of for well some, yes?
>> I would like to know if-- well, thank you.
I'd like to ask Mark if-- I understand that your book has come
out in Brazil already, is that correct?
And do you plan to publish it in English as well?
>> No.   >> No, okay.
>>Too-- it's too big.   >> Okay.
>> But it's very pretty.   >> Oh, it is, it is, it is.
>> [Foreign language] I've got another one that's an anthology,
English and Portuguese, very small, much cheaper.
No, but if you have any-- no, I don't think so.
Take a long time to translate it.   I wrote it Portuguese.
[ Foreign language ]   Yeah, I appreciate your question.
Thank you very much, but talk to me later, I have-- I'll give you some.
>> Well, I would like first of all to congratulate
and thank you all the spe-- and thank all the speakers.
It was a beautiful afternoon.
And well, somehow my question has been answered already
because our first speaker, umm-- oh my God, I forgot your name, yeah,
Candace, was talking about a more traditional way
of Literatura de Cordel and as the last speaker Goncalo was talking
and he talks about something which is quite didactic and trying
to tell a story and more than a point of view or,
and I actually would like you to tell us how you feel about that.
[ Pause ]
>> I think that-- I think that this is,
you know when we were talking a little bit about the kinds
of debates that take place in this-- like this, we were talking, good.
We were talking about the kinds of debates that take place
in the Cordel and through the Cordel and I think one
of those debates is precisely about how one says what one has to say
and there would be people who, first of all,
and the Cordel has never been just one thing even
when at its most supposedly traditional,
there were always different kind of poets who preferred different kinds
of styles, who preferred different lengths of poetry,
who just had different ways of seeing the world,
some who are deeply committed religiously,
some who had a somewhat more independent view point, et cetera.
I think that today, you know the entry of the Cordel
into schools encourages a different kind of vision maybe
of what the Cordel is about.   I mean clearly if you're trying
to teach kids Brazilian history then you know you could use something
that was really quite direct and quite didactic,
but I think that some of the debates are how does one learn
and there are people who would say
that the Cordel teaches the most, right?
It is the most imaginative and crazy, right?
That the great masterpieces of the past were absolute spectacles
of the imagination, right, and that they always had a moral point
but that didn't necessarily mean
that the moral point was spelled out, right,
in great depth, on the contrary, right?
Sometimes the moral point was always the opposite, right,
of what appeared to be, so I think there's realness in the Cordel
for lots of different kind of styles.
I think in the past in general the great masterpieces
of the Cordel are not particularly didactic and the sort
of narrower sense of the word.
It certainly doesn't mean, right, that there is not a place
in the Cordel for didacticism, that there is not a place
in the Cordel for change.
But I think the example that we were talking
about earlier this afternoon, right, about the blacksmith or the devil,
it's outrageous, it's truly outrageous
and people see that, right, and feel that.
So there's no reason that that can't live on with other kinds of Cordel
but I think if I get to pack up the suitcase with a couple
of Cordel classics, I think maybe there'll be a pretty big space
in it, right, for those compositions that had to do with the joy
that was creation for people who had very few joys maybe in terms
of the material things of this world but for whom the word and the word
like poetry became something that overcame great hardship
and that once again the Cordel is many things but if it is not
that first, it seems to me it's something else, right?
Again, let a hundred flowers or thousand flowers bloom
but that's what I think of this.   Here you go.
>> Any other questions?
>> -- was saying in his presentation and I'll try to make it very short
because we have-- all of us or some of us have to go
to another event shortly.
What he was saying is that he has been very successful
in several steps or phases in his life.
He came from the Northeast, he also became very much involved
in the foundation of the Academy of Literatura de Cordel
and maybe more recognizable and also that he has produced
and maybe this you can stop by and see this.
He has been very successful in doing quite a bit of research,
quite a bit of researching and having the certain things
about science, about biology, about human rights, about biology
and so on, to be presented in booklets of semi books or magazines
that then can be used and are being used
by the thousands in Brazilian schools.
He's very, very happy about that and what he also says a major point
and I believe that Candace will agree with it,
even though of Cordel has gone through many phases
that the flavor is still very much there, the flavor of the Northeast.
This is a central point that he had.   Anything else that you like to note?
I mean his poem was wonderful, I just cannot--
>> Yes.
>> So his poem was terrific so maybe what we can do right after this,
we can come, talk to him, get--
look at some of the books and I guess I would give audience
to my good friend, the director of the Rio office.
[ Pause ]
>> I want to thank our speakers today for a wonderful variety
of presentations, and I hope you'll come back tomorrow.
We will begin with registration at 8:45
and the presentations will begin at 9:15.
There will be presentations about iconography in the Cordel, in music,
some topics in library science, digital preservation of Cordel,
how librarians can keep abreast of the more recent changes in Cordel
and then a discussion at the end of the day about Cordel today.
We hope you will come back.
We've enjoyed you as an audience and thank you very much.
Let's give everyone here another round of applause.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.