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The Fusion of Races as Locus of Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Eliana de Freitas Dutra
Eliana de Freitas Dutra*
Affiliation:
Federal University of Minas Gerais
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Extract

For a long while the dilemma between ‘not being’ and ‘being other’ has haunted the history of Brazil. The country's mixed-race condition lay at the heart of the dilemma which reached its apogee in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. At that point in its history, that is, its emergence as a nation-state, the construction of a national identity became an imperative for the political and intellectual elites of Brazil. In this context, a European, the German naturalist, Carl von Martius, made himself particularly notable for having been one of the first, after Independence, to point out the significance of miscegenation in the composition of Brazilian identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 48 , Issue 191 , September 2000 , pp. 25 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2000

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References

Notes

1. On the role of the IHGB in the construction of Brazilian nationality and identity, see Manoel Luis Salgado Guimarães (1988), ‘Naçao e civiliazao nos trópicos', Estudos Históricos, 1, 5-27.

2. Ibid., p. 32.

3. See C. Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1991), Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro), first publication in book form, p. 30.

4. Ibid., p. 31.

5. Ibid.

6. Varnhagen's famous work was published between 1854 and 1857. There he analyses the war between the Portuguese and the Dutch for possession of the Brazilian Nordeste and sees in the Portuguese victory the emergence of a Brazil that is integrated, Portuguese and monarchic, but whose existence was based on the three races. See Adolfo Francisco Vamhagen (1957), História geral do Brasil (São Paulo: Melhoramentos), sixth edition, volume II, chapters 27-30, and volume III, chapters 31-33.

7. Von Martius considered the contribution of the natives with particular reference to the language, sym bols and traditions which could sustain the national mythology. As far as the blacks were concerned, he restricted himself to underlining the links between Portugal and Africa, taking account of the slave trade.

8. Von Martius, op. cit., p. 30.

9. L. Agassiz and E. C. Viagem (1938), Viagem ao Brasil (São Paulo: Nacional), p. 366.

10. Ibid.

11. See G. D. Raeders (1938), D. Pedro II e o Conde de Gobineau (São Paulo: Nacional), and (1988), O inimigo cordial: o Conde de Gobineau no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra).

12. Raeders, op. cit., p. 96.

13. Ibid.

14. My aim here is not to open a discussion on the theories of these authors and their differences, such as, for example, the debate between monogenist and polygenist anthropologists or their appropriation of the ideas of Buffon and / or Darwin. For a more thorough analysis of the diffusion and appropriation of these paradigms in Brazil, see Dante Moreira Leire (1976), O caráter nacional brasileiro (Sao Paulo); Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (1993), O espetáculo das raças: cientistas, instituições e questão racial no Brasil (1870-1930) (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras); Thomas Skidmore (1976), Preto no branco: raça e nacionalidade no pensamento brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra); Roberto Ventura (1991), Estilo tropical: história cultural e polémicas literárias no Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras); Renato Ortiz (1994), Cultura brasileira e identidade nacional (São Paulo: Brasiliense); Luciana Murari (1995), Brasil, ficção geográfica: ciência e nacionalidade n'Os Sertões (Belo Hoirzonte: UFMG); Tânia De Luca (1999), A revista do Brasil: um diagnóstico para a (n)ação (São Paulo: Ed. da UNESP).

15. It was the name by which Silvio Romero himself designated the group which was formed from the Recife Law School in 1868, around the thinker Tobias Barreto. Other centres such as that of the Polytechnic School or the Military Academy at Rio de Janeiro, or that of the Law School of São Paulo, had a role comparable to that of the ‘Recife School' in the diffusion of ‘scientistic' thought in Brazil.

16. S. Romero (1943), História de literatura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio), volume 1, third edition (first edition, 1888). See also S. Romero and J. Ribeiro (1909), Compêndio de história da literatura brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Grancisco Alves), second edition.

17. Ibid., p. 43.

18. This concept was very fashionable among the racialist thinkers of the nineteenth century, especially Gumplowicz and Vacher de Lapouge, well known to Romero, as L. Murai, op. cit., has demonstrated.

19. We should note, however, that some years later, that is to say, in the first decades of the twentieth century, Silvio Romero returned to his first position in relation to the whitening of the Brazilian people. Resuming frankly ‘Aryanist' positions, he not only asserted the persistence of the mixed-race type but also imputed to interethnicity responsibility for the lack of political organization in Brazil. According to such views, the Brazilian people were unfit for democracy because of the gregarious nature of the ‘inferior' races. See S. Romero (1912), Estudos sociais: o Brasil nos primeiras décadas so século XX (Lisbon: Ed. A. Limitada), second edition; R. Ventura, op. cit., pp. 64-6. This attitude of Romero's was to influence the distinguished sociologist, Oliveira Vianna. In his writings of the 1920s and 30s, this writer took up the arguments of Romero to criticize the liberal and democratic system and to defend a strong, centralizing state and a corporatist-type system. See O. Vianna (1923), Evolução do povo brasileiro (São Paulo: Monteiro Lobato & Co.), and (1938), Raça e assimilação (São Paulo: Cia Ed. Nacional).

