Trash, a Novel     by José Américo de Almeida, Translated by R.L. Scott-Buccleuch Original title: A Bagaceira Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Publisher Unknown Pub. Place: UK Not available for ordering

First published in 1928, Trash represents a landmark in Brazilian literature, as it was the first truly regionalist Brazilian novel of the type which had already appeared in other parts of Latin America. So great was its impact that the critic Tristão de Athayde declared that its publication divided the twentieth-century Brazilian novel into two groups; those that came before, and those that followed. By breaking new literary ground, Trash opened the way for a crop of influential novels such as Rachel de Queiroz’s O Quinze (1930), José Lins de Rego’s Menino de Engenho (1932), Jorge Amado’s Cacau (1933), and Graciliano Ramos’s São Bernardo (1934), all of which reflected a new-found desire to portray the lives of the inhabitants of Brazil’s largely neglected interior, rather than those of the urban centres of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. With its stylistic innovations, such as the use of typically Brazilian Portuguese, its terse, almost documentary narrative, and its vibrant depiction of the flora and fauna of the sertão (backlands) and the brejo (lowlands), the novel represented a rejection of the often florid literary stylings which preceded it.

Almeida’s tale of thwarted love, revenge, and inter-regional conflict in the northeast may strike the contemporary reader as slightly implausible and sensationalist in tone, yet his stark depiction of the apocalyptic effects of the periodic droughts which plague the region still packs a powerful punch.

Almeida compares the conditions of the refugees from drought with those scratching out a precarious living as workers at the sugar mill owned by a local landowner named Dagoberto. The pitiful plight of these workers is related in graphic detail by the author as he describes the dehumanising conditions within the mill in which they toil, with no legal protection from their exploitative boss. Dagoberto’s death leaves the way clear for his more socially aware son, Lúcio, to take over the mill. Yet despite Lúcio’s determination to modernise the methods of production at the mill and his genuine intentions to care for his workers, he is conscious that by treating them with dignity he has ironically created the conditions for their own eventual emancipation.

It was the exodus from the drought of 1898 — a resurrection from ancient cemeteries of resuscitated skeletons of claylike appearance and stinking of the charnel house. Emaciated ghosts, their shaky, unsteady steps seemed like a dance as they dragged themselves along in the manner of one who is carrying his legs instead of being carried by them. They walked slowly, looking back behind them as if anxious to return. There was no hurry to arrive, for none knew where he was going. Expelled from their paradise by swords of flame, tormented by furies, they wandered aimlessly on, fleeing the sun, their guide in this enforced nomadism.

Wasted to a comical thinness they seemed to be supported by the wind, while from skinny arms their hands hung loosely below their knees.

They carried no bundles. All, except for those sick from eating poisonous plants, had hugely distended bellies. They possessed neither age nor sex nor any distinguishing feature. They were refugees. Nothing more. 14