Roots of Brazil (ND Kellogg Inst Int'l Studies) (Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development) [1 ed.] 0268026130, 9780268026134

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Roots of Brazil

RECENT T I T LES F ROM T H E H ELEN KELLO G G I N S T I T U T E F OR I NT ERNAT I ONA L S T UDI ES

Scott Mainwaring, series editor The University of Notre Dame Press gratefully thanks the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies for its support in the publication of titles in this series. Brian S. McBeth Dictatorship and Politics: Intrigue, Betrayal, and Survival in Venezuela, 1908–1935 (2008) Pablo Policzer The Rise and Fall of Repression in Chile (2009) Frances Hagopian, ed. Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America (2009) Marcelo Bergman and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Criminality, Public Security, and the Challenge to Democracy in Latin America (2009) Matthew R. Cleary The Sources of Democratic Responsiveness in Mexico (2010) Leah Anne Carroll Violent Democratization: Social Movements, Elites, and Politics in Colombia’s Rural War Zones, 1984–2008 (2011) Timothy J. Power and Matthew M. Taylor, eds. Corruption and Democracy in Brazil: The Struggle for Accountability (2011) Ana María Bejarano Precarious Democracies: Understanding Regime Stability and Change in Colombia and Venezuela (2011) Carlos Guevara Mann Political Careers, Corruption, and Impunity: Panama’s Assembly, 1984–2009 (2011) Gabriela Ippolito-­O’Donnell The Right to the City: Popular Contention in Contemporary Buenos Aires (2012) Barry S. Levitt Power in the Balance: Presidents, Parties, and Legislatures in Peru and Beyond (2012) Douglas Chalmers and Scott Mainwaring, eds. (2012) Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies: Essays in Honor of Alfred Stepan José Murilo de Carvalho (2012) Formation of Souls: Imagery of the Republic in Brazil For a complete list of titles from the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, see http://www.undpress.nd.edu

Roots of

Brazil Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Translated by

G. Harvey Summ Foreword by

Pedro Meira Monteiro

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

English translation copyright © 2012 by the University of Notre Dame Published by the University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First published in Brazil as Raizes do Brasil in 1936. Published by Companhia das Letras, 1995. Translated by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de, 1902–1982. [Raízes do Brasil. English] Roots of Brazil / Sérgio Buarque de Holanda ; translated by G. Harvey Summ ; foreword by Pedro Meira Monteiro. p. cm. — (From the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies) “First published in Brazil as Raizes do Brasil in 1936; published by Companhia das Letras, 1995”—T.p. verso. “[This] translation is from the 26th printing (1995) of Raizes do Brasil”—T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-02613-4 (paper : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-268-02613-0 (paper : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-268-07626-9 (web pdf) 1. Brazil—Civilization.  I. Title. F2510.H65813   2012 981—dc23 2012025737 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and ­durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

This translation of Roots of Brazil was published with support from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture; we are grateful to

Francisco Weffort for his support while he was Minister of Culture. —— The translation is from the 26th printing (1995) of Raízes do Brasil. —— Translation edited by Daniel E. Colón, Rebecca DeBoer, Julia Sendor, and Scott Mainwaring.

Contents Foreword: Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?  ix Pedro Meira Monteiro The Significance of Roots of Brazil (1967); Postscript (1986)  xxi Antonio Candido Preface to the Second Edition of 1948; Preface to the Third Edition of 1956  xxxvii Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Note to the Translation  xxxix Daniel E. Colón ————— Roots of Brazil Chapter 1.  European Frontiers  1 Chapter 2.  Work and Adventure  13 Chapter 3.  The Rural Heritage  43 Chapter 4.  Sowers and Builders  65 Chapter 5.  The Cordial Man  111 Chapter 6.  A New Era  123 Chapter 7.  Our Revolution  137 ————— Afterword: Roots of Brazil and Afterwards  157 Evaldo Cabral de Mello Notes to Roots of Brazil 163 Index 183

Foreword Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?

An English translation of this book has been long awaited and finally comes at an important juncture, now that Brazil’s economy and culture have become so prominent in the world. And yet, in one’s urgency to understand that country, why read a book written almost eighty years ago? On the one hand, Roots of Brazil, first published in 1936 and substantially revised in subsequent editions, is one of those works that shapes its readers’ imagination, a book that in a certain sense “invents” its country, serving as a mirror in which, while seeking their own image, Brazilian readers have also found their own attitudes and inclinations. On the other hand, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s book functions not only as a fixed portrait that preserves a scene from the past but also as a bright surface that can reflect each new historical moment. It is true that its vocabulary is dated and that the author’s imagination is often guided by broad questions about national and regional identity that were typical of the early decades of the twentieth century in Latin America. Even so, this book retains its freshness, as if it contained the secret to the unresolved impasses that are still so provocative whenever questions are raised about Brazil’s place in the family of nations—that is, whenever Brazil is thought of as a country that might represent the “future,” its own future and perhaps the future of all countries. But what can the international reader expect from this book? A simple and yet equivocal answer would be that readers outside Brazil ix

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will find in it everything that distinguishes Brazilians from other nations, as if the national traits that the book postulates were irreducible features that one should grasp in order then, and only then, to understand the unique complexity of Brazilian society. In that case, the book would contain the keys to an understanding of that strange entity known as “the Brazilian.” However, another way of answering the question about the readability of Roots of Brazil would be to suppose that it is precisely outside of Brazil that a reader less haunted by notions about national identity could break free of the tautology that Brazil is understandable only on the basis of Brazilian experience. As Tom Jobim is claimed to have once said, “Brazil is not for beginners.” Perhaps that quip by the great musician of the bossa nova is valid, but the fact is that “beginning” to understand Brazil (since whenever we begin we are beginners) is also a way of seeing the shortcomings in all theories of national identity. The reader will soon discover that the “roots” in the title, unlike what one might suppose at first glance, do not point toward a single origin or even toward a necessary beginning. Quite the opposite: these are loose, contradictory, multiple roots that may point toward different figures that are sometimes closer and sometimes more distant, as the book proceeds to analyze how Brazilian history has been shaped: by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the European, the Hispanic American, the North American, the Native American, the African, the Asian, and so on. But what does Roots of Brazil focus on? Proceeding on the basis of a concept that itself is rather fluid—the “European frontiers”— Sérgio Buarque de Holanda suggests a basic paradox: certain forms of life and political association brought from Iberian Europe encountered in America a terrain very different from the one where they originated, which has produced the sensation that, on the level of culture, “we remain exiles in our own land,” according to a formula and a feeling that run through Brazilian literature from the nineteenth century on.1 We should not take for granted such a feeling of displacement, which might remind a Brazilian reader of the anthropophagus metaphor of Oswald de Andrade (for whom it was better

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to devour the European Other than have it serve us as a mirror), and may remind an English-­speaking reader of the transatlantic character of the fiction of Henry James, for example. While interrogating the country, Roots of Brazil also leads the reader’s imagination to work on a transatlantic level, because the more the search is for Brazil, the more one glimpses the Iberian Peninsula, or even Africa. Iberia is a peninsula that Sérgio Buarque de Holanda sees as a “transition zone” between Europe and Africa, echoing the initial thesis of another book fundamental for an understanding of Brazil: The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre.2 From this border region that is the Iberian Peninsula—a “contact zone,” in the words of Mary Louise Pratt3 —come two of the great colonizing forces of the modern era, the Spanish and the Portuguese, whose empires mark the history of an America profoundly different from Puritan America. Like Gilberto Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda takes North American society as a reference for understanding Brazil. But unlike Freyre, who actually visited the United States in the 1920s and came to see a reflection of his Brazilian Northeast in the “Deep South,” Buarque de Holanda was working, in the 1930s, with an entirely imaginary country: the United States he sets in counterpoint to Brazil derives from various readings, many of them suspicious with regard to the civilizing example set by North American historical experience. The reader of Roots of Brazil will see that the “cordial man”—the most important concept in the book—is a kind of anti-­American, not because he hates the United States, but because he is the exact opposite of the person who, in protecting his private life, sees it as inviolable, hiding all torments and secrets within the sacred inscrutable space of his status as an individual. In contrast to the North American, the cordial man is the person who refuses all restraints, as well as all protective mechanisms, with regard to society and to the Other. In the Brazilian case, the public sphere would instead be the place for possible celebration of the proximity of bodies and souls. Intuitively, who can fail to recognize, in this kind of celebration, the alegria [joy]

