By EDU TERUKI OTSUKA*
The importance of radical ideas in a country like Brazil
Antonio Candido once defined radical thinking as that which “aims to transform society in a sense of equality and social justice, implying the loss of privileges of the dominant classes”.[1] In the essay on radicalism in Brazil,[2] He begins by presenting it as a set of ideas and attitudes that act as a counterweight to the conservative thinking that has massively predominated in the country.
This characterization by contrast with its opposite announces the tone of the essay, dedicated to highlighting the importance of radical ideas in a country like Brazil, in which “a body of politically advanced doctrine has not developed, unlike what happened in countries like Uruguay, Peru, Mexico and Cuba”.[3]
Antonio Candido refers here to revolutionary thought and Marxism, which practically did not develop in the country before the 1930s and, when they did exist, they were generally framed within the pre-established formulas of Soviet doctrine. Decisive to the argument is that, in addition to acting as a corrective to conservative and oligarchic tendencies, radicalism can function as an ingredient “for the transposition and eventual creation of revolutionary positions.”[4]
In the following notes, I intend to revisit the relationship between radicalism and revolutionary practice in Antonio Candido's view, seeking to recover some references to the example of other Latin American countries and the contrast with the Brazilian case. To this end, I comment on some of the critic's lesser-known texts in which the political theme stands out, such as the commentaries on José Martí and the Cuban revolution, the various writings on Florestan Fernandes and Caio Prado Jr., the texts on Marighella and the brief article on the Zapatistas.
1.
Seeking to identify the occurrences of radical ideas in Brazil, Antonio Candido notes that Brazilian radicalism was due to “some isolated authors who do not integrate into systems”.[5] This formulation seems to suggest that a tradition of political thought focused on social transformation, whether revolutionary or not, was not established here.
Considering that radical thought was only rarely sustained in a consistent manner, but noting that manifestations of radicalism occurred, with some frequency, even in conservative authors, Antonio Candido says he realized that “in Brazil there was more radicalism than was supposed”[6] and affirms the importance of identifying and resuming discontinuous incidences of radical ideas and attitudes.
Thus, Antonio Candido observes that radicalism sometimes manifested itself as an “occasional deviation” in the mentality of the ruling classes. Hence the mention of intellectuals linked to the traditional oligarchic vision who, however, present elements of radicalism, such as Gonçalves de Magalhães, Alberto Torres and Gilberto Freyre. In them, one finds manifestations of “interstitial radicalism” in the gaps of a conservative body of thought; this is what happens when Gonçalves de Magalhães glimpses for a moment the situation of poor workers, when Alberto Torres defends miscegenation in opposition to the racism prevailing in his time, and Gilberto Freyre, in Big house and slave quarters (1933), values the role of black people in Brazilian culture, even though the book is based on an aristocratic vision.[7]
Elsewhere, Antonio Candido also includes, in the examples of “sporadic radicalism”, Tobias Barreto from “A speech in shirt sleeves” (1877) and Sílvio Romero from texts such as the Introduction to Doctrine against doctrine: Evolutionism and Positivism in Brazil (1894)[8]
Let us also remember that, in a previous article, “Occasional Radicals”,[9] Candido had already studied some instances of radicalism in writers such as Olavo Bilac, Elísio de Carvalho and especially João do Rio. Flirting with socialist and anarchist ideas of a more humanitarian than political nature or, in the case of João do Rio, denouncing the situation of workers and the urban poor, these writers presented, in their works, moments of radicalism that soon dissipated.[10]
The most representative example of “passing radicalism” is Joaquim Nabuco de abolitionism (1883). In an author who was fundamentally conservative, radical ideas manifested themselves during the period of the abolitionist movement, which led him to adopt an advanced perspective. Leaving aside conventional humanitarian arguments, he analyzed the slave system in economic-social terms and conceived the need to abolish slavery and integrate blacks and their descendants. After the radical moment, however, Joaquim Nabuco settled back into the establishment, became enthusiastic about Pan-Americanism that subordinated Latin America to US imperialism and ended up as a conservative liberal.[11]
The other two authors discussed in the essay present traits of “permanent radicalism”. Manoel Bomfim, in Latin America (1905), studied the colonization process, highlighting the economic exploitation that defined the “original evils” of the former Latin American colonies and their consequences in subsequent social and political life. Although his method was based on biologism, Manoel Bonfim’s analysis is consistently radical, as it rejects the then-current concepts of racial determinism, understands the predominance of oligarchies as an extension of colonialism, and opposes North American imperialism. The illustrated conclusion, which believes in educating the people as a solution for the country, is also consistent with radicalism, stepping back from the revolutionary consequences to which his own analysis seemed to lead.[12]
The other author discussed in the essay is Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. Antonio Candido seeks to highlight the political meaning of Brazil roots (1936), to which he had already drawn attention in the preface he wrote for the 1969 edition.[13] Sérgio Buarque's interpretation avoids the bias towards the past, such as that of Oliveira Viana, in its treatment of the Portuguese heritage and focuses on the present, in which the popular classes appear on the political scene. Opposing the conventional liberalism of the oligarchy that advocated the role of guardianship to be played by the elites over the people and rejecting the solutions of fascism and communism, Sérgio Buarque's book points to the need for the participation of the subordinates in the country's politics, decisively opting for popular democracy.[14]
At the institutional level, it was only in the 1930s and 1940s that a more far-reaching radical thought emerged among the progressive middle class, expressing a non-oligarchic vision of Brazil. This mentality developed within institutions such as the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters and the Free School of Sociology and Politics (to take the examples from São Paulo), which expanded the themes of sociological and anthropological studies, shifting the focus of interest to the subaltern classes, marginalized or oppressed groups.
