Summary Of Auto And Progress By Joel Wolfe

The idea of what makes a nation or region modern changes depending on time, place, and whom is being asked. Despite these difficulties that surround defining, and applying modernity to time and place, Joel Wolfe, professor of Latin American history at the University of Massachusetts, explored these ideas in his book concerning twentieth century Brazil. His work, Autos and Progress: The Brazilian Search for Modernity, published in 2010, examines how the Brazilian idea of modernity during the twentieth century was directly associated with the development, and advancement of, the domestic automobile industry. Autos and Progress serves as a unique exploration of twentieth century Brazil through the lens of their developing auto industry. Through
Originating in the fifteenth century, the establishment of Portuguese settlements along the Atlantic Coast and the settler’s inability to traverse the rugged terrain inland, resulted in the foundation of a nation that, by 1900, was inherently partial to its east coast. These settlement Wolfe concludes, when coupled with the absence of a dependable mode of communication between distant areas, culminated to result in a nation that was not a unified Brazilian nation, but, in the words of a national media outlet, made up of “two Brazils” (139). Wolfe supports this claim of a divided Brazilian nation, and elaborates further, declaring that the first two decades of the twentieth century in Brazil were dominated by “political rivalries among its states…economic splintering along regional lines,” in addition to “cultural and social divisions between the coastal Europeanized cities and the distant sertões…” or interior, Wolfe offers a grim image of what Brazil was prior to the development of their auto industry
His work is not intended as a standalone study of the development of modernity in twentieth century Brazil. He makes this tremendously clear when, through the nearly two hundred page work, he references race so little it is easy to forget he is writing about Brazil. Although Wolfe acknowledges the absence of non-Caucasian and non-European specifics in his book it is still difficult to overlook. With approximately fifty percent of Brazil’s population comprised of peoples of African descent, it being the last nation to end slavery in the Western Hemisphere, and the arrival of the first automobile in country only three years after the last slaves were set free, the absence of race in this study surrounding modernity and automobiles leaves some crucial aspects unsatisfyingly examined considering the text is concerned with the unification and development of economically and culturally diverse nation (13). Although it is possible that there were budget shortages or issues with publishing agencies that lead to this shortfall, the fact that African, black, native, Indian, indigenous, or any term for that matter, which refers specifically to a group of peoples of non-European descent cannot be found anywhere in the index is quite damaging to that theory. Interestingly enough, Wolfe does find time to discuss the