The son of Francisco Fernandes and Maria Viola Fernandes, Millôr Fernandes was born on August 16, 1923 in Méier, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, with the name Milton Viola Fernandes. He was only registered the following day, so his official birth date is May 27, 1924. His handwritten birth certificate made it look like hi s name was Millôr and not Milton. He had three brothers. His father died when he was two and his mother when he was 11, and he began working at a very young age. In spite of his difficulties, Millôr had a happy childhood alongside 10 uncles, 42 cousins and his Italian grandmother, Concetta de Napole Viola.
When comic strips arrived in Brazil, Millôr became an avid reader of these publications, especially Flash Gordon. With the help of his uncle Antonio Viola, he saw his first work published when he was ten years old, in Rio de Janeiro’s O Jornal. He received 10 thousand réis, the currency of the time, for it. At the age of 15 he began working as an office assistant, page setter and factotum on the magazine O cruzeiro (which, at the time, had only two other employees). At 16, with the pseudonym “Notlim”, he won a short story contest promoted by the magazine A cigarra. For that reason, he was promoted and began working with archives. A short time later, he started writing a regular section on A cigarra, called Poste escrito. He then took on the direction of A cigarra, a role he fulfilled for three years. He also directed O guri, a comic, and Detetive, with crime stories. For six years, from 1938 to 1943, he studied at the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios art school in Rio de Janeiro.
A self-taught man, he did his first literary translation: Dragon seed, a novel by American writer Pearl S. Buck, with the title A estirpe do dragão, in 1942.
In 1943, he returned to the magazine O Cruzeiro, which went from 11 thousand to 750 thousand weekly copies over the following years. His collaboration with the magazine went as high as ten sections a week in 1947.
He made his literary debut in 1946, with the book Eva sem Costela - Um Livro em Defesa do Homem. In 1948, he traveled to the United States, where he met Walt Disney, Vinicius de Moraes, the scientist César Lates and the star Carmen Miranda. He married Wanda Rubino.
He published Tempo e contratempo, with the pseudonym Emmanuel Vão Gôgo, in 1949. He wrote his first film script, Modelo 19. The film, released with the title O amanhã será melhor, won five São Paulo State Governor prizes, including best dialogue (for Millôr).
In 1951 he released the weekly magazine Voga, which had only two issues and, in 1953, his first play, Uma mulher em três atos, opened at the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia, in São Paulo (SP).
The following year, he bought the apartment that would later become famous as “Millôr’s penthouse”, in Ipanema, where the writer lives to this day. His son Ivan was born.
In 1955, he shared first place in the Buenos Aires Caricature Museum International Exhibition with American artist Saul Steinberg. He wrote Do tamanho de um defunto, which opened at Teatro do Bolso (Rio de Janeiro) and which later, adapted by the author himself for the cinema, received the title Ladrão em noite de chuva. That year, Millôr wrote Bonito como um deus, shown at the Teatro Maria Della Costa, in São Paulo (SP) and, also, Pigmaleoa and Um elefante no caos. The latter only opened five years later (1960) in Rio de Janeiro, once the problems with censorship were resolved, and brought him the Municipal Theater Commission prize for Best Author.
In 1959, he was invited by Frederic Chateaubriand to present a series of programs entitled Universidade do Méier, where he drew while making a commentary, on Itacolomi TV, in Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais. Subsequently, the program was transferred to Tupi TV in Rio de Janeiro, with the title Treze lições de um ignorante and suspended by the Juscelino Kubitschek administration, after a criticism of the country’s first lady.
In 1961 he worked for seven days on the newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, being dismissed for writing an article about press corruption. The editors, poet Mário Faustino and the journalist Paulo Francis, also resigned in solidarity.
The following year, in the March 10 issue of O Cruzeiro, he “fired” Vão Gôgo and began to sign as Millôr. The Amstutz & Herder Graphic Press, an important Zurich publication, dedication a page of its yearbook to the author.
From 1964 to 1974, he collaborated weekly on the Portuguese newspaper Diário Popular. In 1964, he launched the magazine Pif-Paf, considered the beginning of the alternative press in Brazil.
He went back to television in 1965, as presenter of the news program Jornal de Vanguarda (Record TV), alongside Luis Jatobá and Sérgio Porto (Stanislaw Ponte Preta). Liberdade, liberdade, a musical written in partnership with Flávio Rangel, opened at Teatro Opinião, in Rio.
The song O homem, composed by Millôr, was sung by Nara Leão at the II Festival of Brazilian Popular Music, in 1966. He set up, in the open air, in Largo do Boticário in Rio de Janeiro, his adaptation of Manuel Antônio de Almeida’s Memórias de um sargento de milícias, using only black actors.
In 1968, he began collaborating with Veja magazine and wrote the text of the concert Momento 68, promoted by the company Rhodia, with Caetano Veloso, Walmor Chagas and Lennie Dale, among others. The following year, he participated in the O Pasquim newspaper.
Over the last 60 years, cartoonist Millôr has been collaborating in the main organs of the Brazilian press. As a columnist, he has published over 40 titles. As a playwright, he wrote hits like Liberdade, Liberdade (in partnership with Flávio Rangel), Computa, computador, computa and É… As a graphic artist, he has had work exhibited in several art galleries in Rio de Janeiro and at the Rio de Janeiro Modern Art Museum – MAM/RJ. He has written scripts for films, television programs, concerts and musicals and is one of the most sought after theater translators in the country. Ironic and controversial, with his texts (aphorisms, epigrams, irony, double entendre and puns) and his drawings, he has chronicled Brazilian customs since the 1940s.
This is a guest post from Charise Johnson, a research associate in the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. The post originally appeared on their website.