For Antonio Candido, this represented a decisive cultural fact, because it advanced in relation to traditional liberal positions and opposed the dominant conservative and reactionary mentality.[15] But, as he notes in the 1988 essay, this radical thinking only partly identifies with the interests of the subaltern, since it tends to address problems on a national scale, ignoring the antagonism between classes. For this reason, the radical intellectual generally retreats at the time of the definitive rupture, tending towards conciliation rather than revolutionary solutions.[16]
2.
Crucial to understanding Antonio Candido's ideas is that the possible contribution of radicalism to implementing transformative policies would lie mainly in its ability to do so “in terms appropriate to the social and historical reality of its country”[17], and not as a transposition of formulas defined in other contexts. At stake here is the age-old problem of the suitability of foreign theories to develop solutions for issues specific to peripheral society, and here the focus is on Marxism and the theory of revolution.
Considerations on the topic thus focus on the central axis of Candido's reflection on literature and culture in Brazil, developed in Formation of Brazilian Literature,[18] but now with interest focused on ideas and political actions.
In fact, for him, the resumption of the radical vein in Brazilian thought could be a “contribution to an adequate use of Marxism”[19]. Furthermore, this reflection on Brazilian radicalism is in line with the conception of a democratic, anti-Stalinist socialism that Antonio Candido assumed in his political activism in the 1940s and 1950s. In his view, recovering radicalism would make it possible to achieve something that had been an aspiration of his and his generation: “a Brazilian socialist thought that was not dependent on the norms imposed by the USSR.”[20].
In other words, Antonio Candido emphasizes the importance of a creative assimilation of Marxism in light of the concrete reality of the peripheral country with a colonial past. Marxism is not treated as a pure doctrine, directly applicable to any historical-social situation; on the contrary, for Candido it “has only worked when combined with the radical traditions of each place.”[21]. And he cites as examples Marxism-Leninism, developed in accordance with local conditions based on the tradition of Russian radicalism, and Maoism, resulting from the encounter between Marxism and the traditions of agrarian revolt in China.
The third example, closest to Brazil, is that of Cuba, where there was “a happy combination of Marxism with the country’s radical tradition, especially the thought of José Martí and the guerrilla practice that came from the struggles for political independence in the last century [XIX]”[22]. This is how Candido concludes: “the radicalism of each country can be the condition for the success of revolutionary thought, including that which is inspired by Marxism”[23].
3.
In 1983, Antonio Candido gave an interview about José Martí, in which he comments that, in Cuba, he “is seen for the radical aspect of his ideology”, being considered “a national liberator concerned with taking the independence process to its social and economic limits”[24]. Martí's radicalism combined anti-imperialism with a popular conception of democracy, aware of the specificities of Latin American reality, understood as “the fruit of a complex process, where the European and the Indian mix with the African to generate a culture that at the same time prolongs and innovates”[25].
For Antonio Candido, it was due to his radicalism that Martí served, in posterity, “as an intermediary between a thought that was not his, Marxism, and its creative adaptation to Cuban conditions”[26]. Antonio Candido's considerations about José Martí thus point to the “fundamental problem of adapting Marxist thought, not only to our time, but to each of the places where it acts as a form of action and social transformation”[27].
The way Antonio Candido understands José Martí's ideas shows proximity to the interpretation of Roberto Fernández Retamar, possibly one of his references on this subject.[28] The Cuban poet and critic ran the magazine House of the Americas since 1965; at the time of the interview, Candido had already been to Cuba twice: in 1979, as part of the jury for the Casa de las Américas Prize, and in 1981, when he was invited to give the opening speech for the Literary Prize jury.[29]
When recounting the experience of his first visit, Antonio Candido says that he attended a lecture by Fernández Retamar on José Martí at the National Library in Havana, followed by debates. Antonio Candido notes that the “quasi-socialist radicalism” that made Martí a “precursor of the current situation, as if he were the Latin American equivalent of the Russian radicals of the last century – men like Herzen, Chernichevski, Dobroliubov” was discussed there.[30].
