By JORGE BARCELLOS*
It is not enough for the left to simply deconstruct its opponent's discourse in elections: it is necessary to take the battle to the symbolic field as well.
Forget Boitatá, Negrinho do Pastoreio, Salamanca do Jarau. A new gaucho myth has emerged in the 2024 Porto Alegre elections: the right-wing candidate who is running in the municipal elections calling himself “the man with the straw hat”. The name, which would fit into any Stephen King book, serves as a way for candidate Sebastião Melo (MDB) to reinforce symbols of simplicity and closeness to voters.
I am surprised that the left does not denounce this strategy. I do so in the belief that it is not enough for the left to simply deconstruct its opponent's discourse in elections: it is necessary to take the battle to the symbolic field as well. In recent times, to paraphrase Alain Finkielkraut's famous expression, the left has become modern, while the right has become postmodern.
The left seeks to convince with reason, with its programs, exactly how it is right to do politics; the right wants to convince with emotion, with jokes, with memes, the wrong way it has been doing it. The “man in the straw hat” has already appeared on the capital’s political news program with the famous pixel glasses of memes laughing at himself, but it is the straw hat, for me, the most representative symbol that needs to be deconstructed. Why?
The world is made of symbols. They enter our consciousness, stir our imagination, and affect the world. In politics, symbols reinforce projects, create the basis for narratives, stay in people's minds, and win votes. I understand that the strength of the straw hat in Sebastião Melo's image comes from two assumptions. The first is that it is a symbol that seeks to add to the candidate's values of naivety when he is not. The government of the man in the straw hat is not naive.
There are accusations of corruption in his government; there are criticisms of his management of flood protection; there are criticisms of the privatization of Carris that he carried out, which led to the unemployment of dozens of fare collectors. For the left, his candidacy is a problem: no criticism sticks to the “man in the straw hat”, says journalist Rosane Oliveira. Thanks to the success of his propaganda, the PT is suffering from a reduction in votes for Maria do Rosário from 31% to 27%, while “the man in the straw hat” went from 36% to 41% of the votes between 27/8 and 17/09, according to the latest Quaest poll.
It must be said that “the man with the straw hat” is a notable symbolic association with the famous character Jeca Tatu. In times when programmatic content matters less than campaign images, when political careers and achievements matter less than memes published in the media, it is important to seek explanations for the success of this image in his propaganda. In the time of Jeca Tatu: representation of rural populations in the urban imagination of the 20th century (1914-1980)” (available at https://abre.ai/k8qZ ), Fabio Sgroi and Ana Paula Koury make an important analysis of the character Jeca Tatu that inspires my reflections here.
The second assumption of the power of the symbol used by Sebastião Melo is the fact that the image of Jeca Tatu permeated the imagination of urban Brazilian culture in the 20th century. But we need to go beyond the image of the straw hat, which simply embodies simplicity, to see what it really is: Jeca Tatu was the personification of the country's precariousness and backwardness.
In this sense, the “man in the straw hat” is our Jeca Tatu, he wants to update the character, giving it a new meaning. Now he serves to embody simple modernity, the administrator who is close to the population. The poor and lazy country boy is out, and the simple and humble manager is in. The straw hat has the power to create, in this sense, an identity. Both Jeca Tatu and our “man in the straw hat” exchanged their origins: Jeca Tatu, the countryside for the city; Sebastião Melo, our “man in the straw hat”, the small town for the capital.
The original character was created by Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) in 1914 “as a character in an article published in a newspaper, the poor and lazy country bumpkin” (Sgroi & Koury, 2019). The current character is a creation of political marketing. Interestingly, unlike the time of Jeca Tatu, when heated debates about his figure arose in the press, today the left does not see in the “man in the straw hat” an important symbolic content to criticize.
At the time, Jeca Tatu was seen as one of the reasons for the country's economic backwardness, and he later became a media symbol when he entered the cinema through Amácio Mazzaropi (1912-1981). “On the big screen, the character firmly established himself in the urban imagination, embodied by an actor who understood the repertoire of the lower classes very well. The country bumpkin survived on the big screen, with great box office success, until the beginning of the 1980s. Since then, he has been disappearing, substantiated in the repertoire of contemporary urban culture,” the authors state.
Until, drum roll, the “man in the straw hat” is resurrected as a political figure, taking advantage of the memory of the peasants who have become proletarianized workers in the city or who have been relegated to underemployment. Weren’t the humblest, or those who had the experience of watching Mazzaropi’s films, also those who voted for him and promised to vote for him again, even though they were victims of his policies or lack thereof, as seen in the flood?
