Uma cultura atrasada: The Luso-Baroque Manezinha, hyper-whiteness, and the modern middle classes in Florianópolis, Brazil

This article examines the views held by white middle-class Brazilians in Florianópolis regarding their working-class neighbors from the Azorean diaspora, known as manezinhos. Manezinhos are looked down upon by the middle classes as backwards and simple-traits that are linked to their supposed traditionality. They are cast as a Luso-Baroque remnant of the colonial era-an embarrassing reminder of Portuguese colonization. Distinguishing themselves as Brazilian against the manezinhos, who are perceived to be an anachronism that has been bypassed in the construction of a racially mixed Brazil, I suggest that the middle classes view them as "hyper-white"-as too European to be truly Brazilian. This is then connected to a gendered analysis of the construction by middle-class women of manezinha women as being victims of their own traditional culture. It is against these women that the middle classes attempt to ameliorate their potentially un-Brazilian whiteness and modernity by constructing a postcolonial Brazilian "modernity".