Brazil and the Brazils of Mário de Andrade: The end of the apprentice tourist?

Abstract

This article describes the idea of Brazil in the Modernism of Mário de Andrade and assesses its relevance one hundred years after the Week of 22, a landmark event of the avant-garde movement. Analyzing the Macunaíma rhapsody and the travel diaries of O turista aprendiz, this article exposes how Mário de Andrade conceived the unity of Brazil by reaping a diversity of “Brazils”. This project, formulated through art, relied on ethnic and cultural admixture, and considered non-European elements of the national formation. This marked the 20th century. Today, however, this imagined project was called into question due to the difficulties of concretely carrying it out, given the growing demand for determining unmixed ethnic and cultural differences, which would allow for the direct political confrontation of the country’s injustices and inequalities.