“Your Dad Helped Build This Airport”: Brazil’s 20th Century in One Family’s Eyes
In an internationally hailed new book, a sociologist traces Brazil’s tumultuous development through his trucker father’s life story.
This article is adapted from AQ's special report on the 2024 U.S. presidential election and its impact on Latin America “Remember, your dad helped build this airport so you could fly,” a long-distance trucker tells his son, who’s leaving for the United States to pursue a doctoral degree. Father and son share a name: José Bortoluci. But the father goes more often by his nicknames: Didi when he’s home, and Jaú, the name of his hometown, when he’s on the road. The son, a sociology professor in his late 30s, is now a public figure in Brazil—and in What Is Mine, a hybrid of oral...
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