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repeatedly attributed to Brazilians, backed up by an endless string of stereotypes? It is true that stereotypes always answer to real experiences, and it is no accident that the land of the cordial man is also the land of soccer and Carnival—essential experiences that, in their own way, question the limits of the pacts of civilization, exalting, in the final analysis, the porosity of the social body. The “cordial man,” as concept and as metaphor, has its origin in a dialogue between the Brazilian modernist poet Ribeiro Couto and the Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes, who was his country’s ambassador in Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s and whose Monterrey: Correo Literario de Alfonso Reyes contains the first mention, made by Ribeiro Couto, of the “cordial man.”4 But we may suppose that, beyond any strictly Latin American debate, this concept of cordiality arises from a problematical encounter with the United States, a country that had already provided a similar matrix for Max Weber’s thoughts about the modern world. It is well known that The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism would be inconceivable without the proverbs of Benjamin Franklin and their guiding spirit, based on a restriction of mundane pleasures and a severe adherence to a lay work ethic. So here we find, in reverse, the traits of the cordial man, who never lets himself be taken over by such a work ethic. It is as if, when faced by the imperious need for endless extenuating labor, Macunaíma—the anti-­hero created by Mário de Andrade in 1928, in a novel of central importance in modern Brazilian literature—were to step forth and exclaim, with utter shamelessness, ai, que preguiça! (Oh, how lazy I feel!).5 From the “cordial” point of view, it is not a question of merely setting up an ethic refractory to work, but rather a question of creating a social pact based on the possibility of a space for games and ludic interaction. Here we see that Carnival and soccer can be much more than simple escape mechanisms, because they function as markers for the play of society, creating a space where the rules of coexistence are governed in a new way, though strictly respected within that field.6 If the “cordial man” can bring something of importance into contemporary debates, it would be the reminder that all political pacts are also games, and that their rules may change

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without causing any setbacks in civilization. In short, Roots of Brazil can suggest the possibility of other political pacts that have no basis in values dear to North American liberal traditions. Even so, the cordial man is not simply a “contribution to civilization,” as stated in Ribeiro Couto’s celebratory remark, which Buarque de Holanda imbues with deep ambiguity when he refers to it in Roots of Brazil. The shaping of public space is problematical and precarious wherever the values of cordiality prevail and whenever the political ethic is based on the well-­being of a small family nucleus that serves only a circle of friends and beneficiaries instead of some abstract “collectivity.” The obstacles to the establishment of public space in Brazil (which may reflect similar problems in Hispanic America, of course, and not be unique to Brazil) are illuminatingly formulated in this book. Drawing on Hegel’s reading of Sophocles’ Antigone, Buarque de Holanda sees in the conflict between Antigone and Creon a clash between family values and civic values, between a circle of acquaintances and the abstraction of the polis, and, in short, between the cordial man and the citizen. This impasse is still unresolved today and may remain so for a very long time to come: in Brazil, the politician, as representative of larger groups, is not always able to free himself from personal commitments. In other words, the man does not yield to the political persona, and the very idea of representation loses a great deal of its complexity, because, when the cordial man prevails, no masks (good or bad) can be maintained. Like Antigone when she was forbidden to bury her brother, the cordial man is always ready to violate the needs of the community, remaining an individual loyal to his family, but never a good citizen. In this tragic conflict, as read by Hegel, loyalty to family is the obverse of betrayal of polis. When discussing traits that might be defined as “psychological,” Buarque de Holanda is in fact enabling a discussion of a political kind, because his problem—so pressing during the period between the two World Wars—was the position and role of the individual when faced with the imperious demands of the collectivity. Roots of Brazil was written during the rise of populismo in Latin America (a term whose semantic field is rather different from that of “populism”

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in English), and in that sense it is interesting to think of paradigmatic cases such as those of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil and Juan Domingo Perón (later) in Argentina, while noting how, in both these cases, political models are forged that short-­circuit the processes of representation. After all, such models presuppose a certain degree of commitment between leader and people that, in the final analysis, relegates to a secondary level all the mediations of liberal politics and the whole chain of representations rendered sacred by that tradition.7 So, it would be no exaggeration to claim that the “cordial man” is also a way of dramatizing political impasses in a world divided between the phantoms of totalitarianism, which Buarque de Holanda strongly rejected, and the values of liberalism, which he did not completely support, either—particularly in 1936, when, in the first edition of Roots of Brazil, he still criticized the “fraudulent” character of the liberal mythology, an adjective that significantly disappears in later editions after the Second World War.8 In stressing here Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s “anti-­American” side, I do not mean to imply that he resisted all suggestions coming from the North. Furthermore, it is well to recall that the historiological field into which he would venture in the 1940s has to do precisely with the idea of the frontier, which is so central to Roots of Brazil. Also, in his later essays, the figure of the bandeirante who advances into the sertão becomes more prominent, whereby the Brazilian historian enters into a clear dialogue with Frederick Jackson Turner’s theses concerning the conquest of the North American West.9 Similarly, while writing in newspapers up to and throughout the 1950s as an accomplished literary critic, Buarque de Holanda entered into a productive debate with the Anglo-­American New Criticism, as well as with the great European critics who had contributed to the creation of modern Romance studies, without which the present departments of Spanish and Portuguese in American and British universities would be inconceivable.10 There was no simple resistance to the North American liberal model, but, even so, it is interesting to read Roots of Brazil today as an anguished and perhaps still valid question about other possible models for the political pact. It is as if, in portraying the cordial man

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and his incomprehension of the impersonality of modern politics, Buarque de Holanda were dreaming, albeit ambiguously, about that noble lineage in Latin American thought that, starting in the fin de siècle with the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodó and the Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, defended the idea that the future of civilization lay in the South and not in the North. With all due recognition of the differences among the countless authors included in that lineage, it is clear that all of them were enchanted with the proposal that the dwelling place of the Spirit would not be the land of “Yankee utilitarianism” but rather Iberian America—not just Hispanic America but also Brazil.11 In the Shakespearian terms as renewed by Darío and later by Rodó, Ariel, spirit of the air, would triumph over Caliban and reign supreme in Iberian America. And we know how that same reference would produce, in the 1960s, a series of Calibanesque rereadings that postulate the unsuspected superiority of the “savages” of the South over the arrogance of the North: those were the times of Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, in the context of the French Caribbean, and of Roberto Fernández Retamar in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, all of whom were involved in a broad debate concerning the supposed advantages of a model for civilization that might develop on the margins and in the shadow of the so-­called “developed” world. The threads for disentangling this enormous skein, which also includes Roots of Brazil, can be found in Richard Morse’s polemical book Prospero’s Mirror, where the suggestion becomes unequivocally clear: “For two centuries a North American mirror has been held aggressively to the South, with unsettling consequences. The time has perhaps come to turn the reflecting surface around. At the moment when Anglo America may be experiencing a failure of nerve, it seems timely to set before it the historical experience of Ibero America, not now as a case study in frustrated development but as the living out of a civilizational option.”12 It is important to note the triangulation that makes it possible to read Roots of Brazil not only as a question about Brazil’s position with regard to North America but also as an inquiry into its similarities and differences with regard to Hispanic America. Ultimately, as the reader will see, the initial postulation of an “Iberian” individual will

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yield, throughout the book, to a string of differentiations that culminate in the contrast between urban planning in Hispanic America and the desleixo [laxity] of Portuguese colonial cities—a theme, furthermore, that will return, broadened by a luxuriant erudition, in the analysis of Edenic motifs in the colonization of the tropics, in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s masterpiece, Visão do Paraíso.13 One last word about method and mode of writing in Roots of Brazil. While it is true that Buarque de Holanda incessantly sets up broad categories—such as the “Puritan,” the “Spaniard,” the “Portuguese”—thus inviting the reader to imagine lines that join large social groups, at the same time he blurs those lines, like a Penelope tying together the threads of explanation only to untie them immediately, so that at each step a new design may take shape and a new identity be revealed, in fleeting illustrations. It will be clear, however, that these great theoretical constructions (beginning with the “cordial man”) are only precarious approximations of complex historical realities that remain irreducible to clear and conclusive patterns. The indebtedness of the author of Roots of Brazil to Max Weber’s “ideal types” is obvious, particularly when we recall that, like all good fictions, ideal types condense the traits by means of which we gain access to what lies beneath the visible surface of human actions, whose cultural and historical meaning will elude any descriptive or cumulative summation. It is well, however, to recall that for Buarque de Holanda, these ideal types take on a very special charge in their “dialectic interaction,” in the words of the great critic Antonio Candido, whose preface to Roots of Brazil has been added to all Brazilian editions of the book since 1969 and which the English reader will also find here. Finally, and returning to the botanical, organicist metaphor that lends the book much of its flavor, it is no exaggeration to suppose that this formative essay by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda may now coincide with the sensitivity in our time to a world that cannot be reduced either to clear origins or to explanatory “centers” that allow us to imagine fixed identities. If the critique of the idea of a stable center or origin pulses at the heart of contemporary intellectual adventures, then the reader of today, whether more or less “postmodern,” “post– colonial,” “deconstructionist,” and so on, may here rest assured, since

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he or she will feel quite at home, even while reading a book whose title features the outmoded word “roots.” Pedro Meira Monteiro

