When Literature Addresses History: the Fiction of Barbosa Lessa and Public Memory in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Abstract

The objective of this work is to analyze the interventions of Luiz Carlos Barbosa Lessa (writer, folklorist and activist-founder of the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement) in the public debate of Rio Grande do Sul, using the imagination-literature. We start from the episode that shook the local literate production in the 1950s, the so-called “Sepé polemic”, on the merits or the impracticability of incorporating the experience of the Guarani Misiones in the narratives of the Gaucho past. I seek, therefore, not only to ascertain the positions of the author, but to evaluate the possibilities and formal choices for confrontation, in particular by examining literary writing as a counterpoint to the historical discourse. Lessa’s standing on the Indigenous issue leads to deeper criticisms of the dominant model of historical memory in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, guiding his literary project towards unusual creations, such as the portrayal of groups and segments previously seen as marginal ones (Indigenous groups, Afro-Brazilians, women), and a reaffirmation of the popular character of the Gaucho from Rio Grande do Sul.