Media, Development and Democracy

Heloisa Pait, Juliana Laet, Heloisa Pait, Juliana Laet

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781800434936
• eBook ISBN: 9781800434943
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Social Sciences

Sponsored by the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association (CITAMS), this book explores the complex construction of democratic public dialogue in developing countries. Case studies examine national environments defined not only by state censorship and commercial pressure, but also language differences, international influence, social divisions, and distinct value systems.

With fresh portraits of new and traditional media throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia, authors delve into the essential role of the media in developing countries. Case studies illuminate the relationship between the State and the media in Russia, as well as the challenges faced by journalists working in Kurdistan. Further cases reveal bureaucratic censorship of books in Brazil, regulatory dilemmas in Australia, state policies in post-colonial Malawi, and the potential of oral culture for the strengthening of democratic conversation.

Media, Development and Democracy brings the liberal democratic media model into new terrains where some of its core assumptions do not hold. In doing so, the authors' collective voices illuminate pressing issues facing our current global dialogue and our liberal and democratic expectations concerning communications and the media. This essential volume works as a magnifying glass for our current times, forcing us to question what kind of media we want today

CHAPTER 1

FOREIGN AUTHORS, NATIONAL BANS: BOOKS AND CENSORSHIP IN BRAZIL (1964–1985)

Sandra Reimão

ABSTRACT

This chapter examines books written by foreign authors which were published in Brazil and censored by the military regime between 1964 and 1985. The study focuses on non-fiction books, using official period documentation, with the goal of conducting an extensive survey of these works as well as examining the reasons why they were censored by the regime. The results of the research lead us to a greater understanding of the reasoning of censorship from within the State and to a greater understanding of the Brazilian military dictatorship as a whole.

Keywords: Foreign authors; books; censorship; Brazilian military dictatorship; authoritarian regimes; publishing

During the military dictatorship (1964–1985) in Brazil, the State’s official censorship of culture and the arts censored nearly 500 books (Reimao, 2019b, p. 28), 500 films, 450 theatrical works, dozens of radio programs, 100 magazines, more than 500 songs, and a dozen episodes or clips of soap-operas (Ventura, 1988, p. 285).

The aim of this chapter is to make a systematic survey of a specific kind of censored books: non-fiction by foreign authors that were published in Brazil, and then were all censored over the course of the military dictatorship. We will also undertake an analytical study of the censorship policies.

It is important to note that this study focuses on Brazilian publications of works by foreign authors and on the national context of their publication and censorship. To use Pierre Bourdieu’s terminology, one could say that we are working with Brazilian publishing and the national context and reception of these works rather than with their original contexts (cf. Bourdieu, 2002, p. 4). Therefore, this study focuses on the influence (cf. Darnton, 1982, p. 70) of the Brazilian editions of the works in question. It should once again be emphasized that the focus of this is on non-fiction books.

REASONS FOR CENSORSHIP: BOOK CENSORSHIP AND CENSORIAL REGULATIONS

Between the military coup of 1964 and Institutional Act Number 5, AI-5 in 1968, publishers and bookstores were targets of right-wing vandalism, numerous book seizures and confiscation, and physical attacks on publishers and booksellers.

With the intention of intimidating publishers and booksellers, “Seizures were simple and often improvised, undertaken by operatives who were poorly trained” (Stephanou, 2001, p. 215). The homes of several academics and writers, especially in Rio de Janeiro, were invaded in search of books to be confiscated (Hallewell, 2005, p. 576).

On April 9, 1964, Institutional Act Number 1, AI1 was introduced, which revoked the mandates of 63 federal deputies, two senators, and dozens of local councilors. It also suspended the political rights of approximately 400 people, including Ênio Silveira – the editor of Civilização Brasileira. On October 12, 1968, the Civilização Brasileira bookstore was partially destroyed by a bomb planted by army officers and sergeants; in 1968, right-wing terrorists carried out attacks against Editora Tempo Brasileiro and the Livraria Forense, both in Rio de Janeiro (Gaspari, 2002, pp. 301–328).

Publishers and bookstores had been targets of right-wing vandalism since the military coup of 1964; however, the creation of a unified censorship system for books was only consolidated after 1968.

This lack of censorship regulations in relation to books made it possible to publish national left-wing classics, such as Celso Furtado’s Um Projeto para o Brasil [A Project for Brazil], international erotic fiction like the Hindu physiological and sexual treatise on morality, the Kama Sutra, Sade’s Filosofia na Alcova [Philosophy in the Bedroom], and Henry Spencer Ashbee’s Minha Vida, Meus Amores [My Secret Life] – an account of a collector of erotic art (Reimao, 2019b, p. 22).

The 1967 constitution officialized the centralization of censorship as a federal government activity in Brasilia. Prior to 1967, various different authorities from a range of governing bodies and levels of public administration, both state and federal, had been able to undertake censorship activities.

When Institutional Act Number 5 was decreed on December 13, 1968, censorship was finally centralized within the federal government. Under the guise of “authentic democratic order” and “to combat subversion and ideologies counter to the traditions of our people,” the AI-5 made it possible to terminate mandates, suspend individual guarantees, and create the conditions for the expansion of censorship on information disclosure, free speech, and cultural and artistic productions.

The main arguments used for censoring books during the military dictatorship were the accusation of spreading subversive propaganda and of threatening good morals and customs. During the Brazilian military dictatorship, the most important legal tools used for acts of censorship were decrees 898 of September 29, 1969, and 1077/70 of January 26, 1970.

