I WANT YOU BLACK, BLACK FEIJOADA

Abstract

Favorite and daily dish for Brazilians of all social classes, feijoadahas become a popular, artistic and political jargon. Feijoada usedto mean mixture, confusion, uneducated mob, the day-to-day,old habits, simpler and less sophisticated things. It could havealso a sexual meaning – in this case, “to eat feijoada” could mean“to have sexual intercourse.” Although so popular, feijoada wasaccused of being indigestible and harmful to health, and wasproscribed by hygienist ideas of the second half of the 19thcentury as a facilitator of yellow fever and cholera morbus.However, from the last two decades of this same century, thespread of new microbial ideas and the discovery of yellow fevertransmission by the mosquito have cooled the population’s fearagainst the disease; and the yellow fever eradication in Rio deJaneiro, beginning in 1907, definitely rehabilitated the feijoada.Indeed, in 1900, one of the largest and most popular carnivalsocieties of Rio de Janeiro, the Democráticos, reflecting the climateof revaluation of all that was Brazilian, introduced the “fullfeijoada” in their menu of pre-carnival festivities, and replacedchampagne with cachaça. This “nationalist” initiative, whichtranslated by the use of typical Brazilian dishes and drinks,became a trend and was, thereafter, copied by other carnivalsocieties and sports clubs in their regular banquets. Finally, in1911, at a lunch offered to the 8th Brazilian President of theRepublic, Hermes da Fonseca, the main dishes were barbecueand feijoada. Since then, the ideological “national feijoada” wasimposed in Rio de Janeiro as the mandatory dish of all festivities.

DOI: 10.12957/demetra.2015.16028