Table Of ContentN ew D irections in L atino A merican C ultures
A Series Edited by Licia Fiol-Matta & José Quiroga
New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone
by Raquel Z. Rivera
The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901
edited by Robert McKee Irwin, Edward J. McCaughan, and Michele
Rocí o Nasser
Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture & Chicana/o Sexualities
edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, with a foreword by Tom á s Ybarra Frausto
Tongue Ties: Logo-Eroticism in Anglo-Hispanic Literature
by Gustavo Perez-Firmat
Bilingual Games: Some Literary Investigations
edited by Doris Sommer
Jose Mart í : An Introduction
by Oscar Montero
New Tendencies in Mexican Art: The 1990s
by Rub é n Gallo
The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American
Imaginaries
edited by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics, and Politics
by Idelber Avelar
An Intellectual History of the Caribbean
by Silvio Torres-Saillant
None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era
edited by Frances Negr ó n-Muntaner
Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails
by Arnaldo Cruz-Malav é
The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World
edited by Ruth Behar and Lucí a M. Su á rez
Violence without Guilt: Ethical Narratives from the Global South
by Hermann Herlinghaus
Redrawing the Nation: National Identity in Latin/o American Comics
by H é ctor Fern á ndez L’Hoeste and Juan Poblete
Hispanic Caribbean Literature of Migration: Narratives of Displacement
edited by Vanessa Pé rez Rosario
Caviar with Rum: Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience
edited by Jacqueline Loss and José Manuel Prieto
Cuban Identity and the Angolan Experience
by Christabelle Peters
Corporeality in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature: Body
Articulations
by Bruce Dean Willis
New Argentine and Brazilian Cinema: Reality Effects
edited by Jens Andermann and Á lvaro Ferná ndez Bravo
Brazil under Construction: Fiction and Public Works
by Sophia Beal
N ew C oncepts in L atino A merican C ultures
A Series Edited by Licia Fiol-Matta & José Quiroga
Ciphers of History: Latin American Readings for a Cultural Age
by Enrico Mario Santí
Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place
by Jacqueline Loss
Remembering Maternal Bodies: Melancholy in Latina and Latin American
Women’s Writing
by Benigno Trigo
The Ethics of Latin American Literary Criticism: Reading Otherwise
edited by Erin Graff Zivin
Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity: From
Sensuality to Bloodshed
by H é ctor Domí nguez-Ruvalcaba
White Negritude: Race, Writing, and Brazilian Cultural Identity
by Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
Essays in Cuban Intellectual History
by Rafael Rojas
Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing
by Dami á n Baca
Confronting History and Modernity in Mexican Narrative
by Elisabeth Guerrero
Cuban Women Writers: Imagining a Matria
by Madeline C á mara Betancourt
Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s
edited by Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Carnal Inscriptions: Spanish American Narratives of Corporeal Difference and
Disability
by Susan Antebi
Telling Ruins in Latin America
edited by Michael J. Lazzara and Vicky Unruh
New Argentine Film: Other Worlds (updated paperback edition of O ther Worlds )
by Gonzalo Aguilar
B razil under C onstruction
Fiction and Public Works
Sophia Beal
BRAZIL UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Copyright © Sophia Beal, 2013.
All rights reserved.
Portions of chapter 2 appeared in Sophia Beal’s article “The Substance of
Light: Literature and Public Space in Belle É poque Rio de Janeiro,” which
was originally published in the L uso-Brazilian Review 49.2: 5–27 (2012).
© 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Wisconsin Press.
An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared in an article in Hispania , the
Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
(AATSP). It was published in 2010 in issue 93.1: 1–10. Special thanks
to AATSP for permission to reprint the article.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN ®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave ® and Macmillan ® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–32247–0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: September 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my parents, Thaddeus Beal and
Erica Funkhouser, with love and gratitude
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Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 An Introduction to the Fiction of Public Works 1
2 Conquering the Dark: Literature, Lighting, and
Public Space in Rio de Janeiro in the Early 1900s 23
3 The Spectacle of Light: A Public Works Company
in Southeastern Brazil (1906–1971) 55
4 Bras í lia: The Real and Promised City in 1960s
Brazilian Literature 7 9
5 Fiction and Massive Public Works during the Brazilian
Military Regime (1964–1985) 99
6 S ã o Paulo’s Failed Public Works in Ferré z’s Cap ã o
Pecado and Luiz Ruffato’s Eles eram muitos cavalos 121
Epilogue 137
Notes 149
Works Cited 1 69
Index 185
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Figures
2.1 “A illuminaç ã o do Palacio Monrö e” (The Illumination
of the Monroe Palace) 38
2.2 “Exposi çã o Nacional—Avenida dos Estados—vista
do alto do portã o monumental” (National Exposition—
Avenue of the States—View from above the
Monumental Doorway) 41
2.3 “Exposi çã o Nacional—a illumina çã o do Pavilh ã o do
Districto Federal” (National Exposition—The
Illumination of the Federal District Pavilion) 42
2.4 “Exposi çã o Nacional: O Pavilh ã o da Bahia—aspecto
da illumina çã o” (National Exposition: The Bahia
Pavilion—Aspect of the Illumination) 43
2.5 “Aspecto da illumina çã o da porta monumental”
(Aspect of the Illumination of the
Monumental Doorway) 44
2.6 “O Pavilh ã o do Estado de Minas Geraes”
(The Pavilion of the State of Minas Gerais) 4 5
2.7 “A electricidade” (Electricity) 47
