The professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at New York University (NYU) Barbara Weinstein was born in the USA in 1952, in the typical working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn. The youngest of three sisters—her father was a salesman and her mother an electrocardiogram technician—she was awarded a full scholarship in 1969 to study at Princeton University, one of the most elitist and traditional universities in the country. Weinstein was part of the first group of women, made up of 175 names, to enroll in the institution. At that time, there were more than 3,000 male students and she actually heard one professor say that the presence of women could distract the attention of the students.
During the research for her PhD, when studies about the rubber cycle in the Amazon were centered on the relationships of dependence that Brazil kept with foreign powers, Weinstein moved to Belém, Pará State. It was 1977 and she was 25 years old. She researched historical archives to try to understand the role played by the regional elites and by the rubber tappers in this commercial dynamic. Her thesis was guided by Brazilian historian Emília Viotti da Costa (1928–2017), an expert on slavery and the nineteenth century who became a professor at Yale University (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 262) after receiving compulsory retirement from the University of São Paulo (USP) by the military dictatorship (1964–1985).
Weinstein, who also researched labor movements, was the first specialist in the history of Brazil to preside over the American History Association (AHA), the oldest association in the USA to join together professional historians. Armed with a radiant smile, while passing through São Paulo on her way to a congress in Bolivia, she spent an afternoon speaking in Portuguese with Pesquisa FAPESP, in the lobby of a hotel in the Pinheiros neighborhood.
Specialty
History of Latin America
Institution
New York University
Education
Undergraduate degree in history at Princeton University (1969–1973), master’s degree (1973–1976) and PhD (1976–1980) in history at Yale University
Let’s talk about your childhood?
I was born and raised in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, together with my parents and two sisters. I am the descendant of a family that left a region that is today between Russia and Ukraine and immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century. My father was born in Boston and my mother in Brooklyn. They were raised in typical working-class immigrant neighborhoods. During my childhood, nobody could imagine that I would earn a living as a historian specialized in Brazil. In the middle of the 1950s, if you were a good student, as was my case, you became a secondary school teacher and, maybe, with a lot of luck, a doctor or a lawyer. Being a historian was something very distant from my reality and from the world in which I was brought up. My parents and neighbors valued culture and education, but at the same time they didn’t have a lot of money and stressed the need for youngsters to engage in pragmatic professions, that would ensure their livelihood. And being a Brazilianist didn’t exactly fit into their expectation.
Did you already enjoy humanities at school?
Yes. I was always an enthusiastic reader and was more interested in languages, humanities, and social sciences. I remember feeling that classic anxiety because I didn’t know math very well. I studied in the public system until I entered university in 1969. My parents didn’t have money to cover the costs of a private university. With a few exceptions, the most prestigious universities at the time were private. Encouraged by a school teacher, I decided to study in order to get a scholarship to enter a private institution, which, in my case, was Princeton. Leaving public school and a modest neighborhood, as Brooklyn was at that time, for the bastion of the American elite was a dramatic and, sometimes, traumatic transition. When I did primary education, the public schools in New York were very good. But obviously, I didn’t have the education that many people at Princeton had had in elite schools. On top of that, I am part of the first group of women to enter that university.
When the first class of women entered Princeton, a professor said that we could be a distraction for the men
How was your arrival in Princeton?
I entered the university to study medicine, due to family pressure. But, after one semester, I realized that profession was not for me and asked to be transferred to the history course. I liked politics and was very engaged in the movement against the Vietnam War [1959–1975]. I ended up getting involved with the history of what we used to call, at that time, “third-world” countries. In my sophomore year as an undergraduate, I took a subject about the Cuban Revolution [1953–1959]. I wrote a study about the role of women in this movement and in the post-revolution years. I remember that my professor really liked the text and asked me: “Have you thought about doing a postgraduation in history?” I was raised in a family and in a neighborhood where nobody was a university professor and I barely knew what doing a master’s degree meant. But the professor’s comment caught my attention and I began to think about the possibility of pursuing an academic career. Changing to an undergraduate degree in history represented both a political commitment and a personal choice, besides opening doors for me. Between the third and the final undergraduate year, I won a grant to do research in Uruguay during the summer of 1972. It was my first trip abroad. I arrived in the country in the middle of a declared state of civil war between the military and Tupamaro guerrillas. The experience resulted in my final undergraduate paper, in which I researched the roots of the collapse of Uruguayan democracy at that moment.
When was the first time that you heard Brazil mentioned?