Princeton University, May 2011

Translated from the Portuguese by James Irby Notes 1.  João Cezar de Castro Rocha, O exílio do homem cordial: Ensaios e revisões (Rio de Janeiro: Editora do Museu da República, 2004). Rocha’s book is forthcoming in English from the Davies Group, Publishers. 2.  Published in 1933 in Brazil under the title Casa-­grande & senzala, and in 1946 in English in the United States: Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946). 3.  Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession, no. 91 (New York: MLA, 1991): 33–40. 4.  Rui Ribeiro Couto: “El hombre cordial, producto americano,” as cited by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in Raízes do Brasil, ed. Ricardo Benzaquen de Araújo and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006), 397–98. 5.  Concerning Macunaímic laziness in English and a suggestive comparison with Melville, see: Edgardo Dieleke, “Genealogies and Inquiries into Laziness from Macunaíma,” ellipsis: Journal of the American Portuguese Studies Association, vol. 5 (2007): 9–24. http://www.ellipsis-­apsa.com/. 6. In Portuguese, of special interest is José Miguel Wisnik’s broad review of the great debates of the 1930s in Brazil, with Sérgio Buarque de Holanda at the center. José Miguel Wisnik, Veneno remédio: o futebol e o Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008). For a condensed English version of the principal theses of this book, see José Miguel Wisnik, “The Riddle of Brazilian Soccer: Reflections on the Emancipatory Dimensions of Culture,” Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, issue 73, vol. 39, no. 2 (2006): 198–209. On Carnival, the essential reference in English is Roberto DaMatta, Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991). 7.  Even though this is not the place for a discussion of the theoretical intricacies of “populism,” it is important to remember that the idea of a

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“populist” as a sort of demagogue is not complex enough to explain a phenomenon like this. In any case, for the purpose of reading Roots of Brazil it is useful to note that populism is quite often regarded by theorists as an answer to a lack of stability in the political order: “Populist practices emerge out of the failure of existing social and political institutions to confine and regulate political subjects into a relatively stable social order. It is the language of politics when there can be no politics as usual: a mode of identification characteristic of times of unsettlement and de-­alignment, involving the radical redrawing of social borders along lines other than those that had previously structured society. It is a political appeal that seeks to change the terms of political discourse, articulate new social relations, redefine political frontiers and constitute new identities.” Francisco Panizza, “Introduction,” Populism and the Mirror of Democracy, ed. Francisco Panizza (London: Verso, 2005), 9. 8.  See Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raizes do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1936), 157. 9.  Concerning the theme of the excursions into the sertão, see Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, “The Monsoons,” The Bandeirantes: The Historical Role of the Brazilian Pathfinders, ed. Richard M. Morse (New York: Alfred  A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, 1965), 152–66. Concerning Turner’s importance for Sérgio Buarque and frontier studies, see Robert Wegner, A conquista do Oeste: a fronteira na obra de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (Belo Horizonte: Editora da UFMG, 2000). 10.  Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, O espírito e a letra: estudos de crítica literária, ed. Antonio Arnoni Prado, 2 vols. (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996). An excellent anthology in Spanish is Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Historia y Literatura: Antología, ed. José Ortiz Monasterio (México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2007). 11.  The inter-­American dialogues of those times, which include Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s own work, are the subject of Robert Patrick Newcomb’s Nossa and Nuestra América: Inter-­American Dialogues (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2012). In that same vein, see Silviano Santiago, As raízes e o labirinto da América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2006), and Raúl Antelo, “Rizomas del Brasil,” Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies, vol. 5 (Fall 2007): 211–25. For an inclusive overview of the critical fortunes of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, see Pedro Meira Monteiro and João Kennedy Eugênio, eds., Sérgio Buarque de Holanda: Perspectivas (Campinas/Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Unicamp/EdUERJ, 2008). 12. Curiously, Morse’s book, originally written in English, has been published in Spanish in 1982 (México, DF: Siglo XXI) and in Portuguese

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in 1988 (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras), but never in English. I use here Simon Romero’s translation in his obituary of Morse in the New York Times. Simon Romero, “Richard McGee Morse, 78, Latin America Expert,” New York Times, April 28, 2001. I have studied the relation between Richard Morse and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in a text not yet translated into English, whose theses are partially developed in another essay, available, however, in Spanish. See Pedro Meira Monteiro, “As Raízes do Brasil no Espelho de Próspero,” Novos Estudos CEBRAP, no. 83 (2009): 159–82. See also Pedro Meira Monteiro, “En busca de América,” Prismas: Revista de historia intelectual, no. 11 (2007): 43–55. 13.  Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visão do Paraíso: Os motivos edênicos no descobrimento e na colonização do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010). Originally published in 1958, this book appeared in Spanish translation in 1987: Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visión del paraíso: Motivos edénicos en el descubrimiento y colonización del Brasil (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1987). Concerning the relationship between literary criticism and historical analysis in the author’s intellectual life, see Thiago Nicodemo, Urdidura do vivido: Visão do Paraíso e a obra de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda nos anos 1950 (São Paulo: EdUSP, 2008).

The Significance of Roots of Brazil (1967)

At a certain stage of life, we can assess the past without the danger of becoming complacent. Our testimony becomes an assessment of the experience of many others, of all those who belong to what is called a generation. At first we consider ourselves different from one another, but gradually we become so similar that we lose our individuality and take on the general characteristics of our era. Assessing the past, then, is not speaking of one’s self; rather it is speaking of those who participated in a certain set of interests and with a worldview at the particular moment in time that one desires to evoke. People who today [1967] are around fifty years old were deeply influenced in their understanding of Brazil by three books: The Masters and the Slaves, by Gilberto Freyre, published when we were in middle school; Roots of Brazil, by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, published when we were in high school; and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, by Caio Prado Júnior, published when we were in college. These books, which we consider key, express the mentality linked to the intellectual radicalism and social analysis that burst out after the 1930 Revolution, one even the Estado Novo, or New State (1937–45), could not smother. Alongside these books, the work of Oliveira Viana, which is penetrating and anticipatory in so many ways, already seems passé, since it is full of ideological prejudice and an excessive desire to adapt reality to conventional purposes. For us, it was precisely an unconventional intuition that inspired the unrestrained writing of The Masters and the Slaves, with its frank xxi

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handling of sexual life under patriarchal society and the decisive importance it attributes to the slave in forming our most intimate lifestyles. Today’s young readers may not understand—especially considering the author’s later objectives—the revolutionary power and the liberating impact of this great book. With its unique exposition resulting from a seemingly improvised talent, it bombarded the reader with volumes of information, which led to totally new viewpoints on the Brazil of that period. In this respect, The Masters and the Slaves is a bridge between the naturalism of the old interpreters of our society, such as Sílvio Romero, Euclides da Cunha, and even Oliveira Viana, and the sociological viewpoints that dominated from 1940 onward. I state this in view of the author’s preoccupation with problems of biological origin (race, sexual aspects of family life, ecological balance, nutrition), which served as a basis for the approach inspired by U.S. cultural anthropology, disseminated by Freyre in Brazil. Three years later, Roots of Brazil appeared, conceived and written in a completely different way. A short, discrete book, with fewer citations, it had less of an impact on the imagination of the young. Nevertheless, its qualitative success was immediate, and it became a classic from birth. We will shortly explain the reasons for its success. It was inspired by different sources, and its perspectives were different. To the young, it furnished important indicators for understanding the meaning of certain political positions of that moment, which were dominated by disbelief in traditional liberalism and by the search for new solutions: integralism on the right, and socialism and communism on the left. The author’s attitude, apparently detached and almost remote, was conditioned by those contemporaneous tensions. To help understand those tensions, he offered an analysis of the past. His theoretical support was connected to the new social history of the French, to the cultural sociology of the Germans, and to certain elements of sociological and ethnological theory, which were also unfamiliar to us. Its general tone had a parsimonious elegance and a rigor of composition concealed under an unconcerned and at times subtly digressive rhythm, which brought Georg Simmel to mind, and which seemed to us a countermeasure to Brazilian exaggeration.

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Different from the two other books, The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil appeared nine years after the first, six years after the second, and during the completely repressive and reformative Estado Novo. Caio Prado Júnior did not disguise the work involved in writing, and he was not concerned with beauty or stylistic expression. By drawing on colonial sources to expose a very solid, practical, and economic way of thinking, he provided the first great example of interpreting the past in terms of the fundamental realities of production, distribution, and consumption. He did so neither through romanticism nor with a disposition to accept categories bathed in a certain qualitative aura—like “feudalism” or “patriarchal family”—but rather simply through the laborious unveiling of material substrata. The result was a text, factual in nature and entirely removed from essayism (notable in the other two), which aimed to convince readers by the sheer weight of the data and argument. The work was interpreted along the lines of historical materialism, which in our environment was an extraordinary lever for intellectual and political renewal. It presented, for the first time, historical materialism as a means of capturing and organizing reality, a means that was detached from partisan commitment or immediate practical purpose. To its author, we already owed a short book from 1934 that has been a revealing shock, since it was the first attempt to synthesize Brazil’s history based on Marxism: The Political Evolution of Brazil. As I evoke these intellectual influences on the youth from the 1933–42 period, perhaps I focus somewhat restrictively on those who adopted, like myself, leftist positions: consistently militant communists and socialists or those participating only because of ideas. For us, these three authors offered elements of a vision of Brazil that seemed to fit in with our point of view. They denounced racial prejudice, placed greater value on people of color, criticized “patriarchal” and agrarian origins, showed appreciation for economic conditions, and demystified liberal rhetoric. But perhaps these authors meant something else to the young on the right, who, if I remember well, tended to reject them, to look on them with suspicion, or, to the extent that it was possible, interpret at least the first to fit their purposes. Our

