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http://universitypublishingonline.org/

The Cambridge History of Latin American Literature

Edited by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarra, Enrique Pupo-Walker

Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521410359

Online ISBN: 9781139055291

Hardback ISBN: 9780521410359

Chapter

16 - The essay: architects of Brazilian national identity pp. 345-362

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521410359.018

Cambridge University Press

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[ 16 ]

T he essay: architects of Brazilian national identity

Thomas E. Skidmore

For more than a century Brazilian intellectuals have agonized over their

cou ntr y's natio nal identity. Until the 1950s they attem pted to capt ure its

essence by relying on colorful language and historical allusions. Building

on a par ado xic al combi nati on o f faith and dou bt, they wrestled especially

with the tro ubl eso me quest ion of ho w racial interm ixtur e had affected the

Brazilian character. Such a preo ccup atio n had been co mm on am on g elite

thinkers of Latin America since the late nineteenth century, when the

theories of white racial superiority arrived with the prestige conferred by

No rt h Atlant ic "sc ien ce ." Th e questions remained constant. W h o are we?

H o w have we become this way? Does a racially mixed people have a

future in the "ci vi li ze d" worl d?

This chapter focuses on some of the most influential Brazilian writers

who have taken up these themes. They all tried to define Brazil's national

identity in both a cultural and a political dimension. For each historical

period, the context is sketched and the focus turns to one or two of the

per iod 's mos t wide ly read bo ok s on Brazilia n natio nal identity. All of

these wo rk s we nt throu gh n ume rou s printings and are still read in Braz il.

The years from 1870 to 1889 sa w the Brazi lia n emp ire in dec line.

Despite Brazilian victory in the Paraguayan War (1865-1870), Emperor

D o m Pedro II faced increasing opposition at home from a republican

movement. In 1889 the higher military, endorsing republican ideology,

deposed the only genuine monarchy that nineteenth-century Lati n Am er

ica had ever produced. These years also saw the rapid rise of coffee as

Brazil's chief expo rt, restricted la rgely to the south central areas,

especially the states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and Sao Paulo. This

shifted the Brazilian economy southward and, along with the decline of

sugar and cotton, contributed to the rapid economic decline of the

northeast, whose sugar economy had fueled the prosperity of colonial

Brazil.

Virtually all obser vers bran ded Braz ilian literature of the era as

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C A M B R I D G E H I S T O R Y O F L A T I N A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

unoriginal and uninteresting, modeled largely on that of Paris. In the

realm of ideas, Brazilian thinkers were powerfully influenced by social

Darwinism and by French Positivism. Overlaying both was a vague

liberalism - especially from France and England - which had been animportant trademark ofBrazilian politics since Independence in 1822.

Outsiders in these years tended to see Brazil as little more than a

tropical appendage of Europe. Sanitation was primitive, even in the

largest cities, and epidemic diseases such as yellow fever were common. It

had been the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery (1888).

Against this backdrop Brazilian intellectuals struggled to define their

country's national identity. One of the pioneers was the combative

intellectual and literary critic, Silvio Romero (1851-1914) .

Romero, born in the frequently drought-stricken northeastern state ofSergipe, fought his way up to become a major literary critic in the national

capital ofRio de Janeiro. His Historia da literatura brasileira was the first

comprehensive overview ofBrazilian literary history by a Brazilian. In it

he discussed Brazilian national character at length.

Romero described himselfas a Social Darwin ist, arguing that race and

environment were the keys to understanding artistic creation. An incur

able polemicist, he often contradicted himself to score a debating point.

Yet his inconsistencies had another, more fundamental expl anat ion.

Looking at Brazil through the lens ofSocial Darwinism did not lead tocomfortable speculation. Describing himself as "always inspired by the

ideal of an aut ono mou s Brazil, independent in politics and even more so in

literature" (Romero, Historia, 1, xxiv), Romero argued that Brazil "could

never be creative and up to date in adapting European doctrines and

schools of thought to the Brazilian social and literary world, unless

Brazilians first understood the state ofthought in the Old World and had a

clear idea of our ow n past and present" (1, 1 1 ) .

Romero, like all educated Brazilians of his era, wa s highly sensitive to

the question ofrace. (The 1872 census showed the population to be only38% white, a figure which varied between 44% and 55% in the censuses

from 1890 to 1980.) He wa s virtually alone, however, in acknowledging

that Brazilians were fundamentally a racially mixed people. "Every

Brazilian is a mestiqo, if not in blood, then in ideas. T h e initial

contributing factors were the Portuguese, the Negro, the Indian, the

physical environment and imitation of foreigners" (1, 4) , he explained.

What wa s the link to the Brazil of the 1880s? " W e have an unhealthy

population, which leads a short, sickly, and unhappy l ife" (1, 46), a plight

that Romero sa w as having resulted from the massive use ofslaves. " T h ewhite man, the coldhearted author ofso many crimes, took everything he

could from the Indian and the Negro and then discarded them like useless

objects. He was helped by his son and collaborator, the mestiqo, w h o

succeeded him, assuming his color and his power" (1, 55).

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The essay: architects of Brazilian national identity

347

Ro me ro tho ught the Afri can had contr ibut ed muc h more than the

Indian to the creation of the new nationality. "The African race has had

an enor mous influence in Bra zil , second only to the European ; it has

penetrated our intimate life and shaped in great part our everydaypsychology" (i, 89). Ro me ro then gave his argument a twist unique in his

day: "The Negro, who does not exist in most Spanish American republics,

has enabled us to distinguish ourselves from them in a highly positive

w a y " (1, 53).

Romero was a prolific literary critic and commentator on culture and

politics. He delighted in attacking establishment politicians and self-

important local literati. His most rememb ered literary judgmen t wa s also

his least felicitous: a scathing criticism of Machado de Assis for having

failed to create any memorable fictional personages {Machado de Assis).However , he was closer to the mark in excoriating the Brazilian reading

pub lic as apatheti c. Braz il, he said, was still livi ng on "seco nd - or third-

hand" European ideas {Historia, 1, 102).

