Zeca, portrait of a vaqueiro (1971)

Directed by: George Sluizer | 19 minutes | documentary

Zeca is a forty-year-old ‘vaqueiro’, a cowboy in the northeast of Brazil. He has seven children and lives on the estate on his boss, an erudite and wealthy man who takes good (enough) care of his employees – as far as we can judge – and who both receives and gives respect. Zeca himself is happy in his daily activities. He doesn’t know much else than his work as a vaqueiro, but he wouldn’t want it any other way, the voice-over suggests.

The short documentary ‘Zeca’ is one of the ‘preliminary studies’, as George Sluizer calls it, for the feature films he was going to make in Brazil, such as ‘João en het knife’ and ‘Het Steen Vlot’. He wanted to find out how a vaqueiro lives, what he does and taste the atmosphere of his daily reality.

This works quite well in ‘Zeca’. Although barely 20 minutes is not enough time for an in-depth portrait, as a viewer you still get a sincere and authentic insight into another culture and a – for us – largely unknown ‘branch of sport’. This isn’t a John Wayne or Sergio Leone western, just the mostly unromantic reality. We see how cows are floored, castrated, branded and skinned, up close and without anaesthetic. Handsome guy who doesn’t have to swallow at least or blink when watching these scenes.

But the voice-over doesn’t judge, and the camera just records. We should not be naive or hypocritical, you might even conclude by the lack of comment – and so the lack of a value judgment is actually another value judgment – this is simply what needs to be done to protect this sector – where one million of the one and a half million inhabitants in the region depend on – to keep it going.

There is also no room for emotion or rebellion. Zeca’s world is one of a clear hierarchy, which everyone accepts – including in his family, where the women (including his daughters) eat in the kitchen, and the boys in the living/dining room (but where only the older boys eat). sit at the table, the rest stands).

As the voice-over concludes: in Zeca’s world, everyone knows their own place; for Zeca that is the saddle of his horse. The latter also seems to be true, not just out of necessity, by the way. Zeca doesn’t seem to want anything else either. For example, taming young horses with his mates — on his master’s estate (where he also lives) — seems to give him more satisfaction than a trip to the city.

Whether this is because Zeca doesn’t really know what’s going on outside his borders, doesn’t want to know, or really doesn’t want anything else, is hard to say, and somehow this is also redundant information (and probably also a sign of Western condescension). Zeca is in place and happy as a vaqueiro. We don’t need to know more.

In any case, ‘Zeca’ offers a short, but indeed fascinating portrait of an interesting individual and a lifestyle unknown to us.