José Martí's role in the fight for the country's independence would have influenced “the way in which Cubans assimilated Marxism and practiced socialism” – a circumstance that differentiates the Cuban case from what occurred in other Latin American countries, in which “the role of patriarch fell to conservatives, or to those with vocations of king without a crown”[31]. The originality of Cuban solutions, says Candido, is rooted in the historical process of the struggle for national liberation, linked to the political ideas and actions of Martí.
For Fernández Retamar, José Martí was a revolutionary democrat who went to the extreme limit of what historical circumstances allowed him, in which there were no conditions to carry out a socialist revolution: “In history there are more radical positions; in the story that left Martí alive, in the hubo – it could not happen – another one that was more effectively radical than her story. "[32] Commenting on the role of foreign theoretical sources in José Martí's thinking, Fernández Retamar considers them less important than the concrete problems of colonial society, so that Martí avoided the simple repetition of foreign formulas and instrumentally used what he had learned in developed countries, defending the ideas developed in the clash with concrete reality.[33]
Regarding cultural traditions in Latin America, Fernández Retamar understands, with José Martí, that Western culture is one of its components, not the only one and not the least important, which would give rise to what Martí called “our mixed America”. This notion of miscegenation implied racial miscegenation, but also and mainly cultural miscegenation, in which black and indigenous cultures are present and active.
One can perceive in these considerations the confluence between the vision of Antonio Candido and that of Fernández Retamar regarding the ideas of José Martí. Whatever the differences in the way the two critics conceive of literature and its social function,[34] It is worth noting a certain affinity in the way they understand the cultural dynamics specific to Latin America due to its colonial past.[35]
4.
The well-known admiration that Antonio Candido had for Cuba and that he maintained until the end of his life was certainly not unaware of the “many errors and acts of violence” of the regime: “an unchanging ruler, the hegemony of a single party, little freedom of opinion, a lifeless press, dissidents pruned when they exceed the strict limits established.”[36]. In any case, on several occasions Candido sought to emphasize what he considered to be the success and achievements of the Cuban revolutionaries in building socialism.
In a brief text in praise of Che Guevara, published in the magazine House of the Americas, Antonio Candido talks about the Argentine guerrilla fighter in his capacity as a Latin American revolutionary, highlighting his ability to base theory and political action on concrete reality, moving away from dogmatic abstractions. And he emphasizes the continental significance of Guevara's actions, seen as “a great figure of liberator of our people according to the real needs of our time”, that is, as a Latin American dedicated to making the dignity of life a common good, fighting to “transform the brutalized people of our America into agents of their own destiny”[37]. Here too, the emphasis is on the elaboration of revolutionary theory and practice based on the social reality in which they are based, turning to popular experience.
And it is in terms of this particular Cuban reality that Antonio Candido understands the realization of the revolution and its direction towards socialism. He says that Che Guevara and Fidel Castro represent an unusual political configuration, namely, “the sublimation of the traditional Latin American caudillo into an authentically popular leader.”[38].
For Antonio Candido, in Latin American countries where the democratic tradition had not developed and there were no institutions to ensure its minimal effectiveness, the interests of the popular classes could only be achieved through other means. He concludes: “Just as in Cuba the potential caudillo became a responsible leader, committed to socialism, the radical tradition, coming from thinkers like José Martí, allowed Marxism to be adapted to the reality of the country, making Cuba a rare case among nations seeking to achieve socialism in the Third World.”[39]
This is why, although the Cuban regime officially claimed Marxism-Leninism, Candido believes that this was not exactly the case, but rather an original appropriation of Marxism, made possible by the existence of a radical tradition, represented by José Martí, and above all founded on the experience of the popular classes. This would be the basis of the political thought that was developed there, directing itself towards revolutionary action.
5.
In the Brazilian case, Antonio Candido considers that Marxism did not develop, in its beginnings, a thought equivalent to that which the intermittent radical tradition produced, since the tendency of local Marxists was to “mechanically transpose external schemes”[40]. Candido refers to a certain type of Marxist, “those who abounded in our generation infected with Stalinism and used consecrated terminology to distort reality according to pre-established schemes”[41].
Antonio Candido's reflection on radicalism, as mentioned, is closely related to anti-Stalinism and socialist convictions. For him, only with Caio Prado Jr. and, later, with Florestan Fernandes, Marxism would be incorporated in an inventive and productive way, because it was adjusted to the specificities of Brazilian reality.
Candido says he read Brazil's political evolution (1933), by Caio Prado Jr., in 1935, having been impressed by the novelty of the interpretation of the country's history from a Marxist perspective.[42] When characterizing the work of the historian from São Paulo, Antonio Candido suggests how his perspective was built on geographical and economic knowledge, observing the physical environment, the distribution of populations, their forms of production, to arrive at the analysis of institutions.
