La mayor indicación del estudio de la HRB es mejorar nuestra comprensión sobre el asma

In order to grasp the importance and impact of telenovelas on daily life in Brazil, as well as the mutual infl uences between media images and the social imaginary, one has to understand the close-knit connection between television, power, and the question of identifi cation in this country. There-fore, I shall briefl y explore the emergence and development of the format and its impact on Brazilian society.

Due to an established and multifaceted oral tradition, the publishing industry in Brazil has not developed at the same pace as that of other coun-tries on the continent, making it “an odd country out” in Latin America.⁸ In addition, the strong infl uence of African music and the power of oral narratives sustained and enriched a tradition based more on song and voice than on writing. With the introduction of the radio in the twentieth cen-tury, the format of the melodrama, imported from France and England by means of the feuilleton novel, underwent a continuation on the radio in a format called radionovelas. After fi lms were introduced, that format was transformed with a strong performative element into teleteatro, as the series were broadcast live. After these two intermediary stages, the Brazil-ian telenovela fi nally developed as an independent and specialized genre in the late 1960s.

The media conglomerate Rede Globo played a crucial and decisive role in this regard as it consolidated the form of the telenovela on various levels.

First of all, Rede Globo hired well-known playwrights to produce sophis-ticated scripts that would be relevant to Latin America. The series, each of which lasted from six to eight months, differed in specifi c ways from the open-ended North American model that could continue for years. Second, professional theater actors were contracted, and special attention was given to the quality of fi lming, which led to the invention of the term padrão de qualidade (pattern of quality). Third, Rede Globo broadcasted the tele-novelas daily, which created a captive audience. Thus, by innovating narra-tive, production, and broadcasting practices, Rede Globo confi gured a new genre and contributed to the establishment of a new tradition in Brazil.

Because many Brazilians could not afford to go to the movies often, they generally spent more time watching television. Soon, the small screen became a reference system for the Brazilian public, a new form of narrating the nation. Of note, however, is the fact that the increasing nationaliza-tion of the telenovela was due in particular to a close relanationaliza-tionship between Rede Globo and the military dictatorship, which resulted in the channel receiving special privileges and which led to the constitution of a hege-monic media empire.⁹

Fantasy worlds in distant places and with ‘exotic’ people such as Ara-bic sheiks and French kings and queens (infl uenced by the Mexican melo-drama), the staple of the 1960s telenovelas, changed in the 1970s. The focus then shifted to Brazil and its citizens, their hopes and the problems of their daily lives.¹⁰ At that time, a threefold structure of telenovela broadcasting emerged: Six days a week, the programming began with a romantic series, then a comedy, and fi nally, at prime time, the drama social.¹¹ These drama social increasingly integrated current debates about culture and politics into their storylines, served as a discussion platform, and inadvertently cre-ated images that became part of the Brazilian collective memory, providing frames of reference for national identifi cation. The inclusion of interviews with people on the street or sequences from TV news further consolidated this medium into an alternative knowledge system for many people, par-ticularly for those with limited access to education and print media.

The importance of these media products for the Brazilian public is nota-ble even as one strolls around the cities of Brazil. The faces of the actors of current telenovelas are ubiquitous on billboards, on kiosks, and on the front pages of a whole industry of telenovela magazines. Far from being limited to pulp magazines, photos of telenovela actors and reports on their (fi ctitious) lives in articles ranging from sensationalist discovery stories to sociological observations appear in quality magazines such as Istoé or Veja.

The photographs of these smiling actors appear on all kinds of products, from telephone cards to T-shirts, pens to bed linens. The actors are on TV almost continuously; apart from their telenovelas, they are interviewed on talk shows, star in commercials, and appear as guests on other programs.

Further, comedy programs that parody the latest intrigues and passionate kisses of the telenovelas are particularly popular.

In addition to the overwhelming cultural and audiovisual presence of telenovelas and their heroes, the popularity of these programs has radically reconfi gured the social habits of large segments of the population. During prime time, when the major telenovela is being aired, the streets are less crowded than usual as people stay in to watch. The broadcasting of a tele-novela’s last chapter becomes a city-wide event, as people crowd together in front of their televisions or in bars to witness the antagonist’s ruin or the separated lovers’ reunion. At many hair salons and shops, the staff and customers huddle together and watch little portable TV sets, mesmerized.

In this context, it is no wonder that Rede Globo, by far the most impor-tant producer of telenovelas in Brazil, is also referred to as the “Brazilian Hollywood” or the “Brazilian Dream Factory.”¹²

Narrating the Nation—Immigration to Brazil

Having established the telenovela as a vital forum for discussion of current topics and a source for the national imaginary and identifi cation, I will focus on how this format interprets and actualizes the narrative of migra-tion history. This argument will fi rst be contextualized within the history of immigration to this country.

