Death, Dismemberment, and Memory: Body Politics in Latin America (review)
The volume’s many strengths make it worthy of course adoption. By linking individuals to organizations, social sectors, and national and international trends, the essays encourage the reader to appreciate the dense human landscapes and everyday challenges faced by Brazilians over the past two centuries. Daryle Williams’ piece on Vicente Racioppi describes a man with an obsession—a 1930s preservationist who wanted to save the gold-mining era architectural jewel of Ouro Preto. Ironically, he was marginalized when his work was co-opted by national interests. Todd Diacon’s essay on Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, the early twentieth-century Positivist and founder of the Indian Protection Service, is light on personal details, but in contrast to the other essays, connects to the current status of indigenous policy and contemporary realities. The piece on Jôfre Corrêa Netto, organizer of tenant farmers in rural São Paulo in the 1950s and early 1960s, by Cliff Welch, is particularly successful at demonstrating how the times make the man, the man makes the times, and individuals remake themselves through selective personal memory. James Green shows how Madame Satã constructed a transvestite-tough guy identity in the 1930s bohemian underground of Rio de Janeiro, only to be refashioned late in life as a “hero” by 1970s counter-cultural intellectuals. This essay makes the reader aware that the process of reading and writing history can become a fascinating hall of mirrors. The contributors to this volume rediscover and recreate human lives, making them meaningful today. As students absorb these skillfully recounted life stories, they will surely recognize their own reflections, warped by time and through a different national lens, and come to appreciate the importance of historical context.