Endangered Species Day was introduced as a resolution by Congress in 2006 to encourage “the people of the United States to become educated about, and aware of, threats to species, success stories in species recovery, and the opportunity to promote species conservation worldwide.” This year, Endangered Species Day (May 18) began with a devastating school shooting. It really had me questioning how appropriate it would be to emphasize the importance of wildlife conservation while so many in the world and our nation seem to place little value on human lives. In a time where human rights are being enthusiastically attacked by the Trump administration, however, it has become necessary to think critically about how our nation promotes policies that undermine public protections and the way this affects vulnerable communities. Basically, I realized that there are connections between our wildlife conservation policies…and the social disparities built therein.
Hear me out. The connection is not necessarily obvious at surface level, I understand. Social justice is at the core of environmentalism. Conservation works to ensure the preservation of cultures, heritage, and livelihoods. The spaces we often deign as devoid of “nature” or “environment” are not as readily included in conservation conversations, often at the risk of alienating entire communities and ecosystems. From pristine lands to over-burdened industrial areas, environment is all around us.
I had a conversation with Lia Cheek, fellow woman of color and colleague at the Endangered Species Coalition, to further explore the relationship between endangered species protections and social justice.
Charise: Why do you think the way we view the environment is important for conservation and how is this tied to social justice?
Lia: We look at nature as something to use up. Something that exists to serve our needs. We look at it without emotion, without acknowledgment of the life it holds and its right to existence. Even the words we use to describe it, Nature, natural worlds are inanimate.
Charise: I like how you emphasized the idea of Nature with a big N. When we view it that way, it tends to be exclusionary of underrepresented groups – and that spills over into environmental regulations and even the research questions that are asked. We see this especially with policies and processes that are based solely on economic considerations, with very little regard for both science and community input.
There is also a tendency to forget that “environment” includes built environments, urban areas. Loss of biodiversity affects us all. And we’ve seen the benefits of conservation in urban areas: greater accessibility to green spaces improves mental health and well-being, marked increases in perceived safety, cleaner air to breathe, protection and restoration of terrestrial and aquatic species. The assumption that city-dwellers (especially those who aren’t as socially privileged) do not care about or benefit from species biodiversity in their communities, that they do not notice when the trees are cut down and the birds stop singing, is unfounded. Social justice is the fair treatment of others. We should not put the needs of wildlife above those of humans, rather, we should treat both fairly, and consider more than just our wallets and convenience. It is unjust to distribute resources unfairly, and it is unfair to expect those being treated unjustly to consider conservation their top priority.
Lia: Sure! This is part of the same thread. The way we currently manage wildlife and natural areas feels a lot like colonialism. It’s all about control isn’t it? Controlling the populations of animals that we find inconvenient, like predators, boosting the populations of species that we gain an economic benefit from. That same mindset is built into our other government institutions, which are built around increasing profit and subduing inconveniences, and these goals can often mean stepping all over people’s rights, case and point, the battle at Standing Rock and the keystone pipeline. It’s a very ego and self-driven model that is in the fabric of the way our country is run. The question then becomes, who is this system of benefits really for, and how do we make our institutions expand the circle of who is benefiting from this policy of profit to include folks who have been marginalized.
Lia: The underlying decision to use differences to other a community or another life, rather than a recognition of the similarities is the same. When you “take” an animal without awareness of or respect for its right to existence, without acknowledgment that it has a purpose, a desire, a meaningful existence besides fulfilling your intended use for it. Or without understanding that it experiences moments of joy, the understanding of what family is just like you do. This is the same act of “othering” that creates space for injustice and the violation of human rights when they become inconvenient. The refusal to recognize another life as similar to one’s own is the choice that is at the heart of both colonialism and extinction.
When we think about what it means for a species to go extinct, to cease to exist in any form or feather, memory or song, forever, this knowledge can manifest such a deep sadness in us that we can try to turn away from it to protect ourselves. We push away the instinctual pain we feel that comes with the knowledge that we’ve lost a species to extinction, or the pain and fear we feel when we have to hear about the injustices committed against African Americans by the institutions we are a part of, or the empathy we might feel with immigrant families being torn apart while we stand by and watch. We can choose to close our eyes to the painful and frightening, but when we do this, we are also closing our eyes to the humanity of others, and the connection we have to life on earth. And this is important because we make this choice every day. With when we choose to stand up and speak out about an injustice or sit quietly and watch it play out. When we choose to open that email asking for your help or delete. It’s something about ourselves that we all need to be aware of and watch carefully.
Charise: Yes, beautifully put. I would add that the right to existence is what makes this a justice issue, not just for wildlife, but for people. Through diversity of life, we can exercise our human rights to food, health, and culture. If certain people are not given access to this right, that is unjust. On the flipside, if certain groups are not provided with the basic freedoms afforded others based on race, income, religion, or otherwise, we cannot expect conservation efforts to succeed. We can’t say we’re dedicated to conservation when there are still people being eradicated through the country’s prison pipeline, gun violence, and toxic pollution, with little input on solutions.
Species conservation is necessary for the protection of wildlife, a valuable natural resource. With so many attempts to dismantle science-based environmental regulations, we are putting more than our natural resources at risk. But we can change the narrative of who gets to benefit from “nature.” We can push for more consideration of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in scientific research and policy decisions. Instead of stifling community members or excluding them from discussions outright, we have to listen to and incorporate the problems and solutions they have already identified. Addressing the inherent biases in our institutions from an intersectional perspective is the first step in serving vulnerable communities justly. You can start by joining the conversation. If you’d like to learn more about how our Science Network members engage in their communities around justice-based issues, check out our Science for Justice blog series.