Gender and the Semiotics of Political Visibility in the Brazilian Northeast

Brazilian regionalist literature and popular narratives since colonial times have too often depicted the semi-arid environment as being too harsh for femininity. Women have been constructed with masculine traits, as is the case for a myriad of fictional characters and real historical figures. Perhaps the most prominent cases are Maria Bonita, wife and member of the band of Lampião, the most famous criminal of the Brazilian semi-arid at the beginning of the 20 century; and Luzia-Homem, a character from the novel by Domingos Olímpio (1903) depicted as muscular and with a hairy body, which caused local men to say that “[she] doesn’t even look like a female woman” (Ibid.: 12). And there is the case of women who engaged in activities reserved to men, like Guimarães Rosa’s fictional character Diadorin (1956), or in real life such as Antônia Alves Feitosa, both of whom had their hair cut and dressed in men’s clothing trying to pass as vaqueiros (cowboys) or as combatant males (Duarte 2003).