Contracultura: Alternative Arts and Social Transformation in Authoritarian Brazil

Christopher Dunn’s history of authoritarian Brazil exposes the inventivecultural production and intense social transformations that emerged duringthe rule of an iron-fisted military regime during the sixties and seventies.The Brazilian contracultura was a complex and multifaceted phenomenonthat developed alongside the ascent of hardline forces within the regime inthe late 1960s. Focusing on urban, middle-class Brazilians often inspiredby the international counterculture that flourished in the United States andparts of western Europe, Dunn shows how new understandings of race, gender,sexuality, and citizenship erupted under even the most oppressive politicalconditions.

Dunn reveals previously ignored connections between the countercultureand Brazilian music, literature, film, visual arts, and alternative journalism.In chronicling desbunde, the Brazilian hippie movement, he shows how thestate of Bahia, renowned for its Afro-Brazilian culture, emerged as a counterculturalmecca for youth in search of spiritual alternatives. As this criticaland expansive book demonstrates, many of the country’s social and justicemovements have their origins in the countercultural attitudes, practices, andsensibilities that flourished during the military dictatorship.