I don’t remember thinking about the country during my childhood. Intellectually, my first contact was as an undergraduate, when I did a study about slavery to compare the context of different countries. I read, in English, the book The Masters and the Slaves, by Gilberto Freyre [1900–1987], and other works by Brazilian authors. In summary, I began to become interested in Brazil motivated by issues involving slavery and racism. I used to hear that the country was a racial democracy, but soon suspected that the story was more complicated. Looking back in retrospect, I realize that the first time that I thought about Brazil as a possible research topic was as an undergraduate. My view of the country was still vague, but I started taking Portuguese courses. It was rare that universities in the USA offered courses in this language at that time, but they were available at Princeton. I also started to become interested in labor movements, especially after reading the book The Making of the English Working Class by British historian Edward Palmer Thompson [1924–1993] [published in Brazil by the publishing company Paz e Terra, in 2001].
When you began as an undergraduate in history, you were one of few women in the class. How was that experience?
It was crazy. In 1969, Princeton decided to admit women into the student body, but at the same time did not want to reduce the number of men. So, there was not space for many female students at the university, considering its infrastructure and teaching staff limits. I also remember that there were few people of African or Latin ancestry. It was, essentially, a university of white men. Recently, I was at the institution for an event to celebrate 50 years of the first group of female graduates. At this meeting, I realized the importance that my generation had had for the younger women, for those women that came after us.
How did the professors and students react to the novelty?
Attitudes were varied. Among the students, a lot of young guys were happy because they could finally study with girls in the classroom, while others were unable to adapt to this new, more diverse reality. I’ll always remember one chemistry teacher who, right at the start of the first semester, said that he accepted the presence of women in the university but thought they would be a distraction for the men. Speaking of a much more serious case, a classmate from our class recently reported that she was raped by a student from the same class while at university. After this announcement, other female classmates reported having had the same experience with the same guy. They are women from rich and well-known families who maybe hadn’t reported it before because they felt guilty or ashamed. At that time, thinking about rape as a crime practiced by someone close to your circle of acquaintances was something almost unimaginable.
How would you evaluate the presence of female teaching staff in universities in the USA today?
We are evolving. In my department, for example, almost half of the professors are women. But the majority of the faculty is still made up of white people.
The São Paulo identity was created linked to the idea of a modern Brazil that supported progress and was related to whiteness
And when did Brazil come into your research scope?
In 1973, I enrolled at Yale University to do postgraduation. I had hoped to be advised by historian Richard Morse [1922–2001], considered the most important Brazilianist in the USA at that time. However, he had taken two years leave to run the Ford Foundation, in Rio de Janeiro. Purely by coincidence, in 1973, historian Emília Viotti da Costa arrived at Yale after having been compulsorily retired from USP by the military regime. She marked an era. Almost all of the professors from the History Department at Yale were men. Emília had an air of confidence and, to some extent, even arrogance about her. I think she adopted this posture as a strategy to face this US academic world that was so male-dominated.
Did she agree to advise your research?
Yes. When Emília arrived at Yale, four or five students, including me, were starting postgraduate projects about Latin America, but none were about Brazil. She ended up drawing the attention of the students to Brazilian history. I studied the subjects from the master’s degree and entered straight onto the PhD course. In the USA, when you enter a PhD course, you don’t have to have a clear thesis proposal. Obviously, it is necessary to have an idea of what you intend to study, of the area of interest, but not a formulated project. In principle, I intended to study Argentina, but Emília ended up convincing me to work with Brazil.
What did you study on the PhD program?
The rubber cycle in the North region of Brazil between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The story of how I became interested in the topic is funny, because my initial idea for my thesis was to study the working class of São Paulo. But US historian Michael G. Hall, who was the main professor of labor history in the University of Campinas [UNICAMP] at the time, told me that he knew a Brazilian who was researching the topic for his PhD. Of course, Michael’s reason for telling me that was to encourage me to get in touch with the other researcher and exchange ideas, but at the time I understood that I should seek a different subject to study. Furthermore, I was worried about the possibility of appearing like a North American invading the intellectual space of a Brazilian. So, I went to speak to Emília, who told me the obvious: that there was space for many theses about the formation of the working class in São Paulo. But she took advantage of this moment of indecision and gave me the following advice: “Since you feel worried about it, why don’t you study the rubber cycle in the Amazon?” In the 1970s, Brazilian institutions were already training historians with master’s degrees and PhDs, but the majority of the research was concentrated on São Paulo, and on Rio de Janeiro. Despite many people investigating the Amazon region, few researchers were doing historical studies. My only doubt was whether I would be able to support the heat of the Amazon. After all, my only experience in Latin America had been in Montevideo, where the temperature is more tolerable for someone not used to the climate of a tropical forest.