In fiction, Jeca Tatu was a critic of the culture of the simple man, then he embodied the progressive ideal of the conservative struggle and even became a symbol of the agrarian problem, so important to the Communist Party. The “man in the straw hat” took over the leftist imagination, pasting his political figure onto a character by Mazzaropi, but the truth is that, unlike those, he is not a new character critical of the socioeconomic order, but one of its main defenders. If Jeca Tatu embodies the transition from rural to urban culture, the “man in the straw hat” wants to be the transition from neoliberal to ultraneoliberal culture.
Jeca Tatu lives in the land of the ragpicker as the “man with the straw hat” lives in the land of neoliberal ecstasy. Sgroi & Koury state that the expression “ragpicker” is part of the country vocabulary with the meaning of “great disorder”. This is perhaps a good word to describe the current administration of Sebastião Melo: disorder in the field of flood protection policies with the lack of maintenance of pump houses, disorder in the field of urban development policies with the flexibilization of the Master Plan to facilitate predatory real estate expansion, and disorder in the field of salary adjustments for civil servants with the refusal of adjustments required by law.
With the “man in the straw hat”, but not only him, it is necessary to be fair, since this disorder began in the government of Nelson Marchezan (2017-2021). This is an important word to highlight the process of disintegration of the field of environmental protection that is part of “turning the capital upside down”, which has been happening since the beginning of local neoliberal governments. Until then, the left-wing administrations (1989-2005) were associated with curbing the predatory expansion of civil construction, with the implementation of the regulatory framework of the Master Plan; preservation of the rights of public servants, with salary adjustments; and preservation of the natural environment, with broad action by SMAM, with the maintenance of the protection system, with the maintenance of the DEP.
With the neoliberal governments that began with José Fogaça (PMDB) and ended with the government of the “man in the straw hat” – with a brief interregnum by the PDT – we ended up with the flexibilization of the Master Plan to expand real estate development, the precariousness of the city with the reduction of public examinations, the reduction of civil servants’ rights and salary adjustments, and the end of the Department of Storm Sewage (DEP), which worsened the flooding in the capital. The city became the main laboratory for neoliberal predatory policies, with the “man in the straw hat” as one of its actors.
It was in the midst of this slum that Porto Alegre had become that the new Jeca Tatu, the “man in the straw hat,” appeared. Jeca Tatu originated from the writer Monteiro Lobato’s interactions with the caboclos when he was a land administrator in the Paraíba Valley. For Lobato, they were workers who did not take care of the land, causing fires and impoverishing the soil until it became sterile. The capitalists who benefited from the policies of the “man in the straw hat” did the same in Porto Alegre: they wanted to divide up the Arado Farm, a notable floodplain and archaeological site, into lots; they transformed the urban environment by expanding large buildings that made life and culture in the city sterile.
For Monteiro Lobato, the caboclo is one of the main obstacles to the development of Brazil; for me, the neoliberal project defended by the “man in the straw hat” is the main obstacle to the development of a city with habitability and culture: here, creating conditions for real estate expansion is the way to extinguish the city through predation. The “man in the straw hat” is this parasitic being who, as in Monteiro Lobato’s vision of the Caboclo, lives by creating predatory conditions for real estate capital; he is a nomad with no appreciation for local culture, who lives in the shadows of a border zone between the appearance of a good manager who hides his role in destroying the city’s heritage.
Jeca Tatu boasts of his dog, his pestle, his hat and his lighter; the “man with the straw hat” boasts of his simplicity and his approach to the people. Both retreat so as not to adapt, whether to the modern or to the tradition of the place.
Monteiro Lobato wanted to see more modern models of administration put into practice; I wanted to take a step back, to withdraw from the implementation of neoliberal policies towards a social protection state. We do need economic development, but not at the expense of local culture, heritage, living conditions and the precariousness of public services, exactly the line adopted by the “man in the straw hat”, since the consequences are exactly the same: exhaustion of land use and the decline of the place, whether in the Paraíba Valley or in Porto Alegre.
Jeca Tatu is the product of a literary error, just as the “man in the straw hat” is a political error. The character was born in a text that Lobato sent to the Complaints and Claims section of the newspaper. The State of S. Paul, but which the editors published as an article because of the quality of the writing. Our “man in the straw hat” was born as a political mistake by the city, which thinks it is voting for someone who loves the city when it does not. What kind of love is this that is made at the cost of destroying the loved one? Both seek continuity: Monteiro Lobato began writing for the newspaper, while our “man in the straw hat” wants to be reelected.
