Politics and literature

issues surrounding O presidente negro (1926), by Monteiro Lobato

Abstract

This text takes the novel O presidente negro [The Black President] (1926) by José Bento Renato Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) as a starting point to examine the intellectual debate surrounding eugenics in Brazil at the time. Our objective is to understand the author and the ideas contained in the work within the limits of its era, thereby seeking to contribute to the debate about this author's writings by placing the aforementioned work in historical perspective, a century after its publication. To this end, we first present eugenics as the ideology of intellectual elites who sought a solution to the social ills of early twentieth-century Brazil; subsequently, we introduce the counterpoint produced by communists associated with the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB), such as Astrojildo Pereira and Edison Carneiro, as well as in other party press publications. We argue that, by unveiling the real interests of the exploiting classes and their intellectual spokespersons, the communists offered an important counterpoint to eugenics at a time when such ideas circulated freely both among intellectuals and in decision-making spheres, the literary record of which is found in O presidente negro.