But you ended up coming.
In the end, I decided to work with the topic suggested by Emília and spent around 10 months in the region, mainly in Belém. This occurred between 1977 and 1978, when I was 25 years old, after living in Rio de Janeiro for seven months doing research on historical archives. I was a girl. I adapted with time and, even with the heat and the rain, I liked Belém immediately. I saw that the archives, including the old registry offices, had sufficient documentation so that I could carry out the research. The initial idea was to study the deterioration of the rubber cycle, but I soon realized that studies about the expansion of this business done based on historical archives were scarce. So it didn’t make sense to focus on the collapse without previously understanding the process of expansion.
How was the rubber cycle usually analyzed at the time and what did your thesis bring to the table that was new about this subject?
The thesis, which gave rise to the book The Amazon Rubber Boom, 1850–1920 [published in Brazil by the publishing company Hucitec, in 1993], begins its analysis in 1850, when the cycle of the product already dominated certain areas of the Amazon, especially in the province of Pará. Other studies that had looked at the issue began their investigations in 1880 or 1890, so my research works with a period before, when the production and exchange relationships were more fluid. Besides that, the rubber cycle had been analyzed until then from the perspective of dependency theorists. One characteristic of this type of interpretation is that it places so-called “first world” countries in the leading role of the global economy, as if the “third world” were a blank slate, without any interference or influence on business and other processes. This seemed completely wrong to me in the case of Brazil, which was not a simple puppet in the hands of the English, North Americans, or French. This approach is also complicated by not giving voice to the workers, and free and enslaved men. Of course, I recognized the strong influence of the foreign presence in certain areas of the rubber economy, but, at the same time, it seemed necessary to consider the action of regional elites and the rubber tappers themselves throughout the process. In my study, I didn’t want to deny the arguments of the dependency school of thought, rather expand and make this perspective more complex, showing that it is not possible to explain what happened in the Amazon by looking only at the foreign presence.
Postcolonial studies have brought the most radical changes in the area of history since I have worked in this field of knowledge
What was the role of the workers in this dynamic?
Not all the rubber tappers were enslaved, as was thought. Many had autonomy and considered themselves the owners of the rubber they produced. Obviously, they were part of a business network that limited what they could and could not do. But there was a constant migration of rubber tappers who moved from rubber production regions that became increasingly exhausted to new areas. I remember that Emília reacted somewhat negatively when reading the first version of the initial chapter of my thesis. She thought that I was overemphasizing the mobility and autonomy of the rubber tappers and forgetting to highlight the oppression and exploitation that they suffered. To some extent, she had a point. I didn’t completely reject her criticism, but insisted that I needed to build the arguments in accordance with my findings. She ended up agreeing with me.
What did you research next?
I went from the rubber cycle in the Amazon to the industrialists and workers of São Paulo between the years 1920 and 1964. It may seem like a drastic change, but in both cases I was seeking to understand the leading role of workers in different economic systems. In this research that I did at the start of the 1990s, I investigate the participation of Brazilian workers and industrialists in international debates during the industrial development of Brazil. I also analyze the programs designed by businesspeople in order to reform the working class. An interesting point is that both discussed the technological advances and changes that took place in England, the USA, and the Soviet Union, in the mid-1930s, for example. The results of the research are gathered in my second book, (Re)formação da classe trabalhadora no Brasil (1920–1964 [(Re)formation of the working class in Brazil (1920–1964); Cortez, 2000]. In the book, I question the argument, common at that time, that Brazil did not develop because the national businesspeople didn’t have a modern enough vision.
Is your book The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil [EDUSP, 2022] an expansion of this study?
When I completed the research that I mentioned before, about the industrialists and workers in São Paulo, I was unhappy because I had not been able to look deeply into the issue of race in the context of the industrialization of São Paulo. I covered class and gender, but the issue of race was missing. As I was unable to redo the study, I decided to dedicate myself to the topic in my next work, which resulted in the book in question. In this work, I analyze documents and news from periodicals about the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 and the IV Centenary of the city of São Paulo, celebrated in 1954. I noticed that the construction of the São Paulo identity was related not only to the idea of a modern Brazil that supported progress, but it also seemed to be linked to whiteness.
What are the impacts of postcolonial studies on historical research?
