Henrique de Souza Filho (Ribeirão das Neves MG 1944 - Rio de Janeiro RJ 1988)
Cartoonist, journalist and writer.
He grew up in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Influenced by his older brother, Herbert de Souza, known as Betinho (1935 - 1997), he became interested in political activism. He joined the Juventude Estudantil Católica - JEC [Catholic Student Youth] and the União Municipal dos Estudantes Secundaristas - Umes [Municipal Union of Secondary Students]. Accompanying his brother, he frequented the student union of the Faculdade de Ciências Econômicas. Besides caricatures of student leaders, he made illustrations for banners, posters, leaflets and newspapers for the student union's campaigns. He published his first drawings in Resmungo, JEC's mimeographed newspaper. He began studying sociology at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - UFMG, but dropped out after two months. In 1962, he joined the magazine Alterosa as a proofreader, but soon became a cartoonist at the invitation of the magazine's editor, the writer Roberto Drummond, who coined the name Henfil. In 1965, he drew political caricatures for Diário de Minas. In 1967, he was living in Rio de Janeiro, where he drew sports cartoons for Jornal dos Sports and contributed to the magazines Visão, Realidade, Placar and O Cruzeiro. From 1969, he drew for the weekly Pasquim and for Jornal do Brasil. His cartoons and editorial cartoons satirize institutions and customs and criticize politics. His best-known characters are Os Fradinhos [The Little Friars], Capitão Zeferino, Graúna, Bode Orellana and Ubaldo, o Paranoico [Ubaldo, the Paranoid]. In the late 1970s, he joined the struggle to end the military regime, for Amnesty and for Diretas-Já [Direct Elections Now]. He took part in founding the Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT [Workers' Party], for which he produced cartoons and drawings for posters, T-shirts, buttons and other items. A hemophiliac, he died in 1988 of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion.
Critical Commentary
With biting humor and calligraphic drawing, Henfil stands out as one of the most active figures in the resistance to the military regime. From his hands came legendary characters such as the friars Baixim and Cumprido, the bird Graúna, the goat Orellana, Capitão Zeferino and Ubaldo, o Paranoico, who changed the history of Brazilian comics not so much through formal innovation - although his nervous, spontaneous line is striking - as through the use of this specific graphic language as the best vehicle for criticism and social commitment.
Self-taught, in 1964 Henfil worked as a cartoonist for the magazine Alterosa, in Belo Horizonte, where he created the characters that years later would bring him national recognition: the fradinhos [little friars]. In 1965, he began drawing political caricatures for Diário de Minas. After a failed attempt to work in São Paulo, Henfil was taken by Jofre Rodrigues to Rio de Janeiro to draw for Jornal dos Sports, also contributing to the magazines Visão, Realidade, Placar and O Cruzeiro. In 1969, he launched the fradinhos in the humor weekly O Pasquim. Well-behaved and naive at first, the characters only took off around issue 8, when Henfil began coloring his stories with a high voltage of sadism. As the author notes in an interview, the moralistic and racist Rio cultural milieu of the time helped give the fradinhos strips their new tone. Baixim's cruelty, aggressiveness and black humor were matched by Cumprido's brotherliness, naivety and repressed character. With his "Top! Top!" gesture, the friar Baixim became a national craze. But the violence of Henfil's strips did not escape the censors, who imposed cuts. Later, the characters would be immortalized in the Revista do Fradim, edited by Henfil.
Henfil worked as a cartoonist for the union press in the late 1970s. He was one of the founders of the Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT in 1980. Besides being a cartoonist and political activist, he stood out as a writer, journalist, playwright and filmmaker. His work offers a critical, lucid and humorous portrait of Brazil's political and social reality in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972, as a contributor to Jornal do Brasil, Henfil created Zeferino and his friends from the caatinga, Graúna and Orellana. These characters represent a qualitative leap in Brazilian graphic humor by using allegory as the main weapon of resistance to power. They also show a maturing in relation to Baixim's visceral character, as Henfil said: "The fradinhos are neurotic, passionate, scoundrels because they are from the city. And there is no salvation for the city. Zeferino is more social, he is from the caatinga." The Capitão Zeferino strips often bitingly present the contradictions between the capitalist modernization of the "sul maravilha" [marvelous south] and the cultural and social reality of the "caatinga"; a contradiction that can also be observed within that modernization itself.