Everyone tries to achieve continuity in their own way. Jeca Tatu is handsome in the novel and ugly in reality, say the authors. “When he goes to the fairs, everyone can guess what he brings: always things that nature spills over the forest and that all it takes for man is to stretch out his hand and pick them. Nothing more. His great concern is to squeeze out all the consequences of the law of least effort – and in this he goes far.” say Sgroi & Koury. Isn’t this the perfect description of our “man in the straw hat?” Isn’t this the exploitation of the natural world that we see at Arado Farm? Isn’t it his effort to squeeze the Master Plan, to remove from it everything that prevents the construction of large skyscrapers in the city?
He is the bearer of the law of least effort, not for himself, but for the businessmen he represents. As the authors say, “the caboclo is the dark urupê of rotten wood, silently dozing in the recesses of the caves. He alone does not speak, does not sing, does not laugh, does not love. He alone, in the midst of so much life, does not live… (Sgroi & Kouri, apud Lobato, 2009)”.
The “man in the straw hat” says he lives in the city, but he doesn’t. If he saw it, he would care about the shadow of the building he wants to authorize to be built next to the metropolitan cathedral of Porto Alegre. Should I be like the critics of the “man in the straw hat”? Urupes, a book by Lobato in which the character appears, because I am also this “city man of letters”, a term used to refer to the intellectuals who criticized his work. I also criticize him, but not because I am in the comfort of my home, but because I need to show the real character behind the electoral fiction.
It is necessary, as the philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) says, to deconstruct the idealism of the figure that the “man in the straw hat” embodies, and to do so it is necessary to read his image as a text and follow the path of the philosopher of deconstruction, because deconstructing is not destroying his character, but tearing him from his logic, showing the arrangement of his textual elements.
The authors say that the “replies that appeared in the press after the publication of Urupes were as furious as Monteiro Lobato's words”. Even in this, our “man in the straw hat” is lucky. The campaign of his opponent Maria do Rosário (PT) is still lukewarm and the only left-wing politician who is critical enough, Congressman Leonel Radhe (PT), has excellent videos that are not shown during political broadcasts. He is the only one who deconstructed the character, investing in the association of images of the catastrophe of the administration with the “man in the straw hat”. Here, he is not a symbol of simplicity, but of inefficiency.
This is a “postmodern” left-wing response, because it accepts and combats the idea of good politics in the field of symbols. The sociologist Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) had already said in his work The Shadow of the silent majorities (Brasiliense) that the masses do not want the rational, but the irrational. Our man with the straw hat knows this and abuses and uses the resources of memes, including on himself.
Over time, Lobato's Jeca Tatu undergoes two transformations according to the authors. The first is the one that occurs after the author reads the book Basic sanitation in Brazil, by Belisário Penna and Arthur Neiva, published by the Osvaldo Cruz Institute in 1918, when he understood that the interior of the country had been abandoned. Lobato believed that the caboclo was inferior and apathetic due to his racial condition, and replaced the idea of superiority of certain races that the author defended with an idea that the man of the countryside was the result of underdevelopment “Upon realizing that man is a product of his environment – and not the other way around – Monteiro Lobato “asks Jeca for forgiveness, saying that he had ignored him when he was sick”, say Sgroi and Koury.
Monteiro Lobato began to publish about the exploitation of rural people due to the concentration of income and in 1924 created Jeca Tatuzinho, a children's story in which the character transformed into a child narrates his overcoming, from illness and poverty to health care, prosperity and hard work. It serves as advertising for an edition of Biotônico Fontoura Almanac distributed free of charge in pharmacies throughout Brazil (Sgroi and Kouri, apud Duarte: 2009, p. 121). The authors report that the special edition of the Almanac represented one of the greatest public penetration phenomena of its time and that its circulation broke all records of any printed publication of that period. “The longevity of the magazine is also noteworthy: in 1982, 100 million copies of the edition were printed” (idem, p. 129).
The change occurs with the lazy and miserable character when he receives a visit from a doctor, who diagnoses him with Yellowing “after ingesting a “miracle elixir” – Biotômico Fontoura and other medications from the pharmaceutical laboratory –, he becomes robust, ruddy and healthy; he begins to wield the hoe with vigor and transforms his decaying piece of land into a powerful agricultural enterprise, including cutting down trees to expand his house and punching the jaguar that previously frightened him so much”, say Sgroi and Kouri.
This is the author's discovery of the real living conditions of peasants, who are neglected by the government and victims of the high concentration of income in the hands of landowners. In the city of the "man in the straw hat", the campaign of his opponent Maria do Rosário (PT) has already denounced the change in character: if in the previous election she credited the government established in the City Hall with the responsibility for the floods, in the current campaign she criticizes the supposed abandonment of the federal government – which is not true, since it invested 42,3 billion reais in the State to rebuild the flood victims.