They are wide ranging and deep and they oblige us to rethink many questions. For example, despite my criticisms of dependency theory, it was very difficult in my PhD to distance myself from the idea that there are developed countries and underdeveloped nations, which, inevitably, evokes concepts of advancement and delay. Today, postcolonial studies demand that we leave aside notions of success and failure, and abandon discourses that maintain that certain societies do not move forward because they have more defects than the so-called successful ones. Furthermore, postcolonialism obliges us to think about the importance of diversity. It is not just about criticizing imperialist countries, but valuing the societies—such as, for example, Indigenous peoples—who were previously seen as an “object.” I believe that is the most radical change that has occurred in the area of history since I have worked in this field of knowledge.
I have faced questions about my right to study and speak about Brazil on a number of occasions
Have you ever been criticized for being a white American researcher studying Brazil, a country in the Global South?
I have faced questions about my right to study and speak about Brazil on a number of occasions. My book that covers the rubber cycle took 10 years to be published in Brazil. In it, I included a small preface, in which I wrote that few people had worked with the history of the Amazon in those 10 years and that not a single study had changed the conclusions of my research. Mind you, I didn’t say that there hadn’t been a historiography before my book, I was only covering the last 10 years. A historian from Pará began saying that I was disrespecting Brazilian works that had already researched the rubber cycle. She cited names of people who, supposedly, were not mentioned in my study, giving economist Roberto Araújo de Oliveira Santos [1932–2012] as an example. However, I mentioned Roberto Santos at least 25 times, which proves that she had not read the book, but had taken the opportunity to make a nationalist statement. In any case, those that come from abroad to study a particular country have to be prepared for this type of situation. But it is a small price to pay. I feel that I am very welcome in Brazil, although at the same time I know that I am not free from criticism.
What changes do you see with regard to the profile of Brazilianists?
The idea of a Brazilianist as being a foreign researcher, such as US historian Thomas Elliott Skidmore [1932–2016], has changed and, possibly, ended. Today, the circulation of people around the world is greater and more complex than in the past. Many of those who lecture the history of Brazil in the USA have Latin ancestry and some of them are Brazilian. There are also people who have lived in several other countries and have a transnational view of history.
How is your family dynamic when you have to travel for work for a long time?
I’m going to talk about a topic that I don’t usually address in academic contexts. I have a son with autism, who is now 35 years old. Since the 1990s, when he was diagnosed, my life has changed radically. Before discovering my son’s autism, I would spend months or even a year in Brazil researching, but since then I cannot spend more than five weeks away. He is more and more independent, today he can even live alone, but it is very difficult for me to be far from him. I cannot take him with me to the field, because I don’t have the necessary infrastructure, and he would also lose his place on educational and social programs that he attends. I have another daughter, who lives with me. My husband is a sociologist, he has been retired for many years, but continues publishing his studies. He has supported my research in many ways.
What are you working on at the moment?
For the first time, I am researching something not exclusively linked to Brazil: the biography of historian Frank Tannenbaum [1893–1969]. I have been investigating his career in around 100 boxes of documents that are in the archive of Columbia University, in New York. Tannenbaum was an anarchist and spent a year in prison because of his activism. Afterwards, he became a journalist and professor of Latin American history at Columbia. His work is vast and his life is very interesting. He was a friend of Gilberto Freyre and close to the Mexican president Lázaro Cárdenas [1895–1970]. But his biography highlights the challenges of a transnational life. Frank got married in his early twenties and had two children. He moved from the USA to Mexico to do his PhD and began living apart from his wife, who ended up asking for a divorce. This happened at the end of the 1920s. While researching, I was shocked to discover that he relinquished his paternity rights and his children were adopted by his ex-wife’s new husband. And, as far as I know, he never had contact with them again.
What research gaps do you see in history today?
It’s not exactly a gap, but I think many history students at the start of their careers today are working with an excessive division between the oppressed and the oppressors. This propensity brings a certain naivety in its interpretation of the world and an exaggerated concern about being politically correct. On my course about the history and culture of Brazil, for example, when I mention that people of African ancestry, after they were freed, bought slaves, I notice that the students become very distressed. Suddenly, the line between the oppressed and the oppressor becomes a little less clear. For me, one of the main objectives of historical research is precisely to unravel and understand the unexpected, and suspend, at least briefly, our tendency to judge. Certainly, in 100 years’ time, many will look at us, at something that we do or tolerate today and say: “How could they act like that?” It is up to the historian to have some humility when judging the exploits of people in the past.
