The Distance between Freyre and Amado: The Intellectual Foundations of Brazilian Cultural Tourism, 1934–67

This paper, using UNESCO tourism consultant Michel Parent's assessment of the need for an inclusive tourism development program in Brazil following his visit in 1966 and 1967 as an ideal worth pursuing, will examine two tourism paradigms that shaped cultural tourism development in Brazil, beginning in the 1930s. It will examine the writings of Jorge Amado and Gilberto Freyre, who both wrote tour books for their respective cities of Salvador de Bahia and Recife, to outline these two paradigms. That these two literary giants of twentieth century Brazil chose to write on the topic of tourism underscores the political importance of cultural patrimony during the early twentieth century. The Amadean paradigm for Brazilian cultural tourism, influenced by Amado's Marxist leanings in the 1930s, stressed an inclusive, multi-cultural model for tourism development -- one that Parent would have encouraged -- that never really saw acceptance until after the military dictatorship fell in the 1980s. On the other hand, I will examine Freyre's vision of tourism in Recife to establish a tourism development paradigm that stressed racial harmony and racial democracy as products of Portuguese colonialism. The paper will link these competing paradigms to IPHAN's entry to tourism development in the late 1970s by examining the contributions of Freyre and Rodrigo Andrade de Mello (the first director of IPHAN who passed away in the late 1960s) to the Revista do IPHAN.  This presentation will be significant in that it provides a context for the largely bureaucratized records of IPHAN during its transition to tourism development. It will also complement Mark Rice’s presentation on Cusco by exploring why Freyre’s “vision” of Brazilian tourism would have been attractive to EMBRATUR, for obvious economic, as well as cultural, reasons.