I think all people, at least once, get lost in thoughts trying to imagine how it would be the future. How will the world in 20, 100 or 400 years? What will happen to this planet or to humanity?

To be honest, although I find that kind of thing a waste of time, I just can’t resist. This is in fact a kind of mental masturbation. It leads us to nowhere and often makes us lose our time with preposterous ideas that may never be realized. Of course I’m not saying that we shouldn’t imagine the future, because it would be living in a constant state of absolute nihilism. I’m just saying that let our minds go madly through is something that removes us from reality, a kind of self-alienation.

I must confess when I’m alone or after smoking something “funny”, I start to masturbate myself mentally (in my case is sociological masturbation!) And the more crazy things invade my mind: I see the return of Nazism, democracy is doomed to failure, new forms of totalitarian regimes will emerge soon, a new world war is approaching, and so on. Believe me, these are not my more pessimistic or gloomy thoughts!

However, I am not here to write about my perverse fantasies, but on a book by a major Brazilian writer, Monteiro Lobato.

Lobato was an important writer at the beginning of the twentieth century, he is classified as “pre-modernist.” But what is a pre-modernist? As its name suggests, is a mixture of styles: we can say that he used a typical language of the nineteenth century, the Naturalism, to write about subjects that reflected on the modernity of the Brazilian top of the last century. I have written before about another pre-modernist writer, poet Augusto dos Anjos.

To be more specific, I am here to write about a book written over 82 years ago. “The Black President” (also known as “Clash of Races”) was the only novel by Monteiro Lobato directed to adults, and it’s interesting to note that is a science fiction work, something rare in Brazilian literature. Basically, in this book Lobato anticipates globalization, Internet, economic growth in China and more surprising: the candidacy of a black president for the U.S. presidency in 2228.

According to the book, the political momentum that it would allow the candidacy of a black president would be a division of the white race between a candidate of the Men’s Party (Kerlog) and a candidate of the Women’s Party (Evelyn Astor). If you want to know what happen in the book, I suggest you to read it because it’s a fascinating and horrible story.

Interesting “prediction”, isn’t it?

Moreover, Lobato foresaw in this book the work at distance, that would make many people work at home and send to the companies the service ready by electronic media, electronic newspapers with news in real time; quick elections and votes sent by the distance. Monteiro Lobato also imagined another interesting situation: Brazil would be divided, the southern region with Argentina and Uruguay would form a new country.

However, personally I am puzzled by the factors that have led the writer to write such book, especially knowing that Lobato lived in the United States for some time. What prompted this writer to imagine this scenario?

Anyway, leaving aside the mental masturbation, once again you can see that LIFE imitates the ART (who says otherwise probably does not read much). Monteiro Lobato was very criticized while was alive because he had strong opinions and not to hide them from anyone, in fact he was arrested for that. But the history is showing that he was right on some of his opinions and projections for the future. Like it or not.