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antagonists preferred certain older authors with the methodological orientations of the naturalist or (in the broad sense) the positivist, such as Oliveira Viana and Alberto Torres, from whom they drew arguments for a hierarchical and authoritarian vision of society, one that Sérgio Buarque de Holanda criticized in Roots of Brazil. When reflecting dispassionately on those adversaries of our generation, mainly the integralists, we considered them—despite the personal esteem we eventually held for some of them—representatives of a pernicious political and social philosophy, a local manifestation of fascism. However, time has shown that for quite a few young people, integralism was more than fanaticism and a form of reactionary resistance. It was a kind of widespread interest in Brazilian matters, an attempt to replace a narrow, liberal façade with something more alive. That explains the number of integralists who moved toward leftist positions—from the premature schism of Jeová Mota [Federal deputy from Ceará and member of the integralist movement] to the defections of the 1940s, both during and after World War II. At the time of the 1964 coup, ex‑integralists who were identified with the most advantageous positions participated in the attempted social reforms. These were ex‑integralists who adopted various hues of the left, including the “positive,” baptized as such by one of the most brilliant among them, as well as the openly revolutionary attitudes. Meanwhile, on the other side, some among those who had formerly made up the left ended up becoming extremely active tools of reactionaries. These notes seek to illustrate the balancez [swings] that happen among generations and to contextualize the intellectual atmosphere in which Roots of Brazil appeared and functioned. In Latin American thought, reflections on social reality were marked, ever since Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888), by a sense of contrast and even of opposites—in which the history of men and institutions is presented as a function of antagonistic conditions. Sarmiento’s contrast between “civilization and barbarity” forms the framework of his Facundo (1845) and, decades later, of Rebellion in the Backlands (1902) by Euclides da Cunha (1866–1909). These

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thinkers first describe the two categories and then show the resulting conflict; and we see how individuals line themselves up according to the roles they play. In the literature of the Romantic period, contrary views were often interpreted as complete opposites; the man of nature and instinct, especially in the extreme form of the Indian, seemed more authentic and representative. In regional realist literature of the period, however, the writer goes along with the thinkers, as we see in Rómulo Gallegos’s mediocre and expressive Doña Bárbara, which ends with the ritual triumph of civilization. Roots of Brazil is built upon an admirable methodology of opposites, which broadens and deepens the old dichotomy in Latin Ameri­can thinking. On several levels, the author’s thinking is based on exploring diametrically opposing concepts; however, enlightenment does not result from the practical or theoretical choice between these concepts, as in Sarmiento or Euclides da Cunha, but rather from their dialectic interaction. The vision of a given aspect of historical reality is realized, in the strongest sense of the word, by simultaneously approaching both extremes; one concept evokes the other, the two interact, and the result yields a great power of enlightenment. In this process, Buarque de Holanda uses Max Weber’s typological criterion, but he modifies it to focus on pairs, not on pluralities of types. This allows him to put aside the descriptive mode and treat them dynamically, emphasizing their interaction in the historical process. A natural arrangement based on mutually exclusive pairs is thus tempered by a more comprehensive vision, taken partially in positions of the Hegelian type: “history has never given us the example of a social movement that did not contain the germs of its own negation—a negation that necessarily falls within the same space” (chapter 7). Using this tool, Buarque de Holanda analyzes the fundamentals of our historic destiny, the “roots” to which the metaphor of the title alludes, in a roving style of writing that leads us to very diverse manifestations. Despite his generally unified and rigorous approach, he does not mind making digressions or parentheses. Work and adventure; method and caprice; rural and urban; bureaucracy and dictatorship; and impersonal norms and affectionate impulses: the author accentuates these pairs, as exhibited in the Brazilian way of life or in

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the social and political structures, to analyze and understand Brazil and Brazilians. Chapter 1, “European Frontiers”—which already shows a taste for a dynamic approach and a sense of complexity—speaks of “Iberia” to encompass Spain and Portugal as a unit, which the author will partially separate later on. For example, when he analyzes the colonization of America, he shows the eventual differences between the two countries. He ends up, however, relating the entire colonization process as a single episode. This prelude refers to the most remote origins of the traits he then studies: those of traditional personalism, which lead to the slackness of institutions and the lack of social cohesion. In this chapter, he reflects on a topic of current interest, recalling that if these traits, considered defects in our time, always existed, then the nostalgia for a hypothetically more ordered past makes no sense. He observes that “really active periods were never purposely traditionalist.” He goes on to connect this topic to the absence of the principle of hierarchy and the glorification of personal prestige in relation to privilege on the Iberian Peninsula. Consequently, the nobility remained open to merit or to success, shedding the exclusivity still maintained by other countries. This rather easy access abetted a generally exaggerated taste for nobility. (“In Portugal, we are all nobles,” writes Fradique Mendes in one of his letters.) In reference to this old habit, the author alludes, for the first time, to one of the fundamental themes of the book: the rejection of regular work and utilitarian activity, which leads to a lack of organization, by the Iberian, who does not renounce his wishes for the benefit of the group or of principles. Faithful to his method, Buarque de Holanda shows us the paradoxical consequence: the rejection of individuality through blind obedience, the only alternative for those who cannot conceive of discipline based on affective ties, and which is usually manifested by fulfilling tasks out of a sense of duty. “The desire to command and the propensity to carry out orders are equally peculiar to them. Dictatorships and the Holy Office seem to be aspects as typical of their character as the inclination to anarchy and disorder.”

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The next chapter, “Work and Adventure,” contains the basic typology of the book. It differentiates the worker and the adventurer, who represent two opposing ethics: one seeks new experiences, adjusts to temporary conditions, and prefers to discover rather than to consolidate; the other values security and effort, and accepts long‑term rewards. “Between these two types there is not really so much an absolute contrast as there is a radical lack of understanding. Both, to a greater or lesser degree, often coexist, and, clearly, neither the adventurer nor the worker really exists in pure form outside the world of ideas.” For the interpretation of our history, the American continent was colonized by men of the first group, leaving the “ ‘worker,’ in the aforementioned meaning, a very limited, or almost nonexistent, role.” The Spanish, the Portuguese, and even the English—who gained the conventional profile by which we know them only in the nineteenth century—were the adventurers, who did not appreciate the virtues of stubbornness and dreary effort. Given the circumstances in Brazil, however, the author maintains that those characteristics were positive, and he denies that the Dutch could have accomplished here what some dreamers imagine. The Portuguese showed exceptional adaptability, even while functioning “negligently and somewhat carelessly.” In the face of existing diversity, the spirit of adventure was “the preeminently harmonizing element.” In this sense, the planting of cane was a form of adventurous occupation of space; it was not the equivalent of a “strictly agrarian civilization,” but rather a primitive adaptation to the environment that revealed a low technical ca­ pacity and a docility vis-­à-­vis nature. Slavery, a necessary requirement for these conditions, heightened the effect of elements conspiring against the spirit of work by killing the need for the free man to cooperate and organize, and simultaneously subjecting him to the softening influence of a primitive people. “The Rural Heritage,” the third chapter, begins with the disregard of agriculture and analyzes the framework of rural life in the formation of Brazilian society. Rural life reaches a crisis when slavery, its foundation, declines; and since it is based on values and practices connected with agricultural establishments, it conflicts with an urban

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mentality. At this point, the book defines a second basic dichotomy: the urban‑rural relationship, which distinguishes, at various levels, the face of Brazil. In the past, everything depended on rural civilizations, even the intellectuals and politicians, themselves extensions of their planter fathers, who “took the luxury” of being opposed to tradition. The social progress that stemmed from their activities ended, but not before it liquidated these intellectuals’ own class by destroying its base, namely, slave labor. That is the story of the fever for material accomplishment in the 1850s: by virtue of the Eusébio Law, which prohibited slave trafficking, idle capital was channeled toward technical improvements appropriate to urban civilization, amounting to the first stage of the “the decisive triumph of urban merchants and speculators.” This first impetus, like that of Mauá, failed because of “the radical incompatibility between lifestyles copied from more socially advanced nations, on the one hand, and Brazil’s centuries‑old patriarchalism and personalism, on the other.” The great importance of the dominant rural groups, fortified by economic and family autarchy, is represented in a mentality that overvalues “talent,” or those intellectual activities not connected with material labor and which seem to stem from an innate characteristic, such as nobility. In this respect, Buarque de Holanda unmasks the extremely reactionary position of José da Silva Lisboa, who, by a singular mistake, has been considered a progressive thinker. The natural and social landscape was marked by the dominance of the countryside over the city, which remained a mere appendage. The plantation was linked to an idea of nobility, and it was the place of permanent activity located alongside empty cities—it was an extreme ruralism due to the will of the colonizer, rather than a product of the environment. The allusion to the city leads to the connection with chapter 4, “Sowers and Builders,” which begins with the study of the importance of the city as an instrument of dominance, and of the fact of its having been founded for that purpose. Here we arrive at a moment that marks a difference between the Spaniard and the Portuguese, who were initially characterized together.

