Sick Jeca in Problema Vital: Monteiro Lobato and the hygienists of São Paulo in 1918

Abstract

In this paper, I deal with the relationship between Monteiro Lobato and the Brazilian Hygienist-Sanitarian movement, as well as the consequent change in the author’s definition of the poor country man. This relationship led him to publish several papers supporting the sanitary campaign, finally resulting in the collection of these articles under the title Problema Vital,which appeared in 1918, and whose publication was financed by the Eugenic Society of São Paulo. Starting with Problema Vital, Jeca Tatu ceased playing the role of the emblematic figure he appeared as in Urupês (1918), becoming instead the result of endless tropical diseases that could be remedied by hygienic practices. From thence, Lobatian literature abandons the literary realism characteristic of its first stories, and adopts sanitary scientism, of which the author became a sort of propagandist.