The imagined city: rural-urban disputes in Lima Barreto

A cidade imaginada: controvérsias rurais-urbanas em Lima Barreto

Abstract

The work of Afonso Henriques Lima Barreto (1881-1922) is one of the most singular in Brazilian literature, moving between social criticism and acid satire. Lima Barreto presents an indelible picture of the transition from the Empire to the Republic in Brazil and the fate of Afro-Brazilians,not incorporated into the "new" social project. He did not write as a historical chronicler, but as a caricaturist and private deponent. The novelist was mulatto and poor and suffered the stigmas of his condition from an early age. The family's sponsorship and efforts allowed him to access studies, although he did not conclude them. Glorious projects were castrated by the immanence of the injustices that swarmed in the eminent city of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro. The lines drawn by Lima reveal an unequal, prejudiced and corrupt city. The suburb emerges as the antithesis of a city. Much more rural than the Center or South Zone, the suburb saw the growth of worker and peddler huts, comprising an infinite number of those excluded from the republican modernity. However, modernity came as a violent form of sanitation. In the case of the Republic, social reforms were generally composed of a reordering between the oligarchic power and the urban bourgeoisie. In any case, the poor, and among these, Afro-Brazilians, paid more for the demands of making Rio a new Paris. Amidst these striking moments in the construction of the nation that we are, Lima presents a pragmatic version. Not the men, not the airs, not the land. The problem lies in the mechanisms employed to put these variables into action. Self-criticism would be the most appropriate term. As this was suffocated in social life, it was necessary to insert it posthumously in his work. In this enterprise, it is of interest to problematize the interpretation thatLima produced on the urban relations in Rio de Janeiro during the first years of the Republic. That city was represented as a mixture of sympathy and pessimism, extending the suburban horizons and pointing toward the environment of ruralism and poverty that defined the country.

KUMMER, Rodrigo. A cidade imaginada: controvérsias rurais-urbanas em Lima Barreto. Estudos Sociedade e Agricultura, jun. 2018, v. 26, n. 2, p. 402-425, ISSN 2526-7752.