Yet Romero never surrendered his emotional commitment to his

country. He urged his readers to be confident. He ended the prologue of

his Historia with a characteristic declaration: "Literary independence and

scientific indepen dence, both reinforcing Brazi l's polit ical indepen dence -

that is my life's dream. They are the triple challenge for the future. We

must be confident!" (1, xxvi).In fact, Romero's language was ambiguous enough to be read in two

ways. Pessimistic Brazili ans coul d choose to believe the determinist

theories he outlined, while the optimists could fix on his nationalist

championing ofBrazil 's cultural originality. The optimists could also take

reassurance from his argument (to which he himself was not always

faithful) that Brazil's popul ation wo ul d inevitably becom e whiter.

Romero thought that Europea n imm igra nts, w h o began flocki ng to Brazil

in the late 1880s, would accelerate this "whitening" process. Romero

himself was on balance an optimist, notwithstanding his nervous references to determinist theories. It was probably this very optimism that

attracted so many readers then and since.

After the army deposed Emperor Dom Pedro II in 1889 and declared a

Republic, the first two presidents came from among the victorious

generals. T h e leaders of the Rep ubl ica n party , wh o had furnished the

ideological rationale for the army's coup, did not gain power until 1894,

when a Sao Pau lo polit ici an wa s elected the first ci vili an president. T he

Republicans' first decade saw a series of armed threats to the new regime.

In 1893, for exam pl e, naval officers fav ori ng a return of the mo nar chyseized control of a fleet in the Rio de Janeiro bay, threatening to close the

port if their demands were not met. Th ey eventua lly surrendered, but not

before foment ing considerabl e polit ical disrupt ion. T he nerv ous republ i

can government banned monarchist candidates from running for office




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348

and imposed censorship on the small but articulate movement urging a

return to royal rule.

Another monarchist challenge soon provided the venue for a literary

classic that became another landmark analysis of Brazil's nationalidentity. It was the 1896 rebellion at Canudos, in the backlands of the vast

northeastern state of Bahi a. A messianic com mu nit y had forme d, refusing

to ac kn ow le dg e local gov ern men t authority . A n army col umn wa s sent to

subdue them, but the rebels withstood it. The rebels finally fell, massacred

to the last man (some women and children survived) by army

reinforcements.

Euclides da Cu nh a (1866-1909) , a yo un g former army officer turned

journalist, was sent by a leading Sao Paulo newspaper to cover the

rebellion at Canudos, 1,000 miles to the north. He arrived in time towitness the final massacre. Deeply moved by the rebels' courage, he wrote

a series of stirring newspaper dispatches describing the backlanders' epic

struggle against over whel min g odds. He then expanded his coverage into

what became an instant classic, Os sertoes [Rebellion in the Backlands].

What kind of book was it? The first quarter was a detailed essay on the

interaction of man and environment in the semi-arid sertdo region,

explained according to the science of the day. This gave many Brazilian

readers their first real look at the drought-ridden northeastern backlands.

In addition to applying the latest geological and climat ologic al wi sdo m ofthe day, Euclides repeated the views of leading European spokesmen for

scientific racism, such as Gu mp lo wi cz and La pou ge. " A mixi ng of highly

diverse races is usually prejudicial," he argued, adding that "miscegena

tion carried to an extreme brings retrogression" (Os sertoes [1985], 174).

Th e person of mixe d blo od "is a degenerate w ho lack s the physical energy

of his savage ancestors, and does not have the intellectual distinction of his

civilized ancest ors" (p. 175) .

The final three-quarters of the book recounted the army's campaign to

subdue the rebels. Euclides saw the latter's courage and cunning asdramatically demonstrating man's potential in the sertdo, a perception

that seemed to contradict his earlier acceptance of scientific racism.

He described the drama on two levels. One was the military battle.

Euclides depicted the insurgents' skill in using their envir onmen t against

the arm y - luring the soldier s into ambus hes in unfamili ar cou ntr y,

watching them cut to ribbons by the cacti and poisoned by eating

nonedi ble plants they had never before seen. As for the va in glor io us and

incompetent army officers Euclides described, no reader could fail to see

the divergence between the reality of hostile Bahia and the fantasy worldof the War Ministry in Rio de Janeiro.

O n another level his book indicted the very people of mixed blood

whose courage he admired. Euclides attributed their rebellion largely to




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349

the emotional instability of the sertanejos, personified in the "atavistic"

personality of their renegade leader and ex-priest, Antonio Conselheiro.

Here Euclides expressed the elite's worry - articulated earlier by Silvio

Romero - about the connection between the biology of miscegenation andthe proces s of natio n-bui lding . If race mixin g created instabi lity, ho w lon g

w o u l d it take to achieve a stable national identity?

These two levels of analy sis led to tw o different c onc lusions. Th e first

w as the urgent need for political reform, which fo l lowed from the hair-

raising accounts of army incompetence, itself reflecting the elite's willful

and uncomprehending neglect of the interior. The second conclusion was

a note of enco ura geme nt a bou t Brazi l's racial mix , wh ich fo l lowed from

the discovery of a noble struggle for freedom on the part of non-Whites

(although this was at the same time called into question by Euclides'sacceptance of scientific racism).

Os sertoes, an indictment of the elite (the only book buyers), received

immediate critical acclaim in Rio de Janeiro. Why? In part it was

Euclides's sca thin g crit icism of the arm y; many intellectuals resented the

milit ary repressi on of the 1890s, wi th its censorship and mar tia l l aw .

H o w e v e r , the answ er pro ba bl y lies mos tly in Euc lid es' s abilit y to tap the

elite's guilt about how little their ideal of Brazilian nationality related to

their country's actual condition, without quest ionin g all their basic social

assumptions.This interpretation is borne out by the favorable reaction of the literary

critics. Virtually all discussed the racial question. The critics were as

equivocal on the key questions as Euclides had been. Several agreed that

the connection between ethnic and social integration was crucial. None

was wil l ing to conclude that Brazil's fate was hopeless. And none was

clear-sighted enough to point out the inconsistencies at the heart of

Euclides's analysis (Os sertoes: juzos crticos).

The difficulties caused for the Republicans by events such as the

rebellion at Canudos were exacerbated by the government's own lack ofcohesion. Republican leaders often failed to agree on the presidential

succession. Ball oti ng wa s routinely fr audulent, especially in the interior,

with local party machines commonly delivering suspiciously huge majori

ties for their candidates. Such fraud disillusioned many of the younger

political elite, who yearned for the respectability of West European

political systems.

