To speak of 1968 is to speak of art, politics, and also political purges. For us Brazilians, 1968 became directly associated with the enactment of AI-5. Institutional Act No. 5 suspended a series of individual guarantees and ushered in the harshest period of repression under the dictatorship. It profoundly marked much of the 1970s.
But it is impossible to speak of 1968 without also associating it with France’s May ’68. The student uprising, which brought more than 20,000 young people into the streets of Paris, established a generational break and called for Creativity to Take Power. 1968 was also the year of Martin Luther King’s assassination in the United States, and it evokes seminal works of Cinema Novo…
1968 in the expanded field
In a broader sense, 1968 was the result of a series of struggles for civil rights, such as those of Black Americans, feminist demands, and intense aesthetic and behavioral revolutions that began a little earlier and reverberated for decades afterward. From this perspective, we need to think of 1968 as a process rather than simply a year.
In Brazil, within this view of 1968 in an expanded field, I would highlight Tropicália by Hélio Oiticica, from 1967, which brought the architecture of the favelas inside the modernist building of Rio de Janeiro’s MAM. I would recall Terra em Transe (featured in this post), also from 1967, by Glauber Rocha.
And how could we not talk about music? I should end this column with Panis et Circencis, by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, performed by Os Mutantes. The song, a brilliant piece of psychedelic rock from 1968, offers a biting critique of the moral values of its time. But I will end with another: Aquele Abraço (1969), by Gilberto Gil.
For me, Aquele Abraço carries a sense of tribute beyond its historical context. This was the first record I was given, a gift from my aunt, USP Professor Emerita Paula Beiguelman, one of the victims of the dictatorship’s political purges. In honoring her, I honor all the other 218 professors and researchers who were forcibly retired under the supplementary acts to AI-5.
Democracy is far from a perfect system, but nothing can compensate for the suppression of freedom.
Aquele Abraço, Paula.
Transcript of Giselle Beiguelman’s Ouvir Imagens column, broadcast every Monday at 8 a.m. on Rádio USP (93.7).
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