Decree 898, the National Security Law, was in force from September 29, 1969 to December 1978. Chapter 2 of decree 898 was entitled “crimes and punishments,” and Article 45 states that it is a crime to make “subversive propaganda,” encompassing any means of social communication, including newspapers, magazines, periodicals, books, newsletters, brochures, radio, television, cinema, theater, and other spectacles, as vehicles of adverse psychological, revolutionary, or subversive war propaganda.

Decree 1077/70 of January 26, 1970 stated that it was essential to regulate and censor the media to maintain and protect morals and good manners, with emphasis on book publishing.

The 1960s in Brazil was a time of vibrant artistic and cultural manifestations, particularly in film and theatre. It was also a period when many ideas and attitudes – with roots in print, theory, and fiction – blossomed on stage and screen, and developed and evolved. As noted by journalist Zuenir Ventura (1988): “The generation of ’68 may have been the last literary generation of Brazil – at least in the sense that their academic learning and aesthetic perception had been formed through reading. I was brought up reading more than seeing” (p. 51).

From a quantitative point of view, book production in 1960s Brazil was relatively low. 36,322,827 books were printed in Brazil in 1960. With the Brazilian population having reached 65,743,000 inhabitants, this meant the average number of books per capita per year was 0.55 (cf. Reimao, 2019a, pp. 16–37).

In 1972, according to data from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, the Brazilian (IBGE) national statistics department, the barrier of one book per inhabitant per year was finally breached. The population that year had reached 98 million, and there were 136 million books printed. In 1972, there were 1.3 books per inhabitant printed. With some distortions, this ratio continued to grow throughout the 1990s, reaching 1.8 in 1979. The rise in literacy rates from 29% to 39% between 1970 and 1980 (among those over five years of age), and the growth in the number of university students (especially in private institutions) from 100,000 to almost one million over the same period, help to understand the expansion of book production and trade in Brazil in 1970 (cf. Reimao, 2019a, p. 29).

Hallewell (2005) discussed the quantitative growth of book production and marketing in Brazil in the 1970s, and stated that despite the “truly phenomenal growth of the book trade,” it became “both financially and personally risky to publish anything that might exceed the – unclear – limits of official tolerance” (p. 574).

Therefore, while there was on the one hand a relative increase between 1974 and 1985 in left-wing publications, there was also a concomitant, comparatively greater, and “truly phenomenal” expansion in publishing in general in Brazil – which underwent impressive growth and industrialization.

Thus, we can say that under the Brazilian military dictatorship, book production underwent a process of conservative modernization; a phenomenon similar to that observed by Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta in Brazilian universities in his book As Universidades e o Regime Militar. In the words of Sá Motta (2014):

the modernizing aim focussed on economic and administrative growth, and the acceleration of industrialisation (…). The authoritarian-conservative project was founded on maintaining these excluded subaltern sectors, particularly as political actors, as well as in fighting against the ideology and agents of the left – or anything avant-garde at all in the fields of politics and culture (…). (p. 15)

NON-FICTION WORKS BY FOREIGN AUTHORS PUBLISHED AND THEN CENSORED IN BRAZIL

The censorship of 13 non-fiction books by foreign authors published in Brazil over the Brazilian military dictatorship was verified through three main sources of documentation and bibliographic references: (1) Censorship reports from the Divisão de Censura de Diversões Públicas (DCDP) [Public Entertainment Censorship Division], the DCDP. Regarding DCDP reports, it is important to remember in any statement about these data that these files are what are remaining, and we do not know to what percentage of the original total they correspond; (2) dispatches published in the Diário Oficial da União [Official Gazette] (DOU); and (3) lists of censored works presented by Deonísio da Silva as an attachment in annex in the book Nos bastidores da censura [In the Wings of Censorship] (da Silva, 1989).

Fig. 1.1 brings the DOU of July 2, 1970, containing a list of censored books, while Fig. 1.2 brings a report from the Public Entertainment Censorship Division regarding the Hite Report.

Fig. 1.1. Diário Oficial Seção I – Parte 1 – 2 de Julho de 1970. Source: Imprensa Nacional Portal – http://www.in.gov.br.

Fig. 1.2. Page 1 from the Censorship Report on the O Relatório Hite.

The non-fiction books by foreign authors that were published in Brazil and then were all censored, were the following:

• Frantz Fanon. Os Condenados da Terra [The Wretched of the Earth]. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1968. [Censorship document number: DOU 02.07.1970]
• Ricardo Rojo. Meu Amigo Che [My Friend Che]. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1968. [Censorship document number: DOU 02.07.1970]
• Che Guevara. Textos de Che Guevara [Texts]. Rio de Janeiro: Saga, 1968. [Censorship document number: DOU 02.07.1970]
• Mao Tsé-Tung. Citações do Presidente Mao Tsé-Tung [Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung]. Rio de Janeiro: José Álvaro, 1967. [Censorship document number: DOU 02.07.1970]
• Miguel Urbano (a Portuguese exile). Opções da Revolução na América Latina [Revolution Options in Latin America]. Ri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Overlapping Communicative Meshes: Plural Perspectives on Media and Development
• Chapter 1. Foreign Authors, National Bans: Books and Censorship in Brazil (1964–1985)
• Chapter 2. Manufacturing the Liberal Media Model Through Developmentality in Malawi
• Chapter 3. Toward a Framework for Studying Democratic Media Development and “Media Capture”: The Iraqi Kurdistan Case
• Chapter 4. Regulating Unhealthy Food Advertising to Children under Neoliberalism: An Australian Perspective
• Chapter 5. How Russian Media Helped Develop the Authoritarian Tradition: Its Historical Legacy for Today
• Chapter 6. How to Capture the Political in Everyday Conversation? Focus Groups as a Method to Research Democratic Practices in Daily Life
• Index