Editing Red Field (section)

==Background==
Jorge Amado published ''Red Field'' in 1946. In 1945, Brazil had entered a period of “redemocratization” and Amado was elected federal deputy for [[São Paulo]] as a candidate of the Brazilian Communist Party. He had long campaigned for the rights of political prisoners accused of being communists. He wrote ''The ABC of Castro Alves'', a biography of the poet from [[Bahia]], before going into exile in Uruguay and Argentina, where he researched the life of the revolutionary leader [[Luís Carlos Prestes]], which he published in 1942 as ''[[The Knight of Hope]]''.<ref name= "nelson">{{cite web|last1=Pereira dos Santos|first1=Nelson|title=Red Field - Afterword|url=http://www.jorgeamado.com.br/obra.php3?codigo=12597&idioma_new=I|website=JorgeAmado.com|publisher=Companhia das Letras}}</ref> Red Field is dedicated to Prestes and it includes bits of verse by Castro Alves and a quotation from Prestes himself. The novel is highly political, a feature of the early phases of the author's work, but unlike most of his novels, the action does not take place in the city of [[Salvador, Bahia|Salvador]] or in the cocoa growing areas around [[Ilheus]]. The hinterlands of the Northeast of Brazil are the setting for the often bloody disputes between landowners and their workers.

Seara Vermelha was published by Amado in the final year of the Brazil's Estado Novo regime, a regime under the presidency of  Getúlio Vargas. The regime was known for its authoritarian, anti-communist and anti-left wing stance. During the Vargas regime, Brazil underwent agricultural reform and  ́'varguistá' ́ legislation.<ref>LINHARES, Maria Yedda, CARLOS TEIXIRA DA SILVA, Francisco., 1999. Terra Prometida Uma História da Questão Agrária no Brasil.Rio de Janeiro: Editora campus.{{ISBN|85-352-0357-5}} p.125.</ref> The reforms followed the international economic crash of 1929 and the devaluation of coffee exports. The Vargas regime wanted to produce more economic wealth and production from the Brazilian agricultural sectors instead of relying on external help, especially in the south such as Rio Grande Do Sul, and the north such as Paraíba. 
However, the regime  left the north-east (the setting of this novel) relatively untouched by reform  and development due to fear of resistance as it was an established area of support.<ref name="LINHARES 1999, p.129">LINHARES, CARLOS TEIXIRA DA SILVA, 1999, p.129.</ref> The Vargas regime internalised control over the farms and production, essentially moving executive power to the cities, but also resisted to modernise the structure of countryside economy in favor of the large traditional farm estates and wealthy landlords.<ref name="LINHARES 1999, p.129"/>  Especially in north-eastern Brazil, the agricultural reforms seen under Vargas without doubt caused a ́ ́questão agrária´´(agricultural question)  within the academic and political  sphere at the time of the writing and publication of 'Seara Vermelha' ('Red Field') . Especially as the contrast between wealth and quality of life for those in the cities and for those in the countryside became ever more apparent, and the toil and suffering under poverty for the rural worker only continued.

As for the political context of the text, author Jorge Amado wrote it at the time of being the federal deputy of the Communist Party in Brazil.<ref>The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019, Jorge Amado [online], https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jorge-Amado, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc.[Accessed 12/06/2019].</ref>  Furthermore, the text was written during other major the geo-political contexts of the 1930s and 40s, such as; the consequences of the Wall Street crash and  the consequences of the Second World War leading on to the Cold War. These geo-political contexts led to deep political divides between communist and right wing conservatism ideologies, especially in regards to the idea of  a growing capitalism in a new era. These divides and the 'communist versus capitalist' questions were omnipresent within Brazil and its agricultural sector at the time of publication of this book, and were certainly urgent in the mind of Amado.