Adolfo Ferreira Caminha
(1867 - 1897) Brazil
Writer, naval officer
Novelist, journalist and literary critic, born in Ceará in northern Brazil, Caminha studied aththe Navy School in Rio de Janeiro and then began a career as a naval officer, including a training voyage to the Caribbean and United States in 1886.
Apart from some Jouvenile works, Caminha published three novels, a travel book about the United States and a collection of literary reviews and criticism. He is best known as the author of Bom-Crioulo (Good Darkie, 1895), the first major Latin American literary work to have male homosexuality as its explicit central theme, which appeared in the same year as the Oscar Wilde trial. It is also one of the eraliest Brzilian novels to have a pure black as its hero, although Caminha was white.
It seems unlikely that Caminha was homosexual, given the obvious strength of his committment to Isabel, but the social ostracis he endured, coupled with his rebellious and combative temperament, appears to have made him sympathetic towards trasgressive sexual relationships. Caminha may also have witnessed hmosexual relationships in his time as a naval officer.
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