Três trópicos da tropicália

a loving desire for modernity in brazil

I shall be very frank. I am a very committed kind of guy. When I became part of Tropicalisrn, it was in terms of a war. I went to prison; I was tortured. I spent years in hiding, ostracized, but I was always faithful, as I still am now, to the essence of what inspired us. The essence of Tropicalism was a loving desire for modernity in Brazil. It was all a point of view that was, and continues to be, repressed and at that historic moment we were able to put it in motion. It was a moment of ecstasy, of real creativity which fed and still feeds this country. It was perhaps Brazil’s most modern moment in the sense that it was a movement linked to a contemporary and mass civilization, there was nothing old-fashioned about it.  And it had no ideological fetters or commitments to factions of the left or the right.  It was Brazil’s own intelligence manifesting itself, in a moment of awareness, lucidity and of passion for the country. It was also a moment in which a Brazilian potentiality appeared. Because when I speak of Tropicalism, I always say that it is not a movement, it is Brazilian art itself. Modernism was already like this. This is Brazil’s vocation. This is our language. This is our identity. There are superficial visions of this, but this Brazilian vocation is here in everything: in this determination, this passion, this universal identity of the Brazilian.