Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado was a Brazilian novelist who contributed to both the Boom and post-Boom genre of Latin American literature. Amado was born and reared on a cocoa plantation yet published his first novel at age 20. His early works, including The Violent Land (1942), explored the exploitation and suffering of plantation workers. Despite imprisonment and exile for leftist activities, he continued to produce novels, many of which have been banned in Brazil and Portugal. Later works such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1966), and The War of the Saints (1993) preserve Amado's political attitude in their more subtle form. Many of his books were adapted for film and television.

'Terras do Sem Fim' (The Violent Land) The promise of a quick fortune is heard far and wide. Those returning from Ilhéus say that the cacau bean is now worth more than gold. Waves of adventurers set out from Salvador and the country towns and make for the "the endless lands" of the Bahia coast. The small hamlets of the region, like Tabocas and Ferradas, are ripe for settlement and cocoa tillage. Greed populates and feeds the dreams of farm hands, but the dangers of setting up in this still-virgin land are many: thick bush, poisonous snakes, smallpox - or bladder, a mysterious fever that kills -, ghosts, ambushes, gunfire and spilled blood. Sinhô Badaró and his shy brother Juca Badaró are the owners of a ranch on those lands, next to the property of Colonel Horácio da Silveira. The bushland of Sequeira Grande, perfect for plantation, becomes the object of a dispute between the two powerful families. However, to reach Sequeira Grande, you have to cross the plot of the peasant Firmo, and he is intent on holding on to his land.

Jorge Amado

'The Violent Land' describes the formation of the cocoa coast, the lust for cacau gold, the battles for land tenure, the establishment of the plantations, and the construction of small towns in the environs of Ilhéus, in the south of Bahia, in the early 20th Century. The world of oligarchs, farmhands, foremen, ladies from good families and the cabaret whores acquires an historical and autobiographical backdrop with an added touch of epic. A narrative that occupies a formative place in the work of Jorge Amado, The Violent Land portrays the social ties of the region, reworks the author's childhood memories and exposes the violence and exploitation that marked the period.

'Tenda dos Milagros' (1969) chronicles the chaos that results when a prominent American Nobel Prizewinner arrives in Bahia, with nothing but praise on his lips for a long-forgotten local writer-scientist named Pedro Arcanjo. When the media finally discover who Arcanjo was and what he espoused, they are completely horrified to discover that he believed that the way to improve the lot of humanity was for people of various races to marry and have children by one another in mixed-race marriages. Furthermore, Arcanjo clearly acted on his beliefs. The rampant racism of Brazilians is completely exposed, and the American is seen to be applying Arcanjo's theories by having an affair with a local mestizo woman.

'Gabriela, cravo e canela' (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon 1958)The action of the novel begins in 1925 in the provincial port of Ilhéus in Brazil's north-central state of Bahia. Ilheus served as an important point for the distribution and export of cacao, the region's primary product and a topic of much discussion in the novel.The book tells two separate but related tales. First is the romance between Nacib Saad, a respectable bar owner of Syrian origin and Gabriela, an innocent and captivating migrant worker from the impoverished interior. Second is the political struggle between the old guard of landed Cacao growers, led by the Bastos clan and the forces of modernization, in the person of Mundinho Falcão, a wealthy young man from São Paulo. It can be read simultaneously as an unusual, charming love story, a description of the political and social forces at work in 1920s Brazil. It is a somewhat satirical depiction of Latin American aspirations to 'modernity', and a celebration of the local culture and pleasures of Bahia.

The book was made into a film for Brazilian television in 1960 and again in 1976. A feature film of the novel was directed by Bruno Barreto in 1983. The feature version starred Sonia Braga as Gabriela and Marcello Mastroianni as Nacib, and featured original music by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

'Dona Flor e seus dois maridos' (Dona Flor and her two husbands) shattered Brazilian box-office records and proved very popular worldwide, chiefly because of Sonia Braga's tremendously sensual presence. She plays a beautiful woman whose gambling, whoring husband drops dead after an all-night carousal. Deciding to marry again, she chooses a boring, devout, middle-aged pharmacist who rarely wants to make love. One night, as she lies in bed next to her sleeping spouse, the ghost of her first husband appears in the room. She tries to get rid of him, but he refuses. She finally succumbs to his overtures and takes the ghost to bed with her, while the second husband continues to sleep. This entertaining and erotic picture, while perhaps not the most challenging film to come out of Brazil in the 1970s, is nevertheless enjoyable. At times though, the creative personalities involved seem to want to play it both ways and make it "art cinema" as well as "commercial cinema" simply because it was aimed at the international market.

