““It is an intriguing paradox that while on the whole Brazil’s cultural economy was increasingly homogenized along the strategies of capitalism, the Northeast would be hailed as one of the country’s most culturally rich and resistant regions. How was it that the Northeast, its society subordinated both politically and economically, its people regularly displaced, managed to “preserve its origins and maintain its cultural traditions”? This was possible precisely because “northeastern culture” was like the Northeast itself a recent invention,””
