Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Brazil Initiative

Event Archive 2017

Mar 15, 2017

CANCELLED: Miqueias Mugge - Militias and the Politics of War in 19th Century Brazil

CANCELLED. In this talk, Professor Mugge scrutinizes the social origins and political articulations of Brazil’s 19th century war elite, and focuses on the practices and alliances of forty National Guard officers who commanded 30,000 militiamen in the meridional province of Rio Grande do Sul from 1845 to 1873. These militias were pivotal to the Brazilian war machine and provided the majority of troops for the war against Paraguay, which represented a milestone in the country’s military and infrastructural development and also the beginning of the decline of the Monarchy. Close attention to workings of these peripheral Senhores da Guerra (War Lords) helps us to understand how the modern Brazilian State was formed in and through contexts of emergency and war, and to illuminate the ways in which local worlds have been militarized.

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Mar 9, 2017

Spring 2017 Film Series - Terra deu, terra come (The Earth Giveth, the Earth Taketh Away, 2010)

The Brazil Initiative's Spring Film Series presents a selection of classic and contemporary films straight out of "another Brazil": the vast and rich world of the country's backlands.  Filmmaker Rodrigo Siqueira had set out profile Pedro de Alexina, one of the last guardians of the funeral traditions brought by Africans to the Brazilian mining region of Diamantina in the 18th century, but his ethnographic portrait quickly became something else altogether. As Alexina spins his tales and legends for Siqueira, he conjures such a vivid world beyond time and space that the very idea of the real seems to slip away.

7p.m. – 9p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Mar 8, 2017

Gladys Mitchell-Walthour - Black Group Attachment and Political Opinion in Brazil

Relying on in-depth interviews, I examine how Afro-Brazilians in Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo feel linked to blacks. Many Brazilians discuss how racial and social exclusion shape their lives which has an impact on feeling connected to other Afro-Brazilians. I rely on survey data  collected in in Salvador and São Paulo to examine the role of black group attachment on political support, including affirmative action, Law 10.639 (the requirement that African and Afro-Brazilian history be taught in schools), and whether the president should nominate blacks to important positions.

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Mar 2, 2017

Roee Ben Sira - Recrossing the Atlantic: The Case of Brazilian Choro

In the last ten years choro–an old Brazilian musical genre–is being discovered by growing audiences in Europe and throughout the world. What is suddenly drawing the Europeans' attention to this delicate, rich and demanding music? Is it the music itself with its European roots and tropical magic? or is it the Brazilian “way” and conditions in which it is being practiced? In a lecture-concert Roee Ben Sira, an Israeli composer, pianist and a scholar, will share aspects of his research on the internationalization of choro and play some of the music’s classics together with his own compositions. After a year in Brazil and in Europe he is now an artist in residence at Florida State University as part of The Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist Program. His 2015 album–recorded in Rio de Janeiro–was hailed as one of the 10 best albums of the year in Israel’s leading newspaper.

7:30p.m. – 9:30p.m.   Grant Recital Hall, 105 Benevolent Street, Providence

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Mar 1, 2017

Diogo de Sant'Ana -The Right-Wing Backlash in Brazil: Origins and Consequences for Brazilian Democracy

In the current conjuncture, Brazil is going through a radical change in its policy framework. In less than 6 years, the political scenario of the country changed from a left coalition with unprecedented high popularity rates to an unelected conservative government, which has been promoting a number of reforms in the opposite direction to the expansion of rights and citizenship defined by the 1988 Constitution and implemented in a more emphatic way from the Workers Party (PT) victory in the 2002 election. The basis of this radical change goes far beyond the conflicts of the political arena. It is related to a strong reaction to the changes that occurred in the country in recent years. This reaction involves a conservative offensive in the fields of economics, social policy, institutional guarantees and moral values. In fact, a movement that, in conceptual terms, can be understood as a “Right-Wing Backlash” in Brazil. Diogo de Sant’ Ana is an attorney and career employee of the federal government of Brazil as an Analyst of Social Policy (ATPS). He has a PhD in Economic Law from São Paulo University (USP). Between 2008 and 2015, he worked at several positions for the Presidency of the Brazilian Republic. He is now doing his post-doctoral research as a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School.    

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 23, 2017

Spring 2017 Film Series - Girimunho (Swirl, 2011)

The Brazil Initiative's Spring Film Series presents a selection of classic and contemporary films straight out of "another Brazil": the vast and rich world of the country's backlands. This "magical and moving" first feature, somewhere between ethnography and reverie, tells the story of Bastú, an old woman in the arid north of Minas Gerais set adrift after the death of her husband.