Brazil’s status as a major immigration country began with the arrival of the Portuguese in the late fi fteenth century, which led to the mixing of the Portuguese and the indigenous population, the so-called mestiçagem.¹³ In the centuries that followed, the infl ux of ships with people and goods from Europe was accompanied by slave ships from Africa, a dark chapter of forced migration in Brazilian history. Several waves of European immi-grants from Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain in the nineteenth century followed the (forced) African migration, which numbered in the millions.

In the early twentieth century, a signifi cant number of Japanese migrants arrived and, a few decades later, people from Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Lebanon entered the increasingly multiethnic country.¹⁴ The government urged the immigrants to assimilate to Brazilian culture and established Portuguese as the only reference language.¹⁵

In spite of these multiethnic immigration processes and the massive and visible presence of people from other parts of the world on the streets of Brazilian towns and cities, the Brazilian telenovela industry only selec-tively incorporated them into their tales, focusing in particular on Ital-ian immigrants. Regarded as positive and deployed as a model for nation building in Brazil, the representation of Italians shrouded the visibility of other migrant groups, who rarely appeared in audiovisual productions.¹⁶ A strong migration of Italians to the two Rede Globo cities,¹⁷ São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and some of the authors’ own family backgrounds con-tributed to this almost exclusively Italian narrative of immigration history.

This privileged the European aspect of Brazilian identity to the detriment of the multifaceted reality of Brazil.

The titles of the immigration telenovelas clearly signal their potential for nation building: Os Immigrantes (The Immigrants) was broadcast between 1981 and 1982, Vida Nova (New Life) in 1988, Terra Nostra (Our Home-land) in 1999, and Esperança (Hope) between 2002 and 2003. All these titles echo the colonialists’ desire to rename ‘new’ territories. These narra-tives have strong symbolic connotations and recount the immigration his-tory in Brazil; they often start with a couple in a small village in Europe and then continuing in Brazil, narrating the histories of adventure, hopes and dreams, loss, arriving in the new homeland, and the processes of inte-gration. This is narratively constructed in Os Immigrantes, for example, on two levels, an onomastic one and a temporal one. The former can be traced by the names of the three protagonists who are all called ‘Anto-nio’ although they come from Italy, Portugal, and Spain. They allegorically symbolize their respective homelands and the historic migration movement to Brazil through independent, yet often intertwined, family histories. As the story progresses from the arrival of the Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth century to the present, it also transmits a sense of belonging and medially historicizes the migration processes through its linear narrative.

Narrating the Nation, Part Two—“To Make America”

A useful concept that can be deployed for another kind of Brazilian tele-novela was originally developed by the Brazilian historian Boris Fausto to describe migration to Latin America: “to make America,” which he used as the title of his book.¹⁸ This notion, which originally referred to processes of migration to Brazil, has now been revised and describes moving away from the country, stressing new forms of emigration and transmigration in telenovela narratives.

For a long time, emigration was on the margins of the Brazilian social imaginary, in so far as it was almost exclusively related to the Brazilian borderlands and rarely entered mainstream life. In the 1960s, workers began to migrate within geographically limited areas, in particular the mine workers and traders in twin cities bordering on Bolivia, Colombia, Guayana, and Peru,¹⁹ and the Brasiguayos’s (Brazilian Paraguayans) agri-cultural migrations to Paraguay; the historically debated region of South Brazil was rather an exception to this pattern.²⁰ On a smaller scale, they left for the old colonial empire Portugal.²¹ Emigration to the United States was particularly due to two reasons. First, the phenomenon of the city of Gov-ernador Valadares, with the creation of a collective imaginary of a “land of opportunity” in North America, after the establishment of U.S. fi rms in that region and the initiation of a steady commerce.²² Second, there is the emigration that occurred during the military dictatorship,²³ often linked to Brazilian musicians such as Tom Jobim and Vinicius Moraes. But only in

the 1980s was a more sustainable level of emigration to the U.S. observed, and new migration patterns developed.

Of particular relevance here is the emergence of transnational social spaces, with a new and dynamic potential for the making of social ties and relationships, which can be even stronger than those occurring in the space of one’s geographical origins.²⁴ Closely linked to this development is the notion of transmigration. This term, going beyond established binary and static defi nitions of migration, refers to persons who move and live in new social spaces. These migrating subjects maintain networks in at least two societies, the home and host societies, and participate in both of them.²⁵ Consequently, these terms do not refer only to leaving a coun-try, but describe the spaces and routes covered by migrants who oscillate between leaving and coming back.

The telenovela Pátria Minha (1994) was the fi rst attempt at depicting the new migration patterns of Brazilians leaving their country. However, in this series, these aspects were explored rather marginally: the theme was engaged only in the fi rst few chapters, limited to only one narrative thread which was soon discontinued. No attention was paid to more dynamic pro-cesses such as transmigration. Pátria Minha (My Homeland) was the last of a trilogy (following Vale Tudo and O Dono do Mundo) that describes corruption and righteousness in Brazil. It focuses on the dispute between a rich family in Rio de Janeiro and others of a more humble background, structured around an event in which a young girl witnesses the rich busi-nessman Pellegrini kill a person in a car accident and try to get away with it by bribing possible witnesses. The narrative centers on the girl’s hesitation and fear about the consequences of testifying against him, thus symbol-izing the struggle for honesty and righteousness. In a parallel narrative thread, Pedro, who has returned from the U.S. with his wife, Ester, and his son, Gabriel, is shocked to learn that his family has had to move to a shantytown. When the owner of this property, the above mentioned Pel-legrini, gives orders to demolish the slum settlement, Pedro organizes a revolt against him.