Thus, Formation of contemporary Brazil (1942) is understood as the result of the maturation of the author's vision, which combined knowledge of the country's concrete reality with the method and theoretical arsenal of Marxism: “Caio Prado Júnior solidly founded a history of Marxist inspiration, open, attentive to reality, without schemes or imposition of prejudices”[43]. Thus, Caio Prado Jr., in open disagreement with the interpretation of history prevailing in the PCB, studied in his major work “slavery as a fact inherent to the modern accumulation of capital”[44].
Furthermore, Antonio Candido states that it was in the brazilian revolution (1966) that Caio Prado Jr. “systematically expressed his open Marxism”[45], here too, presumably, due to his independence from the prevailing theories among communists, which allowed him to analyze the country's own historical and social circumstances. Candido also says that in this book the historian developed “a thought linked to Brazilian conditions (and there, with a revolutionary tone)”[46]. Proof of Caio Prado Jr.'s openness is that, for him, the nature of the desired revolution – socialist or bourgeois-democratic – could only be determined through the transformations carried out during the course of the revolution itself.[47]
6.
Antonio Candido describes Florestan Fernandes, bringing him closer to Caio Prado Jr. in terms of his “personal way of being a Marxist”, showing that Marxism has “an extraordinary force of agglutination and flexibility that allows it to face different realities, providing the specific responses that each one requires”[48].
Unlike Caio Prado Jr., who uses concrete empirical data as the basis for theoretical-conceptual elaboration, Florestan Fernandes's career, according to Antonio Candido, reveals an inverse movement. In the 1950s, Florestan defined his Marxist vision, combined with the academic sociology he had been assimilating since the previous years, and began to interpret reality after having developed his theoretical instruments.[49] Florestan then converts understanding of the world into a weapon of combat,[50] merging “the rigor of academic sociology with the political perspective”.[51]
Contrary to Florestan Fernandes' description of himself as a Marxist-Leninist, Antonio Candido insists that he was “a Marxist sui generis"[52], which “forged an analytical and interpretative instrument of Marxist nature, capable of abolishing any mechanistic imposition and of opening itself to the lessons of objectively observed reality”[53]. In other words, “an original Marxist, capable of having his own vision of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, the class struggle, poverty, and educational problems in the concrete context of the reality of his time, in Brazil and Latin America.”[54].
Florestan Fernandes guided his activism towards showing that “the authentic political struggle has to come from ‘below’”, says Antonio Candido, alluding to the novel Those below (1916) by Mariano Azuela, who described the Mexican people in their revolutionary effort.[55] In these terms, for Candido, Florestan took to its logical consequences the radicalism that had taken hold at the USP Faculty of Philosophy and the School of Sociology and Politics, adding a more defined political direction to it.[56]
Thus, Antonio Candido highlights, in the works of Caio Prado Jr. and Florestan Fernandes, the ability to adjust Marxism to Brazilian conditions to develop, each in their own way, original interpretations of reality and perspectives for social transformation.
7.
Focusing on another way of conceiving the theory of revolution, Antonio Candido comments on the historical figure of Carlos Marighella and characterizes him as “a great Marxist revolutionary”[57], seeking to highlight his “human and political eminence”[58], which made him a representative figure in the fight for an egalitarian society. The distance that separated Antonio Candido from Marighella was not small: Antonio Candido did not know him personally, he positioned himself critically in relation to the PCB in the 1940s-1950s and did not agree with the strategies of the armed struggle of the 1960s.
Despite this, Antonio Candido came to recognize in Carlos Marighella “an open Marxist, ready to accept the nuances of reality and the plurality of opinions, within the basic premise of the aspiration for a popular democracy”[59], a significant feature in the context in which sectarian positions predominated in the PCB.
Thinking about the trajectory of the revolutionary from Bahia, Antonio Candido highlights the period of his dissidence, in which Carlos Marighella criticized the Communist Party, was shot and arrested, traveled to Cuba and “reached the final formula of his revolutionary conceptions”. According to Antonio Candido, this period corresponds to Marighella’s transition from the “orthodox partisan phase” to a type of thinking and action that “marks his distancing from the Soviet model, because, instead of ‘applying’ pre-established guidelines, he analyzed the lessons of popular struggles in Brazil and Latin America and began to trust in armed struggle”, completing his political evolution.[60]
As can be seen, Candido values Marighella's ability to remodel his political ideas based on an analysis of the actual historical and social conditions, which led him to fiercely criticize his own party and, subsequently, to break away, developing other means of fighting for social transformation. This is how Antonio Candido begins to praise the historical figure of the guerrilla: “now Carlos Marighella is no longer just the great revolutionary, admired by those who think and feel as he thought and felt; but a hero of the Brazilian people, admired by all who aspire to a humane status for the life of man in our country.”[61]
8.
