Hotel Trópico

Jerry Dávila, author of Diploma of Whiteness (2003), has produced another exciting monograph on Brazilian racial thought during the twentieth century. Hotel Trópico begins with the election of President Getúlio Vargas for his third term (1951 – 54) and examines Brazil’s diplomatic initiatives in Africa during the time Brazil shifted to the military government (1964) and enjoyed her “economic miracle” (1969 – 74). The book title comes from a hotel in Luanda where Brazilian diplomat Ovídio de Mello and his wife Ivony de Mello stayed near the end of civil wars in Angola, when many Portuguese colonists were fleeing the country. The hotel was “the site of the most incongruous acts of Brazilian foreign policy” (p. 1) as Brazil became the first country to recognize Angolan independence under the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in November 1975. Hotel Trópico is based not only on the author’s extensive archival research in Brazil and Portugal but also on his interviews with former Brazilian diplomats and intellectuals who traveled to Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. His informants are predominantly elite white men who identified themselves as Africans and/or blacks and embraced Afro-Brazilian culture only in the context of Africa, while conveniently overlooking their own racism and the exclusion of black Brazilians in the national politics.Dávila organizes the book into nine chapters. The first chapter situates Brazil in the “luso-tropical” world, with Gilberto Freyre traveling to Angola in 1951 as a guest of Portuguese colonial officials. Brazilian national identity was inseparable from Portuguese ethnicity. Chapter 2 focuses on the hardships of Raymond Sousa Santos, the first ambassador to Ghana, whom President Jânio Quadros appointed in 1961 for his independent foreign policy. Chapter 3 examines the experiences of Brazilian diplomats in Nigeria for 1963 – 83 as “the lovers of the African race,” in relation to Afro-Brazilian immigrants and their descendants (known as “Brazilians”) in Lagos. Chapter 4 examines the international context as the war broke out in Angola in 1961, involving the United States with Cold War concerns and racial politics. Under enormous pressure from Portugal and the powerful Luso-Brazilian community, Quadros was forced to compromise his policy, and his successor João Goulart also could not sustain a cohesive foreign policy regarding Portuguese decolonization. Chapter 5 starts with the visit of President Léopold Senghor of Senegal in 1964, six months after Brazil’s military coup, in order to challenge Brazil’s support of Portuguese colonialism. A strong advocate of negritude, Senghor attempted to mobilize black Brazilians and stimulate black activism. In the meanwhile, Brazil’s alliance with Portugal became more and more costly for the military government. Mário Gibson Barboza is the topic of chapter 6 for his efforts to change Brazil’s Africa policy as a new foreign minister at the time of the oil crisis. Chapter 7 examines the challenges Ernesto Geisel and his government had to face in Africa after the Portuguese Revolution took place in April 1974. With the great influx of migrants from Socialist Portugal and Portuguese Africa, Brazil was slow in recognizing independent Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. The reader is reunited with Mello arriving in Luanda in 1975 in chapter 8, which examines Angola’s independence, achieved with the help of Cuban troops, and postindependent Angola-Brazil relations. Chapter 9 focuses on Brazil-Nigeria relations in the late 1970s through the visit of two prominent Afro-Brazilians with different messages on Brazil: Abdias do Nascimento and Pelé.Hotel Trópico is a very informative monograph on Brazilian diplomacy whose strength lies in the fascinating narratives and episodes the author draws from elite Brazilians’ reflections, demonstrating the die-hard rhetoric of racial democracy in their politics of identity. The book even includes two former militants’ narratives of exile in Cuba, Chile, Portugal, and Angola during the 1970s. It also traces the connection between Brazil’s Africa policy and the black movement in Brazil, and describes the inner dilemma of Sousa Santos based on his memoir. Even so, Dávila does not include any real voices of important Afro-Brazilian activists. Nascimento and others such as Thereza Santos and Kabengele Munanga were not interviewed. Lastly, the first four chapters might benefit from a better organization of arguments, since the text moves backward and forward in time and some parts may appear repetitive to the reader.Jerry Dávila is to be celebrated for his meticulous research and nuanced historical interpretations. The book is very well written and free of unnecessary jargon. Hotel Trópico contributes to the growing body of research on twentieth-century Brazil. The book will be read not only by scholars and students of modern Brazil but also by many others who are interested in race and nation in modern Latin America. It should be widely adopted for undergraduate and graduate courses in modern Brazil and Latin America as well as global and Atlantic history

Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Decolonization · Economic history · Elite · Ethnology · Independence (probability theory) · Political science · Politics · Portuguese · Racism · Sociology · White (mutation) · Wife · African history and culture studies · Brazilian History and Foreign Policy · Gender Studies · History · Law

• Anthropology of development and the challenge of South-South cooperation

  Open Access•L Cesarino, Letícia Maria Costa Da Nóbrega Cesarino•Vibrant Virtual Brazilian…•2012

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