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The “builder,” the Spaniard, emphasized the character of the city as an enterprise of reason, contrary to the natural order, and he rigorously anticipated the plans of cities that he founded in America. Stylistically, these plans recalled a triumph of the straight line and, in most cases, were meant for interior regions, following the Spaniard’s intention of establishing a stable extension of the mother country. Guided by a slave trading policy, the Portuguese were chiefly tied to the coast until the eighteenth century. They were “sowers” of irregular cities, which were born and raised by chance, and which rebelled against abstract rules. This type of urban settlement “does not contradict nature’s framework, and its silhouette is linked to the line of the landscape.” For the author, that kind of settlement seems to be the result of a simple realism that avoids imagination and rules except when they become routine and can be accepted effortlessly. From this comes the prudent, non-­illusory character of Portuguese expansion, which (we think) introduced a new contradictory element into the spirit of adventure defined earlier: a peculiar “laxity” within the sower’s whim. The Portuguese’s interest in conquest was, above all, an attachment to a way of making a quick fortune without regular work, which was never their virtue. Easy social climbing gave the Portuguese bourgeoisie aspirations and attitudes of nobility—and it aimed to reach nobility by rejecting the opportunity to create a specific mindset like that of other countries. The chapter on the “cordial man” deals with characteristics that, as a consequence of traits mentioned above, are particular to us. Formed within the contours of the family structure, Brazilians have inherited the weight of “affectionate relationships,” subsequently complicating their normal membership in other groups. That is why Brazilians do not take pleasure in the impersonal relationships characteristic of the state and why they try to reduce them to a personal and intimate level. Wherever the family is important, especially in its traditional form, modern urban society is hard to create. In Brazil, urban development caused a “social disequilibrium with lasting effects.” And at this point Buarque de Holanda uses, I think for the first time in Brazil, the concepts of “patrimonialism” and “bureaucracy,” which we

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owe to Max Weber, in order to clarify the problem and provide a sociological basis for the “cordial man,” an expression taken from Ribeiro Couto. The “cordial man” does not presuppose goodness, but rather, only the predominance of apparently affective behavior. Such behavior is not necessarily profound or sincere, but it does stand in opposition to ritualistic politeness. The “cordial man” is viscerally inadequate to engage in impersonal relationships that derive from the position and the function of the individual, rather than from the individual’s personal and family identity or from relationships born in the intimacy of primary groups. Chapter 6, “A New Era,” studies certain consequences, drawn from previous chapters, on the interrelationships of Brazilian society from the time of the royal family’s arrival, which caused the first shock to the old colonial patterns. Several important traits are connected with the so‑called “cordial mentality,” such as sociability, which is barely apparent and does not really become ingrained in the individual or help to build society. This leads to a new perspective on individualism, that is, one showing a reluctance to obey laws that contradict individualism. The incapacity to apply one’s self to an external objective is also linked to individualism. Regarding intellectuals, the author points out that they tend to be satisfied with knowledge for the sake of status and appearance, rather than for a concrete purpose. Since the nature of the objective is secondary, individuals change activities with a frequency that unmasks the roots of their search as one driven merely by personal satisfaction. This leads to overvaluing the liberal professions, which permit individual independence and lend themselves to superficial knowledge. Because of the crisis of old agrarian institutions, the members of the dominant classes easily move into such professions. They avoid any connection requiring direct work with concrete matters, which might hark back to servility. The author relates these factors to our traditional practice of making an impression, of exhibitionism, of improvisation, and of our lack of continual application. He interprets and links this last

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characteristic with the vogue of positivism in Brazil, a movement that was content with its unquestioned dogmas and that took its faith in ideas to extremes, even when its ideas were not applicable. The counterpart in political life was an ornamental liberalism (which really comes from the desire to reject uncomfortable au­ thority) and the absence of a truly democratic spirit. “Democracy in Brazil was always a lamentable misunderstanding. Rural and semifeudal aristocrats imported it and tried to accommodate it, wherever possible, to their rights and privileges, those same privileges that were the target of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy in the Old World.” Our “apparently reformist” movements have, in fact, been imposed from the top down by dominant groups. Chapter 7, “Our Revolution,” is quite compact, and one needs to read between the lines, since the text reduces explanations to a minimum. Its argument consists of suggesting (more than showing) how dissolving the traditional order leads to unresolved contradictions, which originate at the level of social structure and are manifested at the level of political institutions and ideas. One of the chapter’s assumptions, and perhaps its fundamental one, is that the transition from rural to urban, that is, to the domi­ nance of city culture, led to a transition in the Iberian tradition toward a new way of life, since the former depended essentially on agrarian institutions. That process consisted in “destroying our culture’s Iberian roots and replacing them with a new style. We may be deluding ourselves when we label this style American, but its characteristics are quickly becoming more marked in this hemisphere.” An important stage in this transformation was the transition from sugar cane to coffee, a crop linked to modern lifestyles. Past political models continue only as artifacts, for while they were adequate for a rural structure, they no longer have an economic base. Unlike the republic, which did not possess a solid foundation of the kind that existed in the colonial period, the empire was relatively harmonious. The impasse created was resolved merely by replacing rulers or by passing laws perfect in form. Oscillating between one pole and the other, we contradictorily tend toward an ideal administrative machinery, which ought to function as such automatically

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whether facing the impersonal virtue of the law or the most extreme personalism, which undoes it at every step. After arriving at this point, Buarque de Holanda completes his thinking about the conditions of democratic life in Brazil, giving the book a currency that in 1936 distinguished it from other studies of traditional society and aligned him with authors, such as Virgínio Santa Rosa, who were responding to our wishes to see reality clearly. For him, “our revolution,” which began in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, was the most dynamic phase in the dissolution of the old agrarian society, the basis of which the abolition of slavery removed once and for all. The revolution tried to liquidate the past, to adopt an urban rhythm, and to come to terms with the emerging, oppressed populations, the only ones with the capacity to revitalize society and give new meaning to political life. His supporting text in this case is provided by the lucid considerations of a foreign traveler, Herbert Smith, who, even in the time of the monarchy, spoke of the need for a “vertical revolution” rather than mere maneuvers “to bring stronger elements to the top, and forever destroy the old, diseased ones.” Although, according to Smith, the gentlemen of the dominant groups may be estimable, it is important to emphasize with respect to the members of the dominated groups that “physically they are the superiors of the upper class; mentally, they might be, if they had a chance.” Buarque de Holanda holds that the current events in Latin America are guided by this rupture in the oligarchical dominance. The advent of new sectors provides a unique situation to see ourselves “finally revoke the old colonial and patriarchal order, with all the moral, social, and political consequences that it implied and continues to imply.” And he adds: Partisans of a past on which distance already confers an idyllic hue will probably resist with increasing stubbornness such a movement’s complete realization. Depending on its degree of intensity, this resistance may be manifested in certain sentimental and mystical outpourings, limited more or less to the literary domain. However, its direct introduction into society may come

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about in ways that might limit or compromise hopes for any profound transformation. To the author, these reactionary‑like trends could very well take the form of the South American propensity toward dictatorship, a supreme form of personalism and arbitrariness that intervenes in the democratic process. Nevertheless, it seemed to Buarque de Holanda that we have conditions—the rejection of hierarchy, the relative absence of racial and color prejudice, and the very arrival of contemporary lifestyles—that would permit convergence toward democracy. Thirty years ago, Roots of Brazil introduced such elements to us, providing a basis for a profoundly important reflection. It was especially so because his method was based on an interplay of opposites and contrasts, which prevented a dogmatic approach and opened the field for a dialectical‑type meditation. Although other interpreters of our past were still especially concerned with aspects of biological nature and fascinated by the concept of “race,” which was inherited from the evolutionists, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda applied his analysis by using, with an acute sense of structure, perspectives from psychology and social history. In a period still bathed in an undisguised patriarchal nostalgia, he suggested, from a methodological point of view, that knowledge of the past must be linked to problems of the present. And, from a political point of view, he suggested that since our past was an obstacle, liquidating our “roots” was an imperative in historical development. Precisely when Portuguese contributions were being valued sentimentally, he understood the modern meaning of Brazilian development, showing that it would increasingly lose Iberian characteristics and head in directions opened up by urban and cosmopolitan civilization, which is best expressed by the Brazil of the immigrant, who has modified our traditional patterns for almost three quarters of a century. Finally, he gave us tools to discuss problems of organization without falling into praise for authoritarianism, and he contemporized our understanding

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of the dictator—previously interpreted in terms of fascism by the integralists (against whom a part of the book is openly directed) as well as by subscribers to other political tendencies—which shortly thereafter becomes a reality under the Estado Novo. He certainly affirmed that, at that moment, we were entering the acute phase in the crisis that was a decomposition of traditional society. The year was 1936. In 1937, there came the coup d’état and the advent of a formula, both rigid and conciliatory, that directed the transformation of economic structures toward industrialization. The Brazil of today is resting its branches and organizing the sap collected from these roots. Antonio Candido

São Paulo, December 1967

Postscript (1986) Fifty years after its publication, Roots of Brazil continues to be a great book full of suggestions and originality. In the preface written almost twenty years ago, I tried to define what it meant to my generation as a guide to understanding Brazil. Today, I maintain the same opinion and then some. In a later article, I explored an aspect of the book that, seemingly, was not highlighted: the political message. Reassessing the great trio of books [discussed in the earlier preface] from that point of view, I would say that The Masters and the Slaves, with its contradictions between conservative positions and certain progressive tendencies, represented an advanced stage of liberalism for our dominant classes. The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil represented Marxist ideology, using the worker as a reference point and, specifically, a creative Marxist, Brazilian‑style, which would be better clarified in later works by the same author. Roots of Brazil, a different and a curious case, expressed a little‑­ known, rarely posited, and under-­appreciated vein in our political and social thinking, which manifested itself either as latent, intermixed