Further aggravating the political malaise were increasing regional

economic disparities. The southern central region took an increasing

economic lead, fueled by streams of immigrants from Italy, Spain,Germany, and Japan. Liber alism conti nued to prevail in official discourse,

muc h to the frustrat ion of its crit ics. Ye t the press over fl owe d wi th

eloquent attacks on the liberal ideals supposedly enshrined by the




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Republ ic . Brazilian reality, charged the dissenting politicians and law

professors, was a paro dy of democ ratic , representative go vernm ent. Th e

dissenters dem and ed po litica l reforms to bring Brazil ian gov ern men t into

line wit h the count ry' s econ omi c and social realities. For some this meantreplacing electoral democracy with a "strong" government that would lift

Brazil ab ov e the painful rea lities of its illit eracy , misery, and emp ty

rhetoric. The most influential writer of this view was Francisco Jos de

Olivei ra Vianna (1883-1951).

A lawyer-historian from the state of Rio de Janeiro, Vianna was

described by contemporaries as mulatto, a possible key to his preoccu

pati on wit h the role of race in Brazil ian history . In 191 0, Vi an na beg an

publishing a stream of newspaper articles and books, gaining steadily in

influence am on g his elite reade rs. In 1916 he wo n a prof essorsh ip at theL a w Faculty in Rio de Janeiro, but preferred to spend most of his time

across the bay in Niteri, the capital of his native state of Rio de Janeiro.

Populages meridionais do Brasil was Vianna's first major book.

This two-volume work began by praising "the great Ratzel" and

describing Gobineau, Lapouge, and Ammon, the European high priests of

scientific racism, as "mighty geniuses." Vianna described himself as

seeking to "define the social character of our people, as realistically as

possible, in order to establish our differences from other peoples,

especially the great European peoples" (Populages [1952] 1, 13 ). Bra zilians studied themselves too little, he argued, and thus suffered "innumer

able illusi ons " abo ut their capaciti es (1, 19). Wh at Bra zilian s needed wa s

"a cool , detac hed a na ly si s" layi ng bare "the special tendencies of our

mentality and our c har act er" (1, 22). He aske d ho w Brazil's racially mix ed

population would fare in the modern world and whether Brazil could

remain a unified country, given its vast regional differences.

O n first readin g, Oliv eir a Vi an na sounded muc h like Silvio Romero or

Euclides da Cun ha . He thoug ht Brazil wa s in dang er internati onally , and

he saw national self-examination as a crucial first step toward collectiveacti on. Like Ro me ro and Eucl ides he acce pted the autho rity of foreign

racialist theoreticians. What, then, did he add that was new?

One element was a romanticized picture of colonial Brazil. Vianna

tho ugh t the Port ugue se wh o had com e to Am er ic a wer e "the most

eugenic" because, "by the laws of social anthropology those who

emigrate are strong and rich in courage, imagination and will power" (1,

114) . By a stro ke of the pen he had re habi lita ted the oft-denigrat ed early

settlers. These courageous male Lusitanians had come to the new exotic

land without their women, explained Vianna. "Plunged into tropicalspl endor, their nerves dulled by the intense sun, they we re attr acte d to

those vast and primitive breeding groun ds wh ic h wer e the plan tati on slave

quarters." There they found "the languid and tender Indian woman"

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35i

alon g wit h the "pas siona te, lovi ng, prolific, and seduct ive " Ne gr o wo ma n

(i, 101 ). Th us w as born the mestico.

Vianna escaped the absolute categories of the scientific racists by

arguing that the Afr ica n slaves had come from vary ing tribes - some"highly loyal , " others "ferocious," or "virile and brave." The offspring of

white unions with such varied slaves also varied. Some mestiqos were

"inferior," while others inherited the psychic and even somatic features of

the "superior" race. "From the texture of his hair to the color of his skin,

from the morality of his feelings to the vigor of his intelligence," the

superior mestico "ha s a perfectly Ar ya n app ear anc e" (i, 153) . So Oliv eira

Vianna was able to reassure his worried, race-conscious readers that,

through historical luck and the nature of early Port uguese settlement,

Brazil was steadily getting whiter.He saw this felicitous race-mixing as having facilitated Brazil's great

wes tw ard expa nsio n of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mir ac u

lously, in Vianna's account, the "Aryanized" mestiqos joined white

"n ob il it y" to secure Brazil' s claim to its western reaches whi ch had once

belonged to the Spanish crown.

Vianna found other virtues in Braz il' s ethnic history: "O u r peop le

mixed and mel ded wi th ou t any overt ethnic batt les " (1, 392). He mad e no

mention of the many bloody slave revolts or of the equally bloody

campa ign s to extermi nate the ru naw ay slave commu niti es. Here Via nnawas echoing a theme of Silvio Romero - that in Brazil the African

influence had evolved in a uniquely beneficial way. Thus was the myth of

Brazil 's "non-violent" past given one of its classic formulations.

Vianna also thou ght c ont empo rar y Brazil wa s in politica l danger. He

believed Brazil had erred in uncrit ically ado pti ng nineteenth-cen tury

Europ ean liberal institutions. It had thereby failed to insure "a ut ho ri ty "

and "nat ion al un it y" (1, 429). Brazil had su rvived, but only because the

populations of the Southern center - the heroes of Vianna's book - saved

it from a tre mend ous cata strophe "b y their conserv ative spirit and by theirmode rat e and caut ious temperame nt " (1, 435).

The Spanish American republics had not, in Vianna's view, been so

lucky whe n they import ed E urop ean liberalism. Unlike the Brazilian

statesmen, the nation builders in Argen tina and Chile "fa ced popul atio ns

that wer e cons tant ly conspir ing and fight ing. " Brazil wa s saved by the

"natural aversion to vio le nc e" of its southern peop les (1, 434-5) . Th us the

nine teenth century, like the centuries before it, had a happy ending - all

wrapped in the language of racial improvement, the lingua franca of

Vianna's readers. Starting from similar premises, he had emerged with afar more optimistic message than Euclides da C unh a.

However , Vianna saw the lesson of Brazilian history as its failure to

have created a strong state. Brazi lian national ity n ow needed "m ass,




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form, fiber, nerve, skeletal structure and character." Above all, it needed

"a centralizing state with a powe rfu l, dominat ing and unifying nationa l

gov ernme nt " (i, 429). Via nna rapidly became the spokesma n par excel

lence for the anti-liberal critics of Braz il' s malfunct ioni ng electo ralsystem. Later, during the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas (19371945) he

got the opportunity to apply his nostrums when he helped fashion the

corporatist laws that institutionalized the strong state he advocated.

Paulo Prado (1869-1943) belonged to one of Sao Paulo's most promi

nent families, sustained by a fortune in coffee plantations. He was a noted

aesthete and pa tron of the arts who had largely financed the famous Sao

Pau lo Mo de rn Ar t We ek in 1922. In 1928 he publ ished Retrato do Brasil, a

slim vol ume which cast a gl oo my pall over the debate a bout national

character.His "portrait," which opened with the famous phrase "In a radiant

land lives a sad people," analyzed Brazilian character in terms of the three

vices (lust, greed , and melanchol y) whic h had suppos edly resulted from

the combination of a "man set free in the wilderness with the sensual

Indian" (Retrato [1962] 3, 22). Th is produ ced "o ur pr imit ive mi xed -

bloo d po pul at io ns" (p. 27). Th e Brazilian wa s "a new man " headin g

either toward his "fateful triumph" or toward "disillusionment and

disaster " in realizing "his historical and geo grap hical desti ny" (p. 127) .

The solution, for Prado, was whitening - "the so-called Aryanization ofthe Brazilian is a fact of everyday observation. Even with one-eighth

Negro blood the African appearance completely fades away. Since the

colonial era the Negro has been slowly disappearing" (pp. 159-60). Here

was an even more confident endorsement of whitening than Romero or da

Cu nh a had ever made. It reflected the increasing opti mism on this front

felt by the Brazilian elite.

Yet the book 's overall tone made Brazil' s heritage sound debilitating

and its negative effects on Brazilian personality inescapable. The combi

nation of the amoral Portuguese, the seductive climate, and the pliantIndian-Af rican charact er seemed to disqualify Brazi l from the modern

industrial world. In his postscript, however, Prado confidently cited

avant-ga rde US sociol ogists, wh o had begun to emphasize environment

over race as an explanation for social behavior. In the end Prado saw

Brazil 's problem as essentially political. He denounced his country's

"petty pol it ics " and its local "ol ig arc hi es" (p. 178). He repeated the then

current lamentations that Brazil had failed to exp loi t her great natural

resources. Negl ect wa s ever ywhe re - publi c hygiene, transpor tation ,

education, in virtually every sphere of social policy. "In a country whichhas prac tica lly ever yth ing, we import eve ryth ing: from fashions - ideas

and clothes - to broo m handles and toot hp ic ks " (p. 174). Prado, intending

to shock his readers, saw only two ways out of Brazil's disorganization

and stag nati on. It wo ul d take war or revolu tio n to cure a sick Braz il.

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The Republic that had arrived via a military coup in 1889 collapsed in

another co up in 1930. As in the 1890s, the mili tary hande d ove r pow er to a

new genera tion of civilia ns, led by Getiilio Va rg as , a former gov ern or of

Rio Gran de do Sul. Th e prol onged attempt at democratic reform after1930 led to yet another mili tary c oup in 1937 , led this time by the

incu mbent president himself, as Va rg as installed an eight-year dictato r

ship (called the Estado Novo, fol lowi ng Portuguese corporatist

nomenclat ure and ideo logy) . State and local govern ment po wer wa s

sharply reduced, creating the strong centralizing force Oliveira Vianna

had urged.

Economical ly Brazil fared well. Al th ou gh the wor ld crash of 1929 led to

a rapid loss of foreign exchange reserves and a sharp drop in export

income, Brazil ian industry exp and ed rapidly to supply many pro duct spreviously impor ted. T he Second Wo rl d Wa r, whi ch Brazil entered in

1942 on the Allied side, wa s another eco nom ic stimulus, as US dema nd for

strategic mate rial hel ped Brazil rebu ild its forei gn exchan ge reserves.

Meanwhi le , state intervention in the economy grew, reflecting the

corporatist central izatio n of the Va rg as dictat orshi p. Th e pace of indus

trializa tion accel erated in Sao Pau lo, no w Brazil 's largest city and rapidly

becoming the leading industrial center in the developing world.

Culturally these years were highly creative. The 1920s and 1930s

produced many attempts to define Bra zil 's nat ion al identi ty, m uchinfluenced by the intense literary innovation of Modernismo [Moder

nism] (not to be confused with the movement of the same name in Spanish

America) . Scholars and publishers rushed to republish the rich descrip

tions of Brazil bequeathed by foreign travelers of earlier centuries, often

with notes and commentary.

The Va rg as dictat orship also created new centralized cultural institu

tions, such as the Instituto Nacional do Livro, which subsidized distribu

tion of govern ment-sp onsored cultural magazines, and radio p rogr ams.

The vigor and originality of the modernist movement gave legitimacy tothe dicta torsh ip's c laim to be promo ti ng Brazilian nation al culture.

These years also saw the United States begin to challenge France as the

pred omi nant foreign cultural influence in Brazil. North American popular

culture, fed by an increasing flood of US radio progr ams , ph on ogr aph

record s, and H ol l y wo o d films, established a fascination a mo ng city-

dwelling Brazi lians. Th is contest for the cou ntr y's cultural allegia nce

formed the backdrop for the emergence of the historian-sociologist

Gilberto Freyre, the most famous twentieth-century interpreter of Brazi

lian natio nal identity.Freyre (19001987) was born in Recife, capital of the state of Pernam-

buco, in the heart of the traditional sugar-cane economy of the northeast.

He came from a distinguished family and pursued an atypical education

by attending an American high school in Recife and then traveling to the




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US for his colleg e degree at Bayl or , a Bapti st university in Tex as . This

experience significantly shaped the young Brazilian's view of his native

culture. Freyre then attended graduate school at Columbia University in

N e w Yo rk , studying with the noted anthropologist Franz Boas, who hadbecome one of the first outspoken opponents of the scientific racism that

still dom ina ted a cade mic thou ght in the No rt h Atlant ic wo rl d and Latin

America. His five years of study in the US , most ly in the South wit h its Jim

C r o w la ws and viol ent racism, deeply influenced Freyre, givi ng him a

permanent point of reference in his future interpretations of Brazil. At

Columbia he wrote a master's paper, Vida social no Brasil nos meados do

seculo x i x [Social Life in Brazil in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century],

containing many of the themes he was to make famous in Casa grande e

senzala [The Masters and the Slaves].Casa grande e senzala wa s a social history of the slave-pla ntatio n w or ld

of northeastern Brazi l in the sixteenth and seventeent h centuries wh en

sugar furnished the pro duct ive base for Brazil 's multir acial society. Freyre

sympathet ically (and graphi cally ) depicted the intimate person al relations

bet ween the plant er families and their slav es. In pic tur ing this intensely

patriarchal ethos, Freyre dwelt on the many ways in which the African

(and, to a much lesser extent, the Indian) influenced the planters' life-style

in food, clothing, and sexual behavior.

Freyre began by assuming that Brazil 's history differed significantlyfrom the United States, the only other c omp ara ble sl ave-h oldin g society in

the Wes te rn hemisphe re. A s he note d in the preface to the first edit ion ,

"Every student of patria rchal regimes and of Brazi l's slave -hold ing

economy should become acquainted wit h the 'deep so ut h' " (Casa grande,

xi).

Casa grande presented a society in which every Brazilian, from

aristocr at to pedlar, reflected a pol ygl ot culture. Here Freyre clearly

followed Silvio Romero, whose influence he frequently acknowledged.

Freyre further argued that the Portuguese in Brazil had long since lost anychance to be "pure" Whites, since the Portuguese themselves were of

dubious white lineage, having for centuries mixed with their Moorish

conquerors.

Freyre saw the Portugues e as uniquely equi pped to col oni ze the tro pics.

He noted that "race consciousness virtually did not exist among the

cosmo poli tan and plastic-minded Portugu ese" (p. 2). Th e Portuguese

colonist was "a Spaniard without the militant flame or the dramatic

orthodoxy of the conquistador of Mex i co and Peru, an Englishman

without the harsh profile of the Puritan. He was the compromiser,wit ho ut absol ute ideals or fixed pr ejud ices " (p. 197) . Furt herm ore, the

Portuguese used "the natives, chiefly the women, as more than mere labor;

they became the elements to create the family" (p. 24). Freyre was thus led




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to his famous conclusion that "Brazil has the most harmonious race

relations" in the Americas (p. 88).

Freyre had thereby turned on its head the long-familiar and painful

question of whet her generat ions of race mix ing had done irreparabl edam ag e. Brazil' s ethnic jumble , he argued , was an immense asset. He

showed how recent research in nutrition, anthropology, medicine, psy

chology, sociology, and agronomy had rendered racist theory obsolete

and had poin ted up new vill ains - insufficient diet, imp rac ti cal clot hin g,

and disease (especially syphi lis) , to o often undi agn ose d and untreated . He

cited studies by Brazilian scientists showing that it was the Indian and the

Negro who had contributed to a healthier diet and a more practical style

of dress in Brazil.

Equally important for the book's sustained impact was its frankdescrip tion of the intimate history of patri archal society. Whi le this

incurred the criticism of some academic critics abroad and conservative

readers at hom e, it appealed to Brazil ian readers because it exp la ine d the

origin of their personalities and culture. At the same time, they were

getting the first scholar ly exa min ati on of Brazilian nation al c haracter that

unambiguously told them they could be proud of their racially mixed

trop ical ci vili zatio n. Its social vices, which Freyre freely acknowledged,

could be attributed, he argued, primarily to the slave-holding monocul

ture dominating the country until the late nineteenth century. Thesupposedly evil consequences of miscegenation came not from race-

mixing itself, but from the unhealthy relationship of master and slave

under which it had most often occurred.

Freyre wrot e tw o successor vol ume s to Casa grande e senzala: Sobrados

e mucambos [The Mansions and the Shanties], which focused on the

transition to an urban culture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth

century, and Ordem e progresso [Order and Progress], which painted a

pa no ra ma of the elite's self-image in the first several decades of the

twent ieth century . Th es e vol ume s carried forwar d Freyre's portra it of thepatriarchical ethos inherited from the colonial era. Although rich in

historical detail and insight, neither had the impact of Casa grande e

senzala.

Freyre's writings did much to focus attention on the inherent value of

the African as the representati ve of a civ ili zat ion in its ow n right. Fr eyre

thus furnished, for those Brazil ians ready to listen, a rat iona le for a multi

racial society in which the component "races" - European, African, and

Indian - could be seen as equally valuable. The practical effect of his

analysis was not, how eve r, to pro mot e racial egalitarianism. Rather, itserved to reinforce the elite's well-established goal of "whitening" by

showing graphically that the (primarily white) elite had gained valuable

cultural traits from their intimate contact with the African and Indian.




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Yet his analysis did answer a question preoccupying the elite: was white

supremacy of the United States' variety the only path to progress in the

mod ern wor ld? By impl ica tion (whi ch few readers co uld miss), Freyre

answered in the negative. He depict ed a Brazi l wh ic h wa s superior inhuman terms. It was the US that had chosen the destructive path of legal

segregation, to be maintained only by repression.

Raizes do Brasil by Sergio Bua rqu e de Ho la nd a (1902-1982) wa s closer

in format and approach to Paulo Prado's Retrato do Brasil than to the

work of either Oliveira Vianna or Gilberto Freyre. It was an elegant essay

drawing on literary and historical sources, without Freyre's vast range of

informat ion or Oliveir a Via nna 's nar row ly focused social history. Like

both, however, it emphasized the colonial era.

Buarque de Holanda's title revealed his orientation. Portugal hascreated "the present shape of our culture - any other influence had to

conform to that shape." The role of miscegenation? The "mixture with

indigenous or foreign races has not made us as different from our overseas

ancestors as we would sometimes like to think" (Raizes [1956], 30).

Unfortunately for those who wanted economic development, Brazil did

not get the worker prototype (such as supposedly went to New England),

but get-rich-quick adventurers. The Portuguese "wanted to extract

enormous riches from the soil without making great sacrifices" (p. 50).

They also sho wed "ext rao rdi nary social flexib ilit y," and revealed a"complete, or almost complete, lack of racial pride, at least that kind of

obstinate and uncompromising pride that typifies the northern peoples ."

Furth ermore, the Portuguese were, com pared to Spanish, "i nco mpa rab ly

gentler, better able to acc omm oda te social , racial and moral di sco rd " (p.

51) . Th ey were notabl y lackin g in the "mar tial spirit." Brazi lians d on' t

yearn for the "pre stig e of a con que rin g count ry and . . . are not ori ous for

abhorr ing v iolent sol ut ions. " Brazi l wa s "o ne of the first nations to

abolish the death penalty in law, having abolished it long before in

practice" (p. 260). Buarque de Holanda thought the Brazilian could besummed up in the Portuguese word "cordial," which he equated with

affability, hospitality, and generosity.

Raizes do Brasil presented an interesting glo ss on the nati onal identity

motif. The author virtually discarded race as an explanatory concept.

Instead he const ructed a coll ecti ve personali ty for the Port uguese, Spa

nish, and English, then generalizing about comparative national develop

ment. Unlike Freyre, Buarq ue de Hol an da said virtually nothing ab out the

African or the Indian, nor did he lo ok closely at the non -Eu rop ean

elements in Brazi lian cultur e. In fact, Bua rqu e de Ho la nd a cont ributedlittle that was new to the portrait of national identity which we have seen

emerging. He reinforced Gilberto Freyre's image of the Portuguese as

racially toler ant and Ol ive ira Vi an na 's image of them as the beque ather s

of a flawed political legacy.




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An essential feature of Buarque de Holanda's society was "an invasion

of the public by the private, of the state by the fami ly" (p. 103) . It led to a

"slackness of social structure" and a "lack of organized hierarchy." In

short, a "la ck of cohe sion in our soci al l ife" (p. 18). He a lso beli eved , wi thOliveira Vianna, that Brazil wa s adrift. Th e Brazil ians, he ann ounc ed,

"a re still exil es in our o wn land " (p. 15 ). Bo th authors wanted to rouse

their readers to undertake radical reforms, although the nature of their

reforms differed sharply.

Buar que de Ho la nd a wo rr ied abou t Brazil 's politi cal future. In the

Brazil of the mid 1930s opinion was polarizing, as both left and right

preached extremism. He had personally witnessed the rise of Fascism

while living in Ge rm an y. Th e descent into the Brazili an dictat orship of

1937-1945 wa s immine nt. L ike Paul o Pra do in Retrato do Brasil, he aimedhis erudite text at the elite whom he hoped to rouse in defense of a

democratic Brazil.

The two decades after the end of the Var ga s dic tat orship in 1945 (wh ich

was ended by another military coup) brought a return to electoral

democracy and constitutional government, although in a political culture

that remained deeply authoritarian. In the electoral era that fol lowed,

Vargas became the eventual beneficiary, returning to po we r in 1951 as a

popularly elected president. Pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies,

he colli ded wit h conse rvat ive lan dow ner s, Sao Pau lo businessmen, anti-communist military, and the United States government. Faced with the

threat of yet another military co up in 1954, he com mit ted suicide,

th ro win g the conserva tive enemies of his popul ist pol icies on the defensive

fo r another decade.

The first w id ely read essayist on Braz ili an identity t o appea r after 1945

was Vi an na Mo o g (1906- 1988), a novelist and literary critic from Brazil 's

southernmost state of Ri o Gr an de d o Sul. In 1955 he publis hed Bandeir-

antes e pioneiros [Bandeirantes and Pioneers], a direct and detailed

com par iso n of cultural archet ypes in Brazil and the US. Th is perhap sreflected his country's recent wartime experience, when a Brazilian army

division had fought alongside the US Fifth Army, helping to drive Nazi

troops from Italy in 1944-1945.

M o o g ' s message was implicit in his book's title. The first word,

bandeirantes, referred to the get-rich-quick explorers who roamed Bra

zil's interior in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These rude

adventurers in carnate d all the suppo sed Iberian defects: con tem pt for

manual labor, a fixation on Europe, irresponsible eroticism, and an

extreme individualism. The title's second word, pioneiros, incarnated allthe supposed North American virtues: respect for the dignity of labor, an

urge to break wit h the past, a belief in the mor al perfec tibil ity of man, and

a keen sense of community.

M o o g started with the image of the Brazilian as "an indolent, congeni-




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tally melancholy man, the product ofthree sad races whom fate has joined

on American soil" (Bandeirantes [1961], 107). Th is sounded like Paulo

Prado. However, Moog challenged that authority, arguing that in fact

"there is no real proof for the congenital sadness of the Indian, the Negro,the Portuguese" (p. 108).

He then contrasted the archetypes - the bandeirante and the pionee r -

that held the answer to Brazil's relative backwardness. The bandeirante

disdained work, sought quick riches, and lived only to return to Europe. It

was these traits, passed on to modern-day Brazilians, that held back

Brazilian progress. Meanwhile, the pioneer, heir of the New England

colonists, valued work and sought to build for the morrow. These cultural

traits, Moog argued, made it possible for "the United States, a continent

younger and smaller than Brazil, to achieve virtually mira culou s progre ss,while Braz il, wit h a history a hundred years older than the United States, is

still the uncer tain l and of the fu ture" (p. 9).

T o compare Brazil with the US was not new, as we have seen.

Thoughtful Brazilians had done it more frequently as the United States'

eco nomic lead over Brazil increased in the late nineteenth and early

twen tie th cen turies. Y et no wid ely read write r had posed the quest ion as

boldly as M o o g .

What made his book accessible to a wide public was its didactic style

(and its frequent overs impli fica tion of social science theory ). He rebuttedracist determinism by citing academic authorities who claimed to have

discredi ted it scientifically. T o clinch his case, M o o g reco unted several

noto riou s Ya nk ee misadventures in Brazil. On e wa s Henry Ford's

ambiti ous rubber plantat ion project of the 1930s and 1940s in the

Amazon , which failed despite enormous investment and abundant techni

ca l expertise from the north. Ford's failure to understand the psychology

of Brazi lian work er s and the limit ations of plan tat ion agricultur e in the

rainforest (laterite soils leach ing out, etc.) do om ed his projec t from the

start. If Whites were superior, asked M o o g , wh y did an entrepreneuria lgenius such as Henry Ford fail so ignominiously? Moog's second example

was a colony founded by United States Confederate emigres in the

Amazon valley. T w o genera tions after their ar rival in the late 1860s they

had virtually disappeared into the marginal jungle population. Again ,

M o o g asked, where was white superiority - especially since these were

Whites from the Old South, bastion of Aryan supremacy?

M o o g went on to give his readers a witty, documented case against

racist theory. He argued that Brazil' s lack of racial discrimi nation "m ay

have been a positive factor, and may become one of Portuguese-Brazilianculture' s best legacies, despite the high price Brazili ans have paid and may

still have to pay for it" (p. 47). It was an echo of Freyre but in more explicit

terms.




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M o o g refuted other deterministic expl anat ion s for Brazi l's failure to

progre ss at the US pace . T he defeatists had poin ted o ut, for exam pl e, that

Brazil 's river system did not constitute an easy inland transportation

network. Many of the major rivers were broken by waterfalls, makingthem unn avig abl e. Oth ers ran only tort uousl y tow ar d the oce an. Brazil

also lack ed coa l. H o w coul d it industrialize wi th ou t the vital resources

that had fueled develo pmen t in No rt h Amer ic a? M o o g dismissed these

liabilities by arguing that "history can tell us more about social facts than

can the reduction ist theories of geo gra phi c, ethnic, bio log ica l, or econ

omic dete rmi nis m" (p. 106). By history, he meant the collecti ve ps ych ol o

gies created since colonization.

Like his forerunners in interpreting Braz ilian natio nal character , M o o g

had a larger purpose than simply to explain. He wanted to rouse hisreaders t o chan ge the cou ntr y. H e longed to lift Braz il closer to the US

performa nce. Ho we ve r, this could only happen ifthere were a "reform of

the spirit," a call echoing Paulo Prado's message. Moog wanted Brazil to

undert ake a "ma jor colle ctive sel f-e xam ina tio n" (p. 250). Ye t he added a

message that no predecessors had offered. He pointed to the United States,

long taken as the superior example, as a model of how not to develop.

Thus Moog's book served to reassure his Brazilian readers. They were

right to comp are Brazi l to the United States. Th ey were right to con clu de

the Uni ted States wa s far ahead in mate rial pr ogress. Ye t they shou ldknow that Brazil was achieving progress, while the United States would

have to sl ow d ow n to regain its huma nit y. If Brazil lack ed discipline, the

United States lack ed a hum an dime nsion . Mo o g ' s lang uage bore little

relation to the anguish of Oli vei ra Vi an na or Paulo Pra do. Ho we ve r, it did

resemble Freyre's message. In fact, it was Freyre's vindication of the

Portuguese as the progenitors of a new tropical civilization that gave

M o o g the justification to write his optimistic tract.

For all their differences, these essayists from Silvio Romero to Vianna

M o o g had constructed an evol vin g myt h, wh ic h beca me steadily mo reoptimistic (with some back-sliding) through the years. It began with a

vision of the Portuguese colonizer as a sensuous, pragmatic improviser,

unlike the rigid Spanish conquistador or the intolerant English Puritan.

The indulgent Portuguese character had helped to soften slavery, accord

ing to this view, and thus to save Brazil from either Nor th A mer ic an

racism or Indo -Am eri ca' s caste societies. Equa lly important, argued most

of the twentieth- century essayists before the 1950s, Braz il's popu lat ion

was steadily bec omi ng whit er. Brazil had reache d the modern wo rl d with

the most humane society in the Americas . Whethe r it wo ul d kn ow what todo with that huma nit y, they argued , wa s the unan swer ed questi on.

After the 1950s the cont ex t for the dial ogu e ove r Bra zil 's nati ona l

identity shifted, as the rise of modern social science created a major new




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intellectual force in Brazil. Al th ou gh a few anthropolo gists and sociol o

gists had begu n field research in the 1920s, the insti tuti onal bases for the

social sciences only began to be consolidated in the 1950s (Correa,

Historia da antropologia no Brasil). Scholars now had a new perspectivethat could undercut the literary-style essay so long popular.

In 1959 a ps ycho lo gy professor had pub lish ed the initial edition of the

first book-length survey of Brazilian writing on national identity (Leite, O

cardter nacional brasileiro). It marked a new era as the diagnosticians

became more self-conscious in methodology and less naive in

assumptions.

Th e dialo gue no w attracted anthropolo gists, especially those willing to

move bey ond conven tio nal field-work on indi genous peop les to genera

lize abou t the fundamentals of Brazilian civili zation. Promi nent am ongsuch scholars who emerged in the late 1940s was Darcy Ribeiro (b. 1922),

an academic ant hro pol ogi st w ho helped plan the creat ion of the new

Universi ty of Bras ilia in the late 1950s. Lat er a top adviser to President

Joao Goulart (1961-1964), he wa s forced into exile in 1964 wh en the

military overthrew Goulart, an heir to the populist politics of Getiilio

Vargas . During his years of exile (primarily in Spanish America), Ribeiro

wro te a mult i-vol ume study of "civ ili zati on in the Am er ic as ," devot ing

one installment to Brazil (As Americas e a civilizaqdo).

Ribeiro did not restrict his message to academic audiences. On hisreturn from exile he again plu nged into poli tic s, allying closel y wi th the

populist politician Leonel Brizola who twice won the governorship of Rio

de Janeiro state in the 1980s. Ribeiro's solution to the dilemma of Brazil's

dev elo pme nt wa s one of the most over tly poli tica l of any of the write rs

discussed here. (Gilberto Freyre was a federal deputy in the 1946 Congress

and later strongly supported the military coup of 1964.) Having been one

of Gou la rt 's most radi cal advisers in 1963- 196 4, he no w relentlessly

attacked the economic and political establishment and called for Brazilian

scholars to "see as our fundamental task the study of the social rev olu tio nneeded to over come backwar dness and depend ency" (As Americas [1988]

11) . Ribeiro praised Euclides da Cunha and Silvio Romero for their

pioneering insights and credited Oliv eir a Via nna and Gil ber to Freyre wit h

significant contributions, despite the former's "racism" and "colonialist

vision," and the latter's "reactionary" nostalgia for the era of slavery (p.

12).

In his schema of world history Ribeiro placed the Brazilians among the

" N e w Peo ple s," prod uced by the comb ina tio n of "ve ry disparate ethnic

branches such as the indigenous, the African, and the European" (p. 58).He saw Brazil's "historico-cultural configurations," especially the "co l

onial slave-based domination," as crucial in "dehumanizing" the Negro

and the Indian and in produ cing elite theories whi ch drew on "E urop ean

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parascientific pub lic ati ons " about race and climate to create "lear ned

justif icat ions for backwardness and national poverty" (pp. 74-5 , 131 ,

156). What these theories had failed to see was "the role of colonial

plunderi ng and patronal exp loi tat io n" (p. 157 ). For Ribei ro the only"morally defensible position" for a Brazilian intellectual was to recognize

his/her society as "unjust, violent, and bac kw ar d" and "de man d a

revol utio n" (p. 165).

Rib eir o typified a gene rati on of promin ent academi c intell ectuals

(including Florestan Fernandes, Celso Furtado, and Antonio Candido)

radicali zed by conf ron tati on wit h Braz il' s deep social inequal ities, the

unrelenting conservatism of its elite, and the repeated intervention of its

milit ary. All saw their cou ntr y's re demption to lie in radica l polit ical

chan ge from the left, alt hough they differed on the preferred leader ship.Like Paulo Prado half a century earlier, they saw a political shock as the

therapy needed to shake Brazil out of its historic impasse.

Roberto da Matta (b. 1936) was another anthropologist who moved

from the study of the Indian to the study of the wider Brazilian society. Da

Ma tt a, like Freyre, had stud ied in the US and took that country as his

reference point in analyzing Brazil. He enthusiastically embraced a

comb ina tio n of structuralist and symboli c appro aches in writ ing a

diagnosis of "the Brazilian di le mma " in his Carnavais, malandros e herois

[Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes].Da Ma tt a found the essence of Brazi lian character to lie in the structural

relationships and accompanying values bequeathed by the highly hier

archical society of early modern Portugal and its slave-holding American

colony. He analyzed the Freyre-type myth of his coun try' s harm onio us

racial evolution (incarnated in the "fable of the three races") as the

persistent rationale for what he frankly termed "our racism" (Relativi-

zando [1981], 58). It was "the most reactionary prism" of Brazilian

history because it presented that past as a "'history of races' and not of

men" (p. 60). This "myth of the three ra ces" has lon g furnished "th e basi sfo r a political and social plan for the Brazilian, i.e., 'whitening' as the goal

to be purs ued" (p. 69).

What were the sources of this "racismo a brasileira" (p. 68) ? Like Darcy

Ribeiro, Da Matta pointed to the colonial past as crucial in shaping

Brazil 's modern identity , but he emph asiz ed more the pro fou ndl y "an ti-

individualist" and "anti-egalitarian" value system and social structure

bequeath ed by the Port uguese cro wn and church (p. 74). " T h e critical

feature of our entire system is its pro found inequality. In this system there

is no need to segregate the mestizo, the mulatto, the Indian, and the Negrobecause the hierarchies guarantee the superiority of the White as the

dominant gr ou p" (p. 75).

Da Matta rejected Freyre's argument that Portuguese colonization had




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been "essentially more open and huma nit ari an, " arguin g instead that any

easy intimacy of inter-racial relations had been possible only because

"here the White and the Negro each had a fixed and unambiguous place

withi n a well-establi shed hierarchical to tal ity " (p. 79). Th e mi splacedfocus on each of the "three races," argued Da Matta, has "delayed our

under stand ing of ourselves as a society marke d by a unique soci al

structure and a specific culture" (p. 85). He found Darcy Ribeiro to have

succumbed to the traditional reliance on "race" as an explanatory

category, thus invalidating, in Da Matta's view, his attempt to classify

Brazilians as one of the "new peoples" (p. 85).

Da Matta's approach resembled that of Freyre in frequently evoking

the intima te tone and tex ture of fundamental social relat ions, as in his

famous analysis of the imperious locution used to address social inferiors:"Sabe com quern esta falando?" ["Do you realize who you're talking

to?"] . Also like Freyre (who wrote frequently for newspa per s and

magazines), Da Matta sought a wide audience and was able to use the

essayist's newest medium, television, in "Os brasileiros," a ten-part T V

series of short portraits of key national traits. Like Darcy Ribeiro, Da

Matta saw Brazilian society as desperately needing change, but he saw the

solution to lie in adopting more egalitarian values, a process more

profound than mere political change. In this he was closer to M o o g than

he was to the radical leftist intellectuals of whom Darcy Ribeiro was aleading example.

Finally, both Darcy Ribeiro and Roberto da Matta shared the modern

social scientist's rejection of the racist assumptions so long common in

elite dia log ue on nati onal identity. By the late 1970s thoughtful Brazi lians

faced growing evidence (based on official census data) that non-Whites

were systematically disadvantaged (as measured by differentials in

income, employment, education, life expectancy, infant mortality, etc.) in

their society (Lovell, Desigualdade racial no Brasil contempordneo;

Fontaine, Race, Class and Bower in Brazil). Yet the "f able of the threerac es," along with the myth of Brazil 's "rac ial dem oc ra cy " persists

(Skidmore, "Fato e mito"). The pre-1960 architects of Brazil's self-image

const ructed a nati onal identity that has resisted the attacks of both theory

and fact. Moreover, if the role of race in that construct has only begun to

be demystified, the role of gender is equal ly in need of critical exp lo rat ion.

As one leading Brazilian scholar of women's studies has noted, it may be

"through studies of race and gender" that " w e will finally get the answer

to that eternal question, ' Wh at country is th is ?' " (Heloisa Buarqu e de

Holanda, "Os estudos sobre mulher e literatura no Brasil," 88).

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