Closer to our time, Antonio Candido comments on the Zapatista movement in “The Struggle and the Word”[62]. In the opening of this article, he recalls the time of his adolescence, in the second half of the 1930s, when the president of Mexico, Lázaro Cárdenas, sought to continue the principles of the 1910 Revolution, implementing social policies such as agrarian reform, the nationalization of oil companies and the creation of trade unions.
Like others of his generation, at this time Antonio Candido became interested in the Mexican Revolution and was enthusiastic about Emiliano Zapata. He began to see how “Mexico was a kind of tacit representative of all of Latin America, making the first great effort to redeem the oppressed classes and vilified ethnic groups.”[63]. Although he does not mention radicalism in this text, Candido describes the social reform project undertaken in Mexico in terms close to those used to characterize radical attitudes and the progressive policies they instill. Above all, he emphasizes the originality of the attempt to create egalitarian forms, “in order to avoid the mechanical transplantation of ideologies and to identify the real problems of our highly mixed populations.”[64]
It is these two features, the continental significance of the Mexican Revolution and the invention of more equitable ways of life, based on social and ethnic particularities, that reconnect the ties between the memory of adolescence and the observation of the present: “reading about the Zapatista movement of our days, I felt again the strength of this historical role of the Mexicans and understood how, from the old community roots of the indigenous populations, it has been possible to affirm with such sincerity and energy the motto: 'Everything for everyone, nothing for us'”[65].
This motto, for Antonio Candido, gains generalizing force because it is not limited to conventional indigenism that abstracts from the indigenous, but focuses on “the Indians – concrete, varied, whole in their human reality as dispossessed and oppressed”. Therefore, the motto goes beyond the specific conditions of Mexico and “becomes valid for all of our multiracial Latin America, excluded, humiliated, victim of one of the most odious separations between rich and poor that we have ever known, because it is even aggravated by other separations, such as, in Brazil, the greatest of all, between white and black”.[66]
Extrapolating a little, let us remember that, for Michael Löwy, the main sources of Zapatism would be Guevarist Marxism, the legacy of Emiliano Zapata, liberation theology and, centrally, the Mayan culture of the indigenous people of Chiapas.[67] This characterization of the Zapatista movement not only confirms Candido's observations, but also makes explicit other links in the creative assimilation of Marxism, intertwined with various traditions of struggle. Furthermore, in another text in which he presents a brief overview of Marxism in Latin America, Michael Löwy seeks to highlight the inventive and original character of different theoretical elaborations, from Mariátegui to the Zapatistas, providing a synthetic framework that converges with Antonio Candido's arguments.[68]
Furthermore, Antonio Candido also mentions a writing by Subcomandante Marcos, “The fourth world war has already begun” (1997)[69] and comments on its quality as political literature: “Texts like this, and many others from the same matrix, are examples of epic and militant literature, made to move men with the power of conviction that is born from example and respect for the truth, in such a way that the word becomes the ferment of action and ideals”.[70]
By the way, it is worth remembering that, when dealing with José Martí's anti-imperialism, Candido highlights the articles from 1889-1890 in which the Cuban writer denounces the ideological meaning of an inter-American conference held in Washington, “in a style of high literary and political tension, made up of long and elaborate periods full of sarcasm”.[71] It is significant that Candido treats these texts as political literature, valuing their critical and mobilizing function, articulated with the sharpness of expression.
9.
Finally, it is worth remembering Antonio Candido's well-known observation about the capacity of literature to promote the “humanization of man”[72] is best understood when articulated with the critic's political vision. For him, Socialism represents “the highest point in man's struggle to humanize life,”[73] in contrast to the existing reality, marked by “relationships compromised by the dehumanization that inequality brings about”.[74]
In the history of Brazil, says Antonio Candido, social domination generated conflicts pitting man against man: “conqueror against Indian, master against slave, boss against employee, rich against poor”, and around this nucleus arise “war and misery, plunder, fanaticism and social exclusion – in a vast dehumanizing process”[75]. This dehumanization, resulting from historical and social relations, affects not only those dominated, but also those who dominate,[76] and cannot be understood as a primitive condition of native, illiterate or marginalized populations.
On the contrary, the action of subordinate cultures on the dominant culture is also a humanizing element, promoting “the humanization of so-called Western civilization”.[77] Thus, humanization, according to Candido, is understood as a process and could only be fully achieved with the suppression of relations of domination.