The Violent Land

'O sumiça da santa' (Translated as The War of the Saints) dates from 1988 and is set in the Citade do Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, where the author lived for years and died in 2001. The novel describes, (in the words of Amado himself), 'events that couldn't have happened anywhere else'. The original title in Portuguese would actually translate as 'The disappearance of the Saint' however. The first 7 pages of the book present all the elements that will remain throughout the story and that are consistent with post-Boom literature. These are magical realism, political engagement, Brazilian sensuality, a profound love for the culture and the history of the land, seasoned with irony, benevolent sarcasm and the false sense of modesty that characterise most, if not all, of Amado's works. A great emphasis is given here also to religious syncretism and social critique.

Syncretism is the attempted fusion of two or more systems of religious beliefs with (generally speaking) a heterogeneous result. The syncretism in Amado's book is that between beliefs imported into the 'new world' by the Portuguese, (along with the people of Africa they enslaved), and the Catholicism that the Church tried to instill into the people. The huge variety of Catholic saints and biblical characters became over the centuries a covering for the just as huge parade of Yoruban deities, and the ceremonies and prayers became a unique blend of many different rites, to form the Afro-Brazilian. Jorge Amado himself was a member of the candomblé, proudly holding the title of Obá, at one of the terreiros in Salvador, the Axé o Oponjá.

The book is also a bitter analysis of the different regimes that governed Brazil for decades. The censorship, the disbandment of political parties and the repression of any kind of protest. Amado himself was forced into exile when the Government outlawed the PCB 'Partido Comunista Brasileiro'(Brazilian Communist Party) with whom he had been elected as member of the National Constituent Assembly. The Catholic Church does not come out any better from the author's portrayal of discrimination and robbery carried out by the many members of the ecclesiastic world (who are described having political and economical interests that go far beyond the Christian message).

However, Amado is not a complete anticlerical. He talks lovingly of the poor priests of the Brazilian interior and of their very human sins and weaknesses. Particularly unforgettable is the analysis of the sexual temptations of Father Abelardo Galvã

The story of Santa Barbara's disappearance is the fulcrum of the plot, that however goes way further, touching, as well as those mentioned, a myriad of other themes, including art, food, Carnival, sex, marriage, the role of the media. The events are played out by an array of colourful personalities. Each character is subtly assigned a precise role, either within the plot or by being used as examples or to point to parallel stories.

Critics usually discuss Amado's career as having two phases, marked by the shift in Amado's career away from political-oriented works. Leftist critics ignore his later novels, but most reviewers agree the change was for the better.

James Polk asserts, "His first works were embittered, pedantic tracts, weighted with social squalor and class struggle, resolved by a simplistic and highly romanticized brand of communism." Many critics have pointed out the importance of Bahian cultural forms in Amado's fiction, such as his use of the 'candomblé' religious ritual and the Brazilian martial art 'capoeira' in many of his stories. In addition they refer to his borrowing from Bahian's popular literary press, the 'folhetos', or songbooks. Critics often point out the mystical quality of his work and praise his ability to make supernatural events seem ordinary. Many call Amado a regionalist yet some point to the general truths present in Amado's work and the popular appeal of his fiction. Amado is also known for his strong female characters.

A few critics mention his almost feminist views being in strong opposition to traditional Brazilian machismo. However Amado has been accused of inconsistency in his views. His public statements on sexism and racism in Brazil have sometimes conflicted with his presentation of those problems in his novels.

Complaints about characterization range from assertions that portraying intimate or unspoken thoughts is not Amado's forte to charges that his characters are underdeveloped. Some critics have accused Amado of being a pornographer, although it would appear that the majority dismiss this label.

Critical assessment of Amado's fiction is mixed. Some assert that he is a master storyteller with a great ability to evoke the images and soul of his native region.

Others accuse him of being a hack, simply a writer of popular formulaic novels that lack any literary merit. Jon S. Vincent states, "Amado is anything but a simple spinner of yarns. His later novels are deceptively sophisticated fictions by a writer with a perfect ear for the right word, a flawless sense of dramatic and comic pace, and a keen sensibility for narrative pattern."

In spite of the mixed reviews that Jorge Amado's work has attracted, his contribution to Latin American (and specifically Brazilian) literature and his influence through writing is indisputable. His novels are interesting, informative and certainly worth reading.