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with, or as the exception to the predominant discourse of both liberals and conservatives. I speak of what could be called the potential radicalism of the middle classes, which in Sérgio’s case acquired a differentiated quality in its decided emphasis on the people. He may have been the first Brazilian thinker who abandoned the so‑called “illustrious” position according to which enlightened intellectuals, politicians, and rulers manage the interests and direct the activities of the people. A half century ago, he made it clear in Roots of Brazil that only the people themselves, by taking the initiative, could take charge of their destiny. That made him a consistent democratic radical, whose contribution was that a policy directed toward the people, along defined ideological lines appropriate to the conditions of Brazil, needed to be explored and developed. Thus I boldly repeat what I wrote in the 1967 preface: one of the strengths of Roots of Brazil was its ability to show how the study of the past is far from being an exercise in nostalgia, or a way to legitimize or simply confirm the existing order. It could instead be a weapon to open the way for great democratic movements that rely on the initiative of working people and do not confine them to the role of a stratagem, as is usually the case. Antonio Candido

São Paulo, August 1986

Preface to the Second Edition of 1948

First published in 1936, this book, in its current form, has been substantially modified from the original printing. To reproduce it without corrections would imply repeating thoughts and opinions that, for several reasons, have failed to satisfy me. If, at times, I have felt apprehension about radically revising the text, in which case it would be better to write a whole new book, I have not hesitated to drastically alter sections that needed corrections, fine-­tuning, or further development. Nonetheless, I have deliberately avoided the temptation to examine, in the final section of the work, specific problems that arose as a result of the events of the past decade—in particular, those related to the imposition of the dictatorial regime. To do so, it would be necessary to arbitrarily dispense with the historical context that encapsulated and, to some extent, was the impetus for the book, and that seemed neither possible nor desirable. On the other hand, I believe that the analysis developed in this work of our social and political realities of the past and present do not need to be revised in light of the aforementioned events. Regarding the relatively superficial corrections made for this current edition, further comments are in order. Two chapters, numbered 3 and 4, which were originally grouped in a single chapter entitled “The Agrarian Past,” became “The Rural Heritage” and “Sowers and Builders,” respectively—these titles more accurately reflect the content in the chapters, especially considering the current division. Based on my preference, the notes to the text were generally kept xxxvii

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as footnotes. However, the more extensive ones that could be read independently were placed at the end of selected chapters. All of the bibliographic references were then placed at the end of the book. S. B. H.

São Paulo, June 1947

Preface to the Third Edition of 1956 Despite some modifications that do not affect the content of the work in general, the present text is, in essence, that of the second edition of Roots of Brazil. Among the additions to the text are two fundamental aspects of the argument advanced by Cassiano Ricardo regarding the expression “the cordial man.” The objections of this renowned writer, as much as the explanations given in response, will hopefully serve to clarify this concept, which was subject to diverse critical interpretations. This third edition was further enriched by the inclusion of name and subject indexes. On the other hand, the very sensible suggestion of the editor to reincorporate the bibliographic references back into the notes was taken into account. Thus, the work cited list introduced in the second edition, which apparently led to some degree of confusion, was omitted. Finally, the more extensive notes placed at the end of chapters 2 and 4 as appendices remain, considering that they can stand independently from the text they accompany. S. B. H.

São Paulo, October 1955

Note to the Translation

Translation is an imperfect science and a precarious art. A translator takes on the uneasy task of having to interpret a work more meticulously than critics working in the original language, as well as that of crafting a new text that must strike a balance between the exigencies of being faithful to the language and style of the author and offering the reader a polished product in the new language. We went to great lengths to attempt to achieve this balance, and as a result, the translation of Roots of Brazil passed through many hands. One of the most salient difficulties facing the translator and editors was Buarque de Holanda’s language and elaborate style, typical of Portuguese-­and Spanish-­language writing of that period. As Pedro Meira Monteiro observes in his foreword to this edition— “Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?”—the “vocabulary is dated and . . . the author’s imagination is often guided by broad questions about national and regional identity that were typical of the early decades of the twentieth century in Latin America.” Roots of Brazil is a book of another time, yet one that clearly maintains its force and relevance today. Considering this fact, our goal with this edition was to avoid producing an anachronistic text that, on the one hand, used overly antiquated language, or, on the other, imbued the work, which is clearly a product of the historical, political, and intellectual context of the early twentieth century, with uncharacteristically modern language. For this reason, the editors made a painstaking decision to leave words such as Negro and Indian, which first appear in chapter 2, over terms such as blacks, Africans, Afro-­Brazilians, indigenous, or natives, despite the negative charge the original words hold today. xxxix

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Quotes and expressions in foreign languages, such as Spanish, French, Latin, and English, are commonly used throughout Roots of Brazil. With a few exceptions, these phrases have been translated into English with a note indicating the original language. When an entire citation is from a foreign language, the translation is simply placed in quotation marks. However, when Buarque de Holanda intersperses foreign words or phrases into the text that are not part of a citation, the English translation is italicized and the note provides the phrase in the original language. In the original text, Buarque de Holanda also frequently uses italics for emphasis. All italics with no accompanying note are the author’s original italics. Daniel E. Colón

The Catholic University of America

C h a p t e r

1

European Frontiers The New World and Old Civilization — Exaggerated Personalism and Its Consequences: Weak Organizational Spirit, Solidarity, Hereditary Privileges — Lack of Cohesion in Society — The Return to Tradition, an Artifice — A Special Feeling of Irrationality about Privilege and Hierarchy — How the Iberian Peoples Anticipated Modern Thinking — Manual and Mechanical Labor, Enemy of Personality — Obedience as the Basis for Discipline

The effort to implant European culture in an extensive stretch of territory under conditions largely foreign, if not adverse, to Europe’s thousand-­year tradition is the dominant fact in the origins of Brazilian society and the one that has yielded the most valuable consequences. We have brought our forms of association, our institutions, and our ideas from distant countries, and though we take pride in maintaining all of them in an often unfavorable and hostile environment, we remain exiles in our own land. We can accomplish great things, add new and unexpected features to our human nature, and forge the type of civilization that we represent—nevertheless, all the 1

2  European Frontiers

fruits of both our work and our sloth seem to belong to an evolutionary system from another climate and another landscape. Before asking to what extent such efforts at development will attain success, we should ask how far we have been able to represent those inherited forms of association, institutions, and ideas. First, and significantly, we received our heritage through an Iberian nation. Spain and Portugal, along with Russia and the Balkan countries (and, to a certain extent, England as well), are bridge-­ territories through which Europe communicates with other worlds. They make up a frontier and transition zone, somewhat less laden with the Europeanism that is nevertheless an essential part of their heritage. Spain and Portugal entered the European scene most decisively in the era of great discoveries. This late entrance intensely affected their destinies, and it was responsible for many peculiar aspects of their historical and spiritual development. They became societies that in some respects developed on the margins of their European counterparts, and they received no European influence that they did not already possess in inchoate form. On what bases do the patterns of society rest in this indeterminate region between Europe and Africa, from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar? How do we explain many of those patterns without reverting to rather vague indicators, which would never allow us to be strictly objective? The comparison between patterns in Spain and Portugal and those of Europe beyond the Pyrenees brings out a characteristic peculiar to the Iberian Peninsula, one that it does not share, at least not much, with any of its European neighbors. None of its neighbors developed, at least not to such an extreme, the cult of the personality, which seems to be the most decisive characteristic in the evolution of the Hispanic peoples since time immemorial. The Spanish and Portuguese owe much of their national distinctiveness to the particular importance that they attribute to the very value of the human person, the autonomy of each person in relation to his or her peers. For them,

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the measure of a person’s value depends above all on how little one depends on others and how self-­sufficient one is. Each person is the offspring of himself, of his own effort, and of his own virtues. The sovereign virtues of this mentality are so powerful that they sometimes mark a person’s way of being and even physical features. It is expressed most completely and with least alteration by the stoicism that has been the national philosophy of the Spanish since the time of Seneca. That concept is faithfully mirrored in a very Spanish word— sobranceria—a word that initially indicates the idea of arrogance. But the struggle and emulation that it implies were tacitly admitted and admired by the people, glorified by poets, recommended by moralists, and approved by governments. This mentality is largely responsible for the unique weakness of all forms of organization and of all associations, which imply soli­ darity and order among people. In a land where all are barons, lasting group agreement is not possible unless imposed by a respectable and feared outside force. Hereditary privileges were never a decisive influence in countries of Iberian origin, at least not as decisive and intense as in lands where feudalism took root. There was no need to abolish such privileges in order to establish the principle of individual competition. Some of the most unusual episodes in the history of Hispanic nations, including Portugal and Brazil, resulted from their weak social structure and lack of organized hierarchy. In Brazil, anarchical elements flourished due to the complicity or the indifferent indolence of institutions and customs. Initiatives, even when meant to be constructive, were constantly taken as means of separating people, rather than uniting them. Government decrees first originated from the need to contain and restrain momentary personal passions; only rarely were they the result of the active intentions of groups to associate permanently. Our lack of social cohesion, then, is not a modern phenomenon. And that is why those who imagine that the only possible defense against our disorder lies in a return to tradition, a certain tradition,