This plot summary shows how the theme of migration, although pres-ent, does not signifi cantly determine the structure of the narrative. In gen-eral, one could link the ‘homeland’ in the title of the telenovela to a possible life choice between the U.S. and Brazil. The telenovela argues in favor of the homeland, even transmitting a warning regarding what might happen to one’s family if one decides to leave home.

Pedro’s story is a short but vivid subplot about a family’s emigration from Rio de Janeiro. After eight years in New York, Pedro, Ester, and Gabriel return home. Although they made a reasonable living there, both parents had to work at jobs for which they are overqualifi ed. Despite the fact that their son will not have the same future prospects as in the U.S., homesickness for family, friends, food, the beach, and the excitement of watching their favorite football team fi nally convinces them to return for

good. Back in Brazil, they encounter a deplorable situation: their family had lost all the money from the remittances that Pedro had sent home and were reduced to living in a favela, a shantytown. However, from this point on, no reference is made to immigration or life in the United States, as the drama then focuses on Brazil’s problems with power, democracy, and corruption.

Gilberto Braga, the author of this telenovela, draws a picture in which migration might bring wealth at a considerable cost and at the same time lead to problems, as the migrating family has to cope with reintegration when they return home. Life has continued, people have changed, and their home (country) is not as it used to be. Far from representing the migrants as ‘winners’ as a result of their passage abroad, they are shown in an in-be-tween state, as people who had a dream but failed to achieve it completely.

The character of the son, Gabriel, illustrates this point in particular ways.

Socialized in the U.S. and speaking English at school, he has become cul-turally American. Moving back to Brazil and the life of poverty that awaits his family is even more daunting for him. This is symbolized, for example, by the fact that he played the cello in New York but can no longer do so in Rio. Yet, as the representation of emigration was limited to the fi rst chap-ters of Patria Minha and to a secondary narrative thread in the multiplot, the repercussions in the Brazilian public were limited and did not spur gen-eral debates about leaving the country or not.

These fi rst attempts at depicting emigrants and their lives were fi nally reinforced in 2005 with the transnational migration saga América. This telenovela, written by Gloria Pérez, which aired for eight months and was immensely successful with audiences, placed the migrants’ passages, lives, and destinies at the center of the narrative, and portrayed the people who traveled between various host societies. The story centers on Sol, who tries to fulfi ll her own American dream by leaving Brazil and her boyfriend, Tião, behind. Numerous parallel plots follow the lives of other people who also try to fulfi ll their dreams of moving to the U.S., becoming famous in Brazil, reuniting with a lost love, or building their own home.

The plotlines focus primarily on Tião’s and Sol’s families, with settings in diverse places within three countries. In Brazil, the settings include the rural areas of the state of São Paulo on the farm of the widow Dona Neuta, in the mansion of the industrial magnate Glauco in the affl uent South Rio de Janeiro, and in a street in the lower middle-class area of Vila Isabel in the rather poor North Rio de Janeiro. Then, in Mexico, they are set on the border, in a small, poor village near El Paso. Finally, the locations in the U.S. include an immigrant’s boarding house in Miami run by a Mexican woman, Consuelo; the house of a university lecturer, Ed; and the loft and art studio of a rich teacher, May. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the transnational references, these settings help showcase a panorama of Bra-zilian society, only marginalizing the representation of the poorest segment of the society.

The 203 chapters of América focus on the lives of almost a hundred characters (numerous even for a Brazilian telenovela), but with a special focus on Sol. After being caught and deported twice, she fi nally manages to cross the border into the U.S. and lives among other, mostly illegal, Latin American migrants in Miami. There, she works at a wide range of odd jobs: preparing sandwiches, cleaning houses, posing as a tableau vivant, babysitting, dancing as a go-go girl in a nightclub, and testing medicine for a pharmaceutical enterprise. After some time, Sol falls in love with the middle-class university lecturer Ed, with whom she has a baby. Despite the manipulations of the villain, May, and her deporta-tion in the last part of the series, in the end, Sol remains with her new love from the United States. The telenovela places particular focus on the diffi culty of raising money for passage and getting into the U.S., which tightened its migration restrictions considerably after 9/11, and on the problems of living there illegally in silence. Unlike in Pátria Minha, in América, the protagonist Sol is from a shantytown and the majority of the migrants depicted are also from rather humble backgrounds. They have to fi ght for survival, frequently working at degrading jobs inferior to the ones they had back home, and they are often exploited or ignored in the new land of dreams.