If in Monteiro Lobato it is landowners who are the source of the country folk’s ills, in the land of the “man in the straw hat” it is now the entrepreneurs and big businessmen in the construction industry. There is no criticism of capital or the exploitation of the poor in his speech; he merely captures the image of the country folk through the use of his hat for electoral gain. No wonder: the change in Lobato’s character was due to the author’s approach to the themes of agrarian reform defended by the Communist Party; the “man in the straw hat” is only interested in agrarian reform that benefits entrepreneurs and makes life easier for corporations.
Nothing about the populations abandoned to their own fate in the inns contracted by the City Hall and which set fire to and kill their occupants, as reported on the website. Brazil of Fact (available in https://encurtador.com.br/OvTI6). They are like Zé Brasil, the name of another character in Monteiro Lobato's work about a rural worker. There, as here, it is always the abandonment and absolute misery of the worker, whether rural or urban. If the large landowners are the cause of Zé Brasil's abandonment, the large contractors are the urban workers that the "man in the straw hat" wants to represent.
Zé Brasil is an update of Jeca Tatu, but “the man with the straw hat” is not an update of anything, except the power of the elites. According to critics of the time, the transition from one character to another was a political evolution; in our case, there is only an involution, as we have already shown in the analysis of the candidate’s previous election programs in our book “The incredible story of the program that shrank” (available at https://encurtador.com.br/oXWeX).
The second transformation occurs with the character Zeca Tatu, which is given by his recreation by Amácio Mazarropi. He was part of a context of capitalist development, as the “man with the straw hat” is part of its deepening. The first embodied the character of Jeca Tatu in the early days of mass communication in Brazil; the second embodies the character in the ultra-neoliberal period. The first was born in the 1946 radio comedy program Rancho Alegre, which became the first comedy program on TV Tupi in 1950, and the second was born in the electoral propaganda of Porto Alegre in the 2024s.
Both Mazzaropi's character and that of the "man in the straw hat" sought to be the synthesis of the people's origins. But while Mazzaropi's character was born from the mambembe theater, the other was born from the strategies of postmodern marketing, that is, the first was born from an art form and the second from a way of conquering consciences.
Mazzaropi’s Jeca Tatu is justified by the demands of the lower classes; the “man in the straw hat!” by the demands of the political class to perpetuate itself in power. Both are performances, the first improvised and regionalist and the second calculated and political. But the fundamental transformation is in the discourse of the city that it embodies: in the first, the city is the source of falsehood, dishonesty, and vice; in the second, it is the source of wealth, happiness, and progress for all – when it is only for some.
Both Mazzaropi’s Jeca Tatu and Sebastião Melo’s “man in the straw hat” want to embody the image of a pure rural man. The authors say that “The Mazzaropian Jeca appeared in 1959 in the film Jeca Tatu, produced by the artist’s own production company, PAM Filmes, and directed by Milton Amaral”; ours has its origins in the political propaganda of 2024, exactly 65 years later. If Mazzaropi’s Jeca was a confrontation between the country man and the city, the “man in the straw hat” jeca is his resigned acceptance.
Both are inspired by people's observations, but they appropriate the caipira in different ways. In the end, the first wants to convince the dominant classes of their responsibility for the backwardness of the countryside, while the second wants to convince the dominated classes of the dominant classes' interest in improving their condition. What is done here in both is just another form of seduction, the diversion of the symbol's purpose, but if in the first it is at the service of the class struggle, in the second it is at the service of class domination.
Monteiro Lobato's and Mazzaropi's versions of Jeca Tatu do have differences, but in Mazzaropi's the character is no longer a parasite of the nation, sick or conscious like Lobato's, but a conservative peasant critical of industrial logic and in this he distances himself from his contemporary political counterpart, who defends it.
The conclusion is that the “man in the straw hat” is nothing more than a stylized country bumpkin, different from the real country bumpkin or the Mazzaropian heritage. He uses the symbol of the hat and rustic speech to provoke immediate identification with the poorest people. There is nothing in the “man in the straw hat” that points to the Jeca of the past, other than the hat. This is, however, a strong symbol because it evokes a sensitivity. Which one? That of the use of time.
There, time belongs to the farmer; here, it belongs to the frenetic pace of the businessman; there, it was time that passes, here it is time spent searching for results. The Jeca of the past is richer than the one of the present because it has another meaning, that of valuing the time that passes between day and night, the rains and the seasons, different from the timed time of the city. Now, it is not about wasting time, but about buying and selling time. And buying and selling, that is what the “man in the straw hat” understands.
Jorge Barcellos, historian, holds a PhD in Education from UFRGS. Author, among other books, of Neoliberals Don't Deserve Tears: How Neoliberal Policy Increased the 2024 Flood in Rio Grande do Sul (Authors' Club).
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