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are mistaken. The rules and regulations developed by those erudite men are really ingenious spiritual products, which are detached from and adverse to the world. In their opinion, our anarchy and incapacity for solid organization are nothing more than the absence of the only possible order they deem necessary and effective. If we think about it carefully, the hierarchy they glorify needs such anarchy to justify itself and win approval. In any case, why resort to the past in searching for a stimulus to better organize society? On the contrary, would that not merely expose our incapacity for spontaneous creation? Really active periods were never purposely traditionalist. Scholasticism in the Middle Ages was creative because it was current. Hierarchy of thought was subordinated to a cosmic hierarchy. Mankind on earth was a simple parable and a pale imitation of the city of God. Thus, in Thomist philosophy, the angels that compose the three orders of first rank—the Cherubim, the Seraphim, and the Thrones—are comparable to the men who form the immediate entourage of a medieval monarch: they help the sovereign in what he does by himself, and they are his prime ministers and counselors. Those of second rank—the Dominations, the Powers, and the Virtues—have a relationship to God like that of a king’s governors, who are charged with administration of the kingdom’s different provinces. Finally, those of third rank in the temporal city correspond to the agents of power, the subordinate officials.1 If medieval life aspired to beautiful harmony and rested on a hierarchical system, nothing would be more natural, since even in Heaven there are degrees of blessedness, as Dante’s Beatrice tells us. The natural order is nothing more than an imperfect and distant projection of eternal order and is explained in terms of it: . . . All things, among themselves, possess an order; and this order is the form that makes the universe like God.2 Thus, the society of people on earth cannot be an end in itself. Its hierarchical disposition, although admittedly rigorous, aims neither for permanence nor goodwill in the world. There is no place in that

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society for beings who seek earthly peace in the goods and advantages of this world. The community of the just is foreign to the earth; it travels and lives on faith, in exile and during life. “The earthly city,” says St. Augustine, “which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-­ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life.”3 The Middle Ages were hardly aware of conscious aspirations to reform civil society. The world was organized on the basis of eternal and unquestionable iron laws, imposed from another world by the supreme organizer of all things. By a singular paradox, society’s formative principle was, in its clearest expression, an enemy to the world and life. All the work of medieval thinkers, of the great builders of systems, meant nothing more than the effort to disguise, to the utmost extent possible, the antagonism between Spirit and Life (Gratia naturam non tollit sed perficit [Grace does not destroy nature but improves it]).4 This is, in a certain sense, a fertile and venerable task, but one whose essential meaning our era does not wish to comprehend. The enthusiasm that this grandiose hierarchical concept can inspire today, as it was known in the Middle Ages, is in reality a passion of professors. The principle of hierarchy never really mattered among us Brazilians. All hierarchy is necessarily founded on privileges. Long before so-­called revolutionary ideas triumphed in the world, the Portuguese and Spanish seemed to have perceived how irrational and socially unjust certain privileges, especially hereditary privileges, were. In the most glorious periods of Iberian history, personal prestige, independent of inherited name, was always important. At least in this respect, they can consider themselves legitimate pioneers of modern thinking. Everyone knows that the Portuguese nobility was never rigorous or impermeable. During the period of the great maritime discoveries, Gil Vicente noted that the clear divisions between social classes that prevailed in other countries hardly existed among his compatriots:

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In France and Germany, in all France and Venice, where they live with wisdom and skill, in order not to live in sadness, it is not as in this land; because the peasant’s son marries a peasant girl there, and they never rise at all; and the son of the embroiderer marries the embroideress: That is ordered by law.5 One of the most renowned scholars of ancient Portuguese history, Alberto Sampaio, has pointed out, with the help of ample documentation, that the nobility, however great its former preponderance, never succeeded in becoming a closed aristocracy. The general use of the same names among persons of the most varied conditions—he observed—was not new in Portuguese society; such behavior was the result of the continual turnover of individuals, some of whom became famous, while others returned to the masses from which they had come.6 Sampaio further emphasized how, under colonial law, men of noble lineage were of all occupations, from leaders of industry to renters of rural property; honors were denied to them only when they lived by manual labor. The food of the poor—he further stated—was not much different from that of noblemen and, as a result, both were always on intimate terms; not only did nobles eat with the poor, but they even relinquished to them their childraising. This is evidenced by the institution of wet nursing, by which nobles allowed their children to be brought up by peasants, who, in such cases, enjoyed some privileges and immunities. Even if Iberian peoples exhibited similar characteristics with remarkable consistency, it does not necessarily mean that these characteristics came from some unchangeable biological destiny, or that they

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could exist, like the stars in the sky, apart and distant from conditions of life on earth. We know that at certain stages in their history, the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula gave proof of a singular vitality and a surprising adaptability to new forms of existence. We know that they were more advanced than the other European states, especially at the end of the fifteenth century, and that they created modern political and economic units. Perhaps the very success of this sudden and perhaps premature transformation was one of the reasons for the stubborn persistence of traditional habits, habits that partially explain their originality. In the particular case of Portugal, even at the time of the Master of Aviz,7 the rise of artisans and merchants encountered fewer barriers than in those parts of the Christian world where feudalism reigned largely undisturbed. Since the merchant bourgeoisie were not overburdened by the kinds of difficulties that might have resulted from their lack of exclusive economic support, they did not have to adopt a completely new way of thinking and acting or establish a new scale of values on which to base their permanent dominance. Instead, they tried to associate themselves with and assimilate many of the principles of the old, leading classes, and be guided more by tradition than by cold and calculating reason. Aristocratic elements were not completely put aside, and lifestyles inherited from the Middle Ages retained some of their old prestige. Not only the urban bourgeoisie but even the peasants were infected by the splendor of palace existence with its titles and honors. Soon there will need be no peasants: All are of the King, all are of the King, cried the pageboy in [Gil Vicente’s play] the Farsa dos Almocreves. Strange as it may seem, the very anxiety to display coats of arms and the profusion of studies about nobility and books on lineage were, in fact, aspects of the unshakeable tendency toward a leveling of classes. The lower classes still upheld certain long-­established and stereotyped patterns of determining social status as their models. The presumption of nobility was required by ancestral customs,

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which, despite having a persistent surface value, in reality no longer fit the times. True and authentic nobility does not need to exceed the individual; it depends on his strengths and abilities, since his own eminence is worth more than inherited eminence. The abundance of possessions that comes from good fortune, great achievements, and great virtues is the source of all greatness, and is more useful than any advantages of blood relations. For Iberians, the circle of capital virtues is directly related to the feeling of each individual’s dignity. Common to nobles and plebeians, that feeling is, nevertheless, an ethic of nobles, not of peasants. For the Spanish and the Portuguese, the values inspired by this feeling are universal and permanent. Personal merit, when founded on such virtues, was always quite important. In the mid-­sixteenth century, a similar conception, disseminated in theology, was resuscitated: the old quarrel of Pelagianism [a doctrine of free will], which is most fully manifested in Molinist doctrine [a Spanish Jesuit doctrine that man freely performs good acts with God’s grace]. In that argument, the Company of Jesus, an institution of clearly Iberian origin, which tried to impose its spirit on the Catholic world beginning with the Council of Trent, played a decisive role in opposing principles of predestination. In effect, the Spanish and Portuguese always looked with distrust and opposition on theories denying free will. They never felt very comfortable in a world where merit and individual responsibility were not fully recognized. Among the Spanish and Portuguese, that very mentality became the most formidable obstacle to the spirit of spontaneous organization, which was so characteristic of Protestant peoples, especially Calvinists. In fact, doctrines that preach free thought and personal responsibility are all less favorable to human association. In the Iberian nations, which lacked the rational approach to life that some Protestant countries experienced early on, governments were always the unifying factor. The kind of political organization that is artificially maintained by outside force always predominated; in modern times it is typically found in military dictatorships. An insurmountable opposition to all morality that is based on the work ethic has always motivated the psychology of the Iberian

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peoples. Their normal attitude was precisely the theoretical opposite of the system of medieval craftsmanship, which placed a high value on physical labor and looked down on lucre, “filthy lucre.” Only very recently did that work ethic successfully gain some ground, mainly because of the greater prestige of peoples of the northern hemisphere. But the resistance it met, and continues to meet, has been so active and persistent that its complete success is still questionable. “Integrity,” “being,” “seriousness,” “honor,” and “wise action”: these attributes, which, in the words of the Portuguese poet Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, adorn and glorify the noble shield of Portugal, represent essentially inactive virtues through which the individual reflects about himself and refrains from modifying the world. Action about something or about the material universe implies submission to an external object or the acceptance of a law foreign to the individual. It is not required by God, adds nothing to His glory, and does not add to our own dignity; on the contrary, it can harm and debase it. Manual or mechanical kinds of work envisage an objective foreign to man and aim at achieving perfection in a realm different from his. Understandably, then, the modern religion of work and appreci­ ation for utilitarian activity never became part of the Hispanic peoples’ nature. To a good Portuguese or to a Spaniard, a dignified idleness always seemed more desirable and also more ennobling than the insane struggle for daily bread. Both idealize the effortless and unconcerned life of a grandee. Thus, while the Protestant peoples praise and glorify manual labor, the Iberian nations still see things more from the viewpoint of classical antiquity. The older concepts—that leisure is worth more than business, and that productive activity is in itself less valuable than contemplation and love—are dominant among them. One can also understand how a lack of this work ethic fits well with a reduced capacity for social organization. In effect, humble, anony­ mous, and disinterested acts serve as a powerful agent for group soli­ darity, which in turn stimulates rational human organization and supports social cohesion. Where any type of work ethic prevails, civic order and tranquility are likely, since both are needed for the