In opposition to the dehumanizing process – accentuated by the irrationality of capitalism[78] –, Candido sees in socialism and in all forms of political struggle for an egalitarian and democratic collective life the impulse for the realization of humanity. In this sense, the passage in which he characterizes Marighella as “a fighter for the humanization of man, whose dimension can only be found in the conquest of effective forms of economic and social equality” is exemplary, that is, as someone who participated in the effort to “take man out of the sphere of manipulable objects, in which so many Brazilians live, to inaugurate the era of his real humanity”.[79]
In other words, the humanization of man could only truly occur in an egalitarian society that does not yet exist. That is why, commenting on the work of Mário de Andrade, Paulo Duarte and others in the Municipal Department of Culture of São Paulo in the 1930s, Candido points out the limits of institutional action to expand cultural apparatuses: “It was, in truth, a humanizing impetus that would not fit, as it did not fit, in the bourgeois order.”[80] In order for this to be realized, such a humanizing impetus would require a more profound social transformation.
If literature exerts a humanizing force, “both in its action at the conscious level and in its action at the unconscious level”[81], it does so, on an unconscious level, through the organization of fantasy, which makes it possible to detach oneself from the brutality of reality in order to imagine something else. It is in this aspect that the humanizing function of literature converges with the utopian impulse of socialism that inspires the political struggle committed to building an effectively human society.
*Edu Teruki Otsuka He is a professor at the Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at USP. Author of Marks of the catastrophe: urban experience and cultural industry in Rubem Fonseca, João Gilberto Noll and Chico Buarque (Studio). [https://amzn.to/3v8YnIt]
Notes
[1] A. Candido, “Sérgio, the radical”, in: Various Authors, Sergio Buarque de Holanda: life and work. São Paulo: State Secretariat for Culture – State Archives; University of São Paulo – Institute of Brazilian Studies, 1988, p. 64.
[2] A. Candido, “Radicalisms” [1988], in: various writings, 3rd ed., São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1995, p. 265-291. In an interview with Luiz Carlos Jackson, Candido comments on the path of his interest in the theme of radicalism in Brazil; see A. Candido, Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition: Rio Bonito partners and the sociology of Antonio Candido. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2002, p. 130-132.
[3] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 266.
[4] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 269.
[5] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 266.
[6] A. Candido. Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition, P. 131.
[7] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 269-270.
[8] A. Candido. “Sergio, the radical”, p. 64.
[9] A. Candido. “Occasional Radicals” [1978], in: Teresina etc. Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Land, 1980, p. 83-94.
[10] In the Preface to Marisa Lajolo's book, Candido comments on how Bilac, the author of textbooks, was in tune with the ideological needs of the dominant classes, leaving aside egalitarian humanitarianism (“Preface”, in: M. Lajolo, Use and abuse of literature in school: Bilac and school literature in the Old Republic. Rio de Janeiro / Porto Alegre: Globo, 1982, p. 9-12). Elsewhere, Candido mentions Elísio de Carvalho as a writer who abandoned his sympathies for anarchism and ended up developing a militaristic nationalism, close to fascism (“Os brasileiros e a nossa América” [1989], in: cutouts. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 136).
[11] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 271-276.
[12] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 276-288.
[13] A. Candido, “The Meaning of Roots of Brazil” [1967], in: SB de Holanda, Roots of Brazil. 20th ed., Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1988, p. xxxix-l.
[14] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 288-291. See also A. Candido, “The political vision of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda”, in: A. Candido (org.), Sergio Buarque de Holanda and Brazil. New York: Routledge, 1998, p. 81-88.
[15] A. Candido, Interview, Transformation, n. 1, Assis, 1974, p. 12. See also A. Candido, “The Faculty in the centenary of Abolition”, in: various writings, P. 307-322.
[16] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 267. In the interview with LC Jackson, Candido clarifies that he used the word radical in the French sense, thinking of the left-wing republicans, called radicals, who were close to socialism, and alludes to the importance, in France, of the Radical Party in the years 1930-1940; see A. Candido, Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition p. 131.
[17] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 268.
[18] A. Candido, Formation of Brazilian literature (decisive moments). 7th ed. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1993, 2 v. See also “Literature and culture from 1900 to 1945”, in: Literature and society. 6th ed. New York: National, 1980.
[19] “As Marxism found a local radical line, it could lose its generality as a 'jack-of-all-trades' doctrine and apply itself to the concrete conditions of each place” (A. Candido, Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition, P. 131).
[20] A. Candido, Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition, p. 131. In an interview with José Pedro Renzi, Candido says, regarding the Grupo Radical de Ação Popular (GRAP), a political group he founded with Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes in 1943, that they were faced with “the problem of a socialism suited to Brazil, and not tied to Soviet interests”, adding that one of his comrades, Paulo Zingg, defended the importance of studying the tradition of radical social struggles in the country in order to define a local democratic left. See A. Candido, “Socialists, Communists and Democracy in the Post-War”, Sociology Studies, vol. 11, n. 20, Araraquara, 2006, p. 12.
[21] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 268.
[22] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 268.