From 1977 to 1980, Henfil was a columnist and cartoonist for the magazine Istoé, writing his legendary Cartas da Mãe [Letters to Mother], later collected in a book (1986). Addressed to his mother, the letters comment on the most important issues of the moment, using the playful device of the intimacy and freedom of the mother-son relationship to talk about the most pressing matters. In doing so, Henfil ended up "testing" the very process of political opening under way in Brazil. These letters are documents of an era, mentioning the exile of his brother Herbert de Souza, Betinho (1935 - 1997), and other comrades, the workers' strikes in the ABC region, the emergence of Lula as a union leader, the campaign for amnesty, the movement to create a new party, etc.
Settled in São Paulo in the late 1970s, Henfil played an important role as a comics artist for unions and workers' associations at Oboré Editorial, together with Angeli (1956), Glauco, Laerte and others. In 1978, he wrote the play Revista do Henfil with Oswaldo Mendes, at the invitation of Ruth Escobar (1936 - 2017), who produced the show. He wrote and directed the film Tanga - Deu no New York Times (1986), in which he also acted, and created the segment TV Homem for TV Mulher, a Rede Globo program. His published books include Henfil na China (antes da coca-cola) [Henfil in China (Before Coca-Cola)] (1980); Diário de um Cucaracha [Diary of a Cucaracha] (1983); Diretas Já (1984); Fradim da Libertação (1984); Como Se Faz Humor Político [How Political Humor Is Made] (1984); and Cartas da Mãe (1986). The political and social insight of Henfil's satires allows his characters to transcend the historical moment of their creation, keeping them relevant to this day.
A hemophiliac, Henfil died of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion, sadly becoming a symbol of another struggle, like his brother Betinho.
Critiques
"No, there was no need to compare him to Da Vinci; Henfil's drawing could not be compared in quality with Millôr's, Ziraldo's or Jaguar's. Henfil knew this very well; he himself said in his letters that drawing was only a vehicle for his ideas, and humor itself was a path toward the struggle he was waging. The strangest thing is that the drawing communicated, and the humor... ah, it was genuine, formula-free, theatrical, with high-level information that could be understood by readers of little education. He didn't need drawing to amuse people; I saw him on 'TV Mulher', simply talking, messing up the set, causing an uproar with nothing but his ideas and his true genius. I missed him a lot when his Globo program ended, and I wrote about it at the time; I imagine he would have said to me what he said to his friend Zé Barbosa: 'Fighting for Freedom is necessary. Reading Zeferino is not necessary.'"
Norma Pereira Rego
REGO, Norma Pereira. Henfil. In:______. Pasquim: gargalhantes pelejas. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 1996. (Arenas do rio, 6). p. 120-121.
"His drawing, similar in line and aggressiveness to that of the Frenchman Reiser, is succinct and brilliant, and his output, though large, maintains constant quality and vigor. His first characters to become nationally famous were the fradinhos (later known as Fradim). Fradim's cruelty and boundless violence expressed revolt against the censorship and repression promoted by the military regime, which found in Henfil one of its most extreme opponents."
Pedro Corrêa do Lago
LAGO, Pedro Corrêa do. Henfil. In: ______. Caricaturistas brasileiros: 1836-1999. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante Artes, 1999. p. 180.
"Fradim already stretches all the limits of prohibited or forbidden behavior, picking his nose, picking food from his teeth or striking lewd poses. (...) he looks at the reader of the page and explicitly makes him an accomplice. (...) In the Fradim strips, even the devil himself appears, indignant at having been included in a phrase Churchill once said about Hitler. Henfil is not content to expose only and exclusively the wounds of the earth; he also aims to stir up heaven itself, casting his two friars into a completely contingent, gratuitous universe, utterly devoid of purpose and of grace. Divine grace, that is!"
Elias Thomé Saliba
MATTAR, Denise (org.). Traço, Humor & Cia. São Paulo: FAAP, 2003. p.176-178.
Group Exhibitions
1981 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Pablo, Pablo!: uma interpretação brasileira de Guernica [Pablo, Pablo!: A Brazilian Interpretation of Guernica], at Funarte
1982 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Universo do Futebol [Universe of Football], at MAM/RJ
1985 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Velha Mania: desenho brasileiro [Old Habit: Brazilian Drawing], at EAV/Parque Lage
Posthumous Exhibitions
2001 - São Paulo SP - Caricaturistas Brasileiros [Brazilian Caricaturists], at Instituto Cine Cultural
2003 - São Paulo SP - Traço, Humor e Cia [Line, Humor & Co.], at MAB/Faap
2005 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Henfil do Brasil [Henfil of Brazil], at CCBB
Source: Itaú Cultural