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harmonious interaction of citizens’ interests. Among the Spanish and Portuguese, a strong work ethic was always an exotic fruit. Not surprisingly, their ideas of solidarity are precarious. To put it clearly, they have such solidarity only when the connection is one of feeling, that is, in the domestic circle or among friends, rather than interest-­based relations. These circles are by nature restricted and particularistic, and more hostile than favorable toward associations formed on a broader group or national basis. The individual’s autonomy and the extreme glorification of personality, a fundamental passion that does not tolerate compromise, can give way only when it is necessary to renounce that personality in the service of a greater good. On the rare and unlikely occasion when that happens, the Iberian peoples hold obedience as the supreme virtue above all. Such obedience—blind obedience, which differs fundamentally from medieval or feudal principles of loyalty—has so far been their only truly strong political principle. The desire to command and the propensity to carry out orders are equally peculiar to them. Dictatorships and the Holy Office seem to be aspects as typical of their character as the inclination to anarchy and disorder. Their outlook includes no kind of well-­conceived discipline other than that based on excessive centralization of power and on obedience. More than anyone else, the Jesuits epitomized the principle of discipline through obedience. Even in South America they left a memorable example of this, with their reduction villages and their catechisms. No modern tyranny, no theoretician of the dictatorship of the proletariat or of the totalitarian state, has even came close to the extraordinary rationalization that the priests of the Company of Jesus achieved in their missions. Today, simple obedience, as a principle of discipline, seems a worn-­out and impracticable formula, from which stems the constant instability of Brazilian society. Without this brake, we have tried to overcome the effects of our restless and disorderly nature and to create an adequate substitute by either importing systems of other modern peoples or by creating them, in vain, ourselves. Experience and tradition teach us that all cultures generally absorb, assimilate, and develop the traits of other cultures only when they can fit them

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into their own frameworks of life. In this sense, we should remember what happened to European cultures transported to the New World. Neither contact nor mixture with native or foreign races has made us as different from our grandfathers from overseas as, at times, we would like to be. In the Brazilian case, no matter how unattractive it may seem to some of our compatriots, in truth we are still associated with the Iberian Peninsula, especially Portugal, through a long and active tradition, active enough even today to nourish our common soul, despite all that separates us. We can say that the present form of our culture came from there; all other elements were adapted as best they could to that culture.

C h a p t e r

2

Work and Adventure Portugal and the Colonization of Tropical Lands — Two Principles That Regulate Human Activity Differently — Social Adaptability of the Portuguese — Agrarian Civilization? — Lack of Racial Pride — The Taint Associated with Menial Work — Organization of Crafts: Their Relative Weakness in Portuguese America — Incapacity for Free and Lasting Association — Influence of the “Morality of the Slave-­Quarters” — Failure of the Dutch Experience Appendix: The Persistence of Predatory Agriculture

Pioneers in conquering the tropics for the cause of civilization, the Portuguese saw this achievement as their greatest historical mission. And despite all the accusations that can be made against that accomplishment, the Portuguese were not only effective but also natural bearers of that mission. No other Old World people were so well prepared for venturing into regular and intense exploration of lands near the equator, where, in the 1500s, people were believed to degenerate 13

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quickly. There too, according to André Thevet, a French traveler of the period, “the excessive heat of the outside air draws their natural warmth and dissipates it so they are only hot on the outside, and cold on the inside.” This is the opposite of what happens to inhabitants of cold lands, he said, who “have their body heat closed and kept inside them by the external cold, which thereby renders them robust and valiant; for the strength and virtue of all parts of the body depend on this natural warmth.”1 This exploration of the tropics was not methodical and rational, nor was it the result of a constructive and energetic will; rather, it took place negligently and somewhat carelessly—it could be said that it occurred in spite of its protagonists. This fact does not diminish the greatness of the Portuguese effort. If we judge it by today’s moral and political standards, we will find many serious shortcomings. None, however, would justify the exaggerated opinion maintained by the detractors of the Portuguese achievement. Many of those detractors openly admit that they would have preferred colonization by the Dutch, convinced that they would have led us in better and more glorious directions. But before examining this theme, we should look at one singularly instructive aspect of the psychological determinants of the movement of Portuguese colonial expansion into the lands of America. We can divide types of societies into two diametrically opposed principles that regulate human activity: those of the adventurer and those of the worker. In primitive societies, the fundamental distinction is that between the hunter-­gatherer and the people who work the land. The ultimate aim of the former, or the object of all his effort, is of such key importance that he discards all intermediary steps, considering them secondary and almost superfluous; his ideal is to pick the fruit without planting the tree. These human types, the hunger-­gatherers, ignore boundaries; for them, the world seems boundless. When an obstacle to their ambitious purposes arises, they convert it into a springboard. Their world is one of unlimited spaces, vast projects, and distant horizons.

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The workers, on the other hand, focus primarily on overcoming difficulties, not on achieving victory. For them, the slow, persistent, and unrewarding effort, which includes measuring every possibility of waste and taking maximum advantage of what is insignificant, is especially and clearly relevant. Their field of vision is naturally limited. The part is greater than the whole. There is a work ethic, just as there is an adventure ethic. The worker‑type individuals attribute positive moral value only to those actions that they want to undertake. Conversely, they find immoral and detestable the qualities of the adventurer—audacity, lack of foresight, irresponsibility, instability, and the vagabond spirit—all those related with spatial conceptions of the world, which are characteristic of the adventurer. On the other hand, adventurers highly value the energy and efforts directed toward immediate reward. They consider activities for the purpose of stability, peace, and personal security to be vicious and contemptible. To them, nothing seems more stupid and petty than the ideal of the worker. Between these two types there is not really so much an absolute contrast as there is a radical lack of understanding.2 Both, to a greater or lesser degree, often coexist, and, clearly, neither the adventurer nor the worker exists in pure form outside the world of ideas. But the two concepts undoubtedly serve to locate and better classify one’s knowledge of humanity and of social groups. By extending beyond the individual, these types assume great importance in the study of the formation and the development of societies. The worker, as defined above, played a very limited, or almost nonexistent, role in colonizing and conquering the new world. The era was predisposed to audacious feats and deeds, and it honored the men who soared high. It was no accident, therefore, that the nations engaged in the South American continent were those in which the worker type found a less propitious environment than the adventurer type. If that was the case in Portugal as well as Spain, it was equally so in England. Great Britain’s industrial boom in the previous century created an unrealistic perception of the English people, one rejected

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by the country’s earlier inhabitants. Indeed, the typical Englishman was not industrious, nor did he possess the great sense of economy characteristic of his nearest Continental neighbors. On the contrary, he had a propensity for indolence and prodigality, and valued the “good life” above all. Such was the prevailing, nearly unanimous opinion of foreigners who visited Great Britain before the Victorian Era and of moralists and economists who sought remedies for England’s long-­lasting condition of inferiority vis‑à‑vis its competitors. In 1664, in a pamphlet entitled “England’s treasure by forraign trade,” Thomas Mun censured his compatriots for a lack of foresight, a taste for useless dissipation, an unregulated love of pleasure and luxury, and a lewd idleness,3 “which was contrary to the law of God and of the customs of other nations.” He claimed that such vices made it impossible for the English to measure themselves seriously against the Dutch.4 William Ralph Inge, a historian and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, who was well acquainted with the English character, has expressed similar views in recent times. In a book full of interesting suggestions, he observes that the “average Englishman at present has no taste for the untiring and laborious diligence of the Germans or for the parsimonious frugality of the French.” And though the idea may seem disconcerting and new to many, he adds: “Indolence is a vice that we share with natives of some warm lands, but not with any other people of northern Europe.”5 If this lack of a desire to work, or at least to engage in work that offers no immediate compensation, or this indolence, as Dean Inge says, does not stimulate adventure, it is nevertheless a negative aspect of a spirit that generates great undertakings. How otherwise does one explain the Iberian peoples’ great aptitude in hunting for material goods on other continents? “A Portuguese”—commented a traveler at the end of the eighteenth century—“can charter a ship for Brazil more easily than he can go from Lisbon to Oporto on horseback.”6 And is this desire for effortless prosperity, for honorific titles, for positions and quick riches, which is so notoriously characteristic of the people of our land, not one of the crudest manifestations of the

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spirit of adventure? Even today, we live among the numerous offspring of that soldier from Eschwege’s7 time who was not ashamed to solicit a job as a musician in the palace, of that clerk who was not afraid to ask for a governor’s position, and of the simple applier of suction cups who aspired to the duties of master surgeon