[23] A. Candido, “Radicalisms”, p. 268.
[24] A. Candido, “José Martí and Latin America”. Folha de S. Paul, Folhetim, January 30, 1983, p. 3.
[25] A. Candido, “José Martí and Latin America”, p. 3.
[26] A. Candido, “José Martí and Latin America”, p. 3.
[27] A. Candido, “José Martí and Latin America”, p. 3.
[28] Cf. R. Fernández Retamar, “Martí en su (third) world”, in: Introduction to José Martí. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe, 2018. Interestingly, Candido met Fernández Retamar at the congress Terzo Mondo and Communità Mondiale, held in Genoa in 1965 (see Cairo de S. Barbosa, Colonialism, dependence and allegories of Brazil in the literary historiography of Antonio Candido (1960-1973). Doctoral Thesis in Social History of Culture. Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio, 2023). Another interesting fact is that, among the books that belonged to the critic and are now deposited in the “Antonio Candido Collection” of the Florestan Fernandes Library of FFLCH-USP, there are some books by Fernández Retamar, among which is a Mexican edition of his best-known essay, “Calibán” (1971); a French version, from 1973, of the same essay; the volume Caliban and other essays, from 1979; the 1975 edition of the book is also available Towards a theory of Spanish-American literature and other approaches.
[29] A. Candido, “Knowing, living together, integrating: very personal notes”. Latin American Literary Criticism Magazine, year XXV, n. 50, Lima-Hanover, 2nd half of 1999, p. 263-265. A. Candido, “Casa de las Américas – 40 years”, communication at a round table at the Memorial da América Latina, on September 14, 1999. The speech of the second visit was published as “Speech in Havana” [1981], in: cuts, p. 157-161. See also Jorge Fornet, “Encuentros en la gran mediadora: Candido y Cuba”. Chilean Literature Magazine,n. 97, pp. 319-324, 2018. Candido visited Cuba for the third time in 1985, to participate in a congress of Latin American intellectuals.
[30] A. Candido, “In (and for) Cuba” [1979], in: cuts, P. 152-153.
[31] A. Candido, “In (and for) Cuba”, p. 153.
[32] R. Fernández Retamar, “Martí in his (third) world”, p. 88.
[33] R. Fernández Retamar, “Martí in his (third) world”, p. 94-95.
[34] At the time, Candido certainly distanced himself from the position of Fernández Retamar, who defended the participation of writers and the political function of literature.
[35] It should be noted that Fernández Retamar cites with approval the essay “Literature and Underdevelopment”, by Candido, in “Some Theoretical Problems of Hispanic-American Literature” (1975). He had previously mentioned the notion of literary system, through a quote from Ángel Rama, in “Intercommunication and New Literature”, a text written in 1969 and included in the book coordinated by César Fernández Moreno, Latin America in its literature, published in 1972, in which Candido’s “Literatura y subdesarrollo” also appeared. See R. Fernández Retamar, Toward a theory of Hispanic American literature. Santafé de Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuerbo, 1995.
[36] A. Candido, “Cuba and Socialism” [1991], in: cuts, P. 163.
[37] A. Candido, “There are many ways…” House of the Americas, n. 206, La Habana, enero-marzo 1997, p. 29.
[38] A. Candido, “Cuba and Socialism”, p. 164.
[39] A. Candido, “Cuba and Socialism”, p. 164.
[40] A. Candido, “Sergio, the radical”, p. 65.
[41] A. Candido, “An instaurator” [1995], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 56.
[42] A. Candido, “Interview with Antonio Candido” (by Heloísa Pontes), Brazilian Journal of Social Sciences, v. 16, n. 47, São Paulo, October 2001, p. 9; Interview, in: LC Jackson, The forgotten tradition, p. 130-131; “Interview”, in: C. Prado Jr., Political evolution of Brazil and other studies. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012, p. 275-279.
[43] A. Candido, “The strength of concrete” [1989], in: cuts, P. 177.
[44] A. Candido, “An instigator”, p. 57. Regarding the Marxism of Caio Prado Jr., see also Fernando A. Novais, “About Caio Prado Júnior”, in: Approaches: essays on history and historiography. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2005, p. 277-293.
[45] A. Candido, “An instaurator”, p. 57.
[46] A. Candido, “Sergio, the radical”, p. 65.
[47] C. Prado Junior, The Brazilian revolution / The agrarian question in Brazil. See the afterword by Lincoln Secco.
[48] A. Candido, “A tireless militant” [1998], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 77.
[49] A. Candido, “An instigator”, p. 56-57.
[50] A. Candido, “Friendship with Florestan” [1986], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 28
[51] A. Candido, “Florestan Fernandes, Marxist” [1995], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 60.
[52] A. Candido, “Florestan Fernandes: student and scholar” [1995], in: Florestan Fernandes, p. 51. See also “A tireless militant” [1998], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 77.
