In this seminal manifesto, Oswald de Andrade proposes anthropophagy (in the sense of the consumption and subsequent transformation of European cultural taboos) as a paradigm on which to build a Brazilian and, by extension, Latin American cultural identity. Just as Abaporu, a 1928 painting by de Andrade’s then-wife, Tarsila do Amaral, exemplifies modernism, so too does this manifesto record the tenets of the modernistas, specifically those who congregated around the Revista de antropofagia in whose inaugural issue this manifesto was published [(São Paulo), vol. 1, no. 1 (May 1928), 3, 7]. The journal was edited by Antônio de Alcântara Machado and published by poet Raul Bopp until February 1929, and then again from March to August of that year as part of the Diário de São Paulo. Tremendously influential to the 1960s Brazilian avant-garde, the publication was issued in a facsimile edition [Edição facsimilar da Revista de antropofagia. Reedição da revista literária publicada em São Paulo, 1a e 2a “Dentições,”1928–1929 (São Paulo: Abril/Metal Leve, 1975)]. This translation by Vajra Kilgour is from Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America [Mari Carmen Ramírez and Héctor Olea (New Haven and London: Yale University Press; Houston: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), 2004, 466–67; doc. 12].
ONLY ANTHROPOPHAGY UNITES US. Socially. Economically. Philosophically. The only law in the world. The masked expression of all individualisms, of all collectivisms. Of all religions, of all peace treaties.
Tupi or not Tupi, that is the question. . . .1
Only what isn’t mine interests me. The law of man. The law of the anthropophagus. . . .
What ran roughshod over the truth was clothing; the waterproof jacket between the inner and outer worlds. The reaction against those who are clothed. American cinema will keep us informed.
Children of the sun, mother of the living. Found and loved ferociously, with all the hypocrisy of nostalgia, by immigrants, slaves, and tourists. . . .
We never had grammars, or collections of old vegetation. And we never learned what was urban, suburban, on the frontier, and continental. Indolent on the world-map of Brazil.
A participatory consciousness, a religious rhythm.
Against all the importers of canned consciousness. The palpable existence of life. And a pre-logical mentality, to give Mr. Lévy-Bruhl something to study.
We want the Caraiba Revolution.2 Bigger than the French Revolution. The unification of all efficient rebellions for the sake of human beings. Without us, Europe wouldn’t even have its pathetic Declaration of Human Rights.
The golden age advertised by America. The golden age. And all the girls.
. . .
We have had justice, the codification of vengeance. And science, the codification of Magic. Anthropophagy: the permanent transformation of taboo into totem. Against a reversible world and ideas that have been objectivized. Cadaverized. The stop on thought that is dynamic. The individual victim of the system. The source of classic injustices. Of romantic injustices. And the oblivion of the innermost conquests. . . .
The Caraiba instinct. . . .
We were never catechized. What we did was a carnival. An Indian dressed as a senator of the Empire and pretending to be [William] Pitt. Or figuring in the operas of [José de] Alencar, full of noble Portuguese sentiments.
We have already had Communism. We have already had a Surrealist language. The golden age.
Catiti Catiti / Imara Notiá / Notiá Imara / Ipejú.3
Magic and life. We had the relation and distribution of physical assets, of moral assets, of the assets of dignity. And we knew how to transpose mystery and death, with the help of a few grammatical formulas.
I asked a man what Law was. He replied that it was the guarantee of an exercise in possibility. This man was named Mr. Gibberish: I ate him up.
. . .
Against antagonistic sublimations brought over by Columbus’s caravels.
Against the truth of the missionary peoples, defined by the sagacity of an anthropophagus, the Viscount of Cairú:—“It is an oft-repeated lie.”
But those who came here were not crusaders. They were fugitives of a civilization that we are devouring, because we are strong and vengeful, like the Jabuti. . . .4
We didn’t have speculation. But we did have divination. We had politics, which is the science of distribution. And a planetary-social system.
Migrations. Flight from states of tedium. Against urban scleroses. Against the conservatories and speculative tedium. From William James to [Serge] Voronoff. The transfiguration of Taboo into totem: Anthropophagy.
. . .
Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had already discovered happiness.
. . .
In the matriarchy of Pindorama. . . .5
The struggle between what could be called the Uncreated and the Creature— illustrated by the permanent contradiction of human beings and their Taboos.
Quotidian love and the capitalist modus vivendi. Anthropophagy. The absorption of the sacred enemy. In order to transform the enemy into a totem. The human adventure. Earthly finality. . . .
In Piratininga.6
Year 374 of the devouring of Bishop Sardinha.
1
The author’s [modified] quote from Hamlet is a pretext for introducing the subject of the Tupinambá, an indigenous people who lived in the region of the Amazon River. Tupi-guarani was one of the four main linguistic branches in South America. Systematized by the Jesuits, it served as a lingua franca until the nineteenth century and is still spoken by some tribal groups in the area. [—Ed.]
2
Caraiba, or Caribe, is a native population that, during European colonization, inhabited the Caribbean sea (Lesser Antiles), the Guyanas, and the Central America coastal regions. Several tribal groups in Brazil belong to this linguistic background. [—Ed.]
3
This poem in Tupi-Guarani was taken by Oswald de Andrade from the book O Selvagem [The Wild One] by Couto de Magalhães, in keeping with the tone of a parodic collage in which the author constructed his manifesto, with other quotations from texts by historians of Colonial Brazil. It is an invocation of the new moon: “New moon New moon / Whisper to such-and-such a one / To such-and-such a one whisper / Regards from me.” [—Ed.]
4
In indigenous stories from the Amazon region, the Jabuti (land tortoise) is an invincible hero. Although the tortoise is inoffensive, he appears in these stories as crafty and vengeful, overcoming stronger animals like the puma and the jaguar. [—Ed.]
5
Pindorama was the name by which the people of the Andes and the Pampas referred to Brazil in ancient times. [—Ed.]
6
Piratininga is the original name of the area in which the city of São Paulo was founded. [—Ed.]