An anguished joy”: Álvaro Moreyra’s intellectual engagement through the magazine Diretrizes (1938-1944)

Abstract

During the Estado Novo (1937–1945) regime in Brazil, Samuel Wainer took over the direction of Diretrizes, a magazine in which he implemented, as its editor, a critical journalism guided by nationalism and antifascism. Gradually, it also became a mouthpiece for the struggle for redemocratization in a country that, although fighting alongside the liberal democracies in World War II, was living under a dictatorship. Among the intellectuals who composed the editorial staff, the most regular was the writer and journalist Álvaro Moreyra (1888–1964) — who, in his memoirs, described his experience in the periodical as “an anguished joy,” a reference to the censorship and uncertainties of that harsh period. This article examines the sections signed by Moreyra to demonstrate how he acted as a mediating intellectual through the press, articulating culture and politics in accordance with the combative agenda of Diretrizes.