[53] A. Candido, “A Great Man” [1994], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 38.
[54] A. Candido, “An instaurator”, p. 56.
[55] A. Candido, “Preface: What kind of Republic?” [1986], in: Florestan Fernandes, P. 34.
[56] A. Candido, “An instaurator”, p. 54.
[57] A. Candido, “Presentation”, in: C. Marighella, Why I resisted arrest. 2nd ed., New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 8.
[58] A. Candido, “A hero of the Brazilian people”, in: Christiane Nova & Jorge Nóvoa (orgs.), Carlos Marighella: the man behind the myth. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 375.
[59] A. Candido, “Presentation”, in: C. Marighella, Why I resisted arrest, P. 8.
[60] A. Candido, “Preface”, in: Emiliano José, Carlos Marighella. New York: Routledge, 1997, p. 9.
[61] A. Candido, “A hero of the Brazilian people”, p. 378.
[62] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, in: Chiapas: building hope. Org. Alejandro Buenrostro y Arellano and Ariovaldo Umbelino de Oliveira. São Paulo: Peace and Land, 2002, P. 47-49.
[63] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, p. 47-48.
[64] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, p. 48.
[65] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, p. 48.
[66] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, p. 48.
[67] M. Löwy, “Sources and resources of Zapatismo”. In: M. Löwy; D. Bensaïd, Marxism, modernity and utopia. Org. José Corrêa Leite. São Paulo: Xamã, 2000, p. 199-201. The observations on Zapatismo are taken up again in “Introduction: Points of reference for a history of Marxism in Latin America”, in: M. Löwy (org.), Marxism in Latin America: an anthology from 1909 to the present day. Translated by Claudia Shilling and Luis Carlos Borges. 3rd expanded ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 9-63.
[68] M. Löwy. “Le marxisme en Amérique Latine de José Carlos Mariátegui aux zapatistes du Chiapas”. Actuel Marx, n. 42, 2007, p. 25-35. Available at: https://shs.cairn.info/revue-actuel-marx-2007-2-page-25?lang=fr
[69] Subcomandante Marcos, “La quatrième guerre mondiale a commencé”, The Diplomatic World, August 1997. Available at: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1997/08/MARCOS/4902
[70] A. Candido, “The struggle and the word”, p. 49.
[71] A. Candido, “José Martí and Latin America”, p. 3. The articles mentioned can be read in J. Martí, Our America. Sel. and Hugo Achúcar notes. Caracas: Ayacucho Library, 2005.
[72] A. Candido, “Literature and the formation of man” [1972], in: intervention texts. Org. Vinicius Dantas. 34, p. 2002-77. “The Right to Literature” [92], in: various writings, p. 235-263. In a lecture at the inauguration of the library of the Florestan Fernandes National School of the MST, in 2006, Candido revisits the arguments and explains the links between the humanizing function of literature and the political struggle. See “Lecture at the inauguration of the library”, available at: https://fpabramo.org.br/csbh/palestra-na-inauguracao-da-biblioteca-por-antonio-candido/
[73] A. Candido, Foreword, in: Apolônio de Carvalho, It's worth dreaming. 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1997, p. 16.
[74] A. Candido, “Presentation”, in: Flávio Aguiar (org.). With spans measured: Land, work and conflict in Brazilian literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.
[75] A. Candido, “Presentation”, in: Flávio Aguiar (org.). With measured palms, P. 9.
[76] “The situation of black people is one of the most serious problems in Brazilian society, because it means the exclusion and humiliation of a large part of the population due to the color of their skin. It is a situation that dehumanizes the excluded, by denying them access to satisfactory levels of social and economic life; and it also dehumanizes the agents of exclusion, because it implies in them a lack of fraternity that borders on moral insensitivity.” (A. Candido, “Florestan and the MST”, Folha de S. Paul, Brazil, January 21, 2005, p. A6.)
[77] “Let us imagine that in a universe free of prejudice, African traditions could combine in a healthy way with the lines of the dominant culture. The result could be (who knows?) the humanization of the so-called Western civilization – the most predatory, the most plundering, the most destructive and, at the same time, the most efficient and flexible that humanity has ever known.” (A. Candido, “Prejudice and Democracy” [1995], Finisher of Evils, special issue Antonio Candido, Campinas, 1999, p. 103.)
[78] “Capitalism is above all irrational and hence its inhuman aspects.” A. Candido, “Democracy and socialism” (Interview with Jorge Cunha Lima), This is, Sao Paulo, September 7, 1977, p. 36.
[79] A. Candido, “A hero of the Brazilian people”, p. 379.
[80] A. Candido, “Generous Obsessions”, Folha de S. Paul, November 17, 1979, p. 11.
[81] A. Candido, “Lecture at the inauguration of the library”.
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