7:30p.m. – 9:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 22, 2017

Andrea Allen - Violence, Passion, and Power: Lesbian Women and Cultural Ideologies in Brazil

 In this presentation, I will discuss the ways in which Brazilian lesbian women both disturb and reinscribe Brazilian cultural mores surrounding sexuality, gender roles, and violence. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Salvador da Bahia, I will argue that unlike heterosexual women, Brazilian lesbian women are able to embody cultural norms that emphasize sexual dominance and sexual freedom as integral aspects of Brazilian male authority, privilege, and even Brazilian identity as a whole. Nevertheless, they are also made invisible as citizens who are deemed worthy of full protection and consideration when they are victims of intimate partner violence and seek redress from the state.

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 16, 2017

Spring 2017 Film Series - Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, 1964)

The Brazil Initiative's Spring Film Series presents a selection of classic and contemporary films straight out of "another Brazil": the vast and rich world of the country's backlands.  Glauber Rocha's legendary depiction of messianic fervor in the Bahian backlands, operatically intertwining references to the slaughter of the Canudos War, the immemorial desperation of the country's peasants, and the workings of law and violence, is a monument in the history of Brazil's Cinema Novo. Named one of the ten best Brazilian films of all time by the Brazilian Association of Film Critics.

7p.m. – 9p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 14, 2017

Spring 2017 Film Series - Serras da desordem (The Hills of Disorder, 2006)

THIS FILM HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 AT 7PM The Brazil Initiative's Spring Film Series presents a selection of classic and contemporary films straight out of "another Brazil": the vast and rich world of the country's backlands.  This dizzying blend of documentary and recreation – described as a cinematic "UFO" in recent Brazilian production – plunges viewers into the story of Carapiru, a Native man who wandered through the Brazilian hinterland for a decade after the slaughter of his tribe, the Awá-Guajá.

7p.m. – 9p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 14, 2017

Felipe Loureiro - The Alliance for Progress For A Few? US Economic Aid to Brazil’s States during the Administration of João Goulart (1961-1964)

The presentation investigates the allocation of U.S. aid and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loans to Brazilian states during the government of João Goulart in Brazil (1961-1964). Scholars have long emphasized that John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress has employed state-by-state loans and grants as Cold War weapons to destabilize the Goulart regime, even though references on the subject were imprecise or based on few cases. U.S. officials have always denied such practices, claiming that aid was provided based on technical assessments. By using a broad range of sources, including a comprehensible database of U.S. and IDB dollar loans to Brazil’s states in the 1961-1964 period, the presentation points to their unequivocal political motivation. Washington clearly favored anticommunist and anti-Goulart governors in aid allocation, applying economic assistance to restrain Goulart’s power, set out a political alternative to the 1965 presidential elections, and constitute a coalition to collaborate in Goulart’s overthrow if it were needed. The presentation also claims that Brazilian governors played a crucial role in fostering and blocking U.S. state-by-state aid; and that Washington used assistance as a long-term instrument to stimulate a process of liberal capitalist modernization in Brazil, uprooting conditions for the proliferation of radical ideologies. The analyses of the patterns of U.S. state-by-state aid in Brazil shed light not only on how Alliance funds assisted to destabilize the country’s post-war democracy, but also contribute to a broader understanding of the Alliance for Progress in Latin America.

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

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Feb 9 – Apr 6, 2017

Brazil Initiative Spring Film Series 2017

Running from February through April of 2017, the Brazil Initiative's Spring Film Series presents a selection of seven films, some classic and some contemporary, straight out of "another Brazil": the vast and rich world of the country's backlands. This series serves as a reminder of the continued importance of rural Brazil to Brazilian history, culture and art in a country of an increasingly urbanized population.  All films have English-language subtitles.

Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street.

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Feb 8, 2017

Vânia Penha Lopes - Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quotas and the Quest for Racial Justice

After over ten years since its implementation, affirmative action in Brazil has been bathed in controversy. Professor Penha-Lopes will read from her forthcoming book, Confronting Affirmative Action in Brazil: University Quotas Students and the Quest for Racial Justice (Lexington Books), based on her sociological study of the first class of graduating quota students at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). While the university quota policies have created opportunities for upward social mobility for their beneficiaries, by themselves they cannot bring full racial justice to Brazil because the higher university setting is but one sector of society, besides being a privileged arena still occupied by a numerical minority of Brazilians, regardless of race or color. Professor Penha-Lopes also considers the future of affirmative action as a social policy in Brazil in view of the recent major political change brought up by the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the installment of Michel Temer as her successor.

12p.m. – 1:30p.m.   Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street

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