20. See R. Ventura, op. cit., p. 20.

21. For Nina Rodrigues's ideas, see Mariza Corrêa (1999), As ilusões da liberdade: A escola de Nina Rodrigues e a antropologia no Brasil (Bragança Paulista: Ed. da Universidade São Francisco); Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, op. cit., who clearly demonstrates the influence of Nina Rodrigues's school on schools of medicine in Brazil.

22. See Corrêa, op. cit.

23. See Ventura, op. cit.

24. João Ribeiro and Silvio Romero had been intellectual partners. They had co-authored school textbooks and a history of literature.

25. João Ribeiro (1953), História do Brasil: curso superior (Rio de Janeiro: Editora livraria São José), fourteenth edition, first edition, 1900. See especially pp. 303-20.

26. João Ribeiro used the term mameluco as synonymous with ‘mixed-race', as was the practice in the period. See Antônio Moraes Silva (1813), Dicionário da lingua Portuguesa (Lisbon: Lacerdina).

27. Note that João Ribeiro develops a line of argument that is always in favour of the split with Portugal, on which he bases his republican reading of the history of Brazil. He thus opposes Vamhagen, a defender of the imperial state, who had constructed an interpretation of the history of Brazil anchored in the idea of continuity with Portugal. For all the nuances relating to the different interpretative models, see Ciro Flávio Bandeira de Mello (1997), Senhores da história: a construção do Brasil em dois manuais da segunda metade do século XIX (São Paulo: USP), doctoral thesis.

28. Silvio Romero (1988), Estudos sobre a poesia popular no Brasil (1870-1880) (Rio de Janeiro: Laemmert), and (1901), Ensaios de sociologia e literatura (Rio de Janeiro: Garnier). On this subject, see R. Ventura, op. cit., pp. 49-50.

29. J. Ribeiro, op. cit., p. 306.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. See Célia Marinho de Azevedo (1987), Onda negra, medo branco: o negro no imaginário das elites no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra).

33. Nabuco's stance was favourable to ethnic miscegenation as a form of integration of the blacks and the natives in the national community.

34. Joaquim Nabuco (1977), O abolicionismo (Petrópolis, Vozes, Brasília: INL), fourth edition, p. 158.

35. See Nisia Trindade Lima (1998), Um sertão chamado Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Revan). According to the author, there was no consensus among the Brazilian intellectuals on the subject of the relations between eugenics and sanitarianism, nor relations between the sanitarianist discourse and notions of race.

36. See Ricard Benzaquen de Araújo (1994), Guerra e paz: Casa grande & senzala e a obra de Gilberto Freyre (Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34), pp. 38-40. According to this writer, Gilberto Freyre adopted a neo-La Marckian concept of race, which attributes to physical milieu and to climate a decisive influence on the biological and cultural characters of peoples.

37. Gilberto Freyre (1969), Casa grande & senzala: formação da familía Brasileira sob o regime patriarcal (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio), fourteenth edition; first edition 1933. See also (1951), Sobrados e mucambes: decadência do patriarcado rural e desenvolvimento urbano (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio), first edition, 1936.

38. Pierre Nora (1997), Les lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard), volume I, p. 37.

39. It goes without saying that from von Martius to Gilberto Freyre the idea of the fusion of the three races experienced significant variations according to historical context. During the 1930s it was to acquire an important role, given the political culture of the state. As for its function today, it is sufficient to recall that an investigation into Brazilian utopia carried out on the occasion of the quincentennial celebrations revealed that 76 per cent of those questioned believed that the mixing of cultures in Brazil was an example that other countries should follow; 51 per cent asserted that the Portuguese were the people who had contributed most to the construction of Brazil; 29 per cent chose the natives and 28 per cent the blacks. Such an out come is highly suggestive and demonstrates the power of the interpretative schemas which I have reviewed. See ‘A Folha de S. Paulo', Caderno Mais (23 April 2000), p. 13.

40. Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (IBGE), cited in Aílton Mota de Carvalho (1997), ‘Casa grande e insensata: reflexões sobre a discriminação social no Brasil', Caderno de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, 8, April (Belo Horizonte), p. 100.

41. As José Murilo de Carvalho has effectively demonstrated. See (1998), ‘As batalhas da abolição', in Pontos e Bordados (Belo Horizonte, UFMG), p. 78.

42. Ibid.

43. For a current discussion of the consequences of this ideology for the political initiatives of blacks in Brazil, and the importance of ensuring the existence of different identities, see Kabengele Munanga (1999), Rediscutindo a mestiçagem no Brasil: identidade negra versus identidade nacional (Petrópolis: Vozes).

44. I make very free allusion here to the expression ‘oceanic sentiment', first used by Romain Rolland in a letter to Freud, where it is used to express religious sentiment. See Sigmund Freud (1978), O mal estar da civiliazção (São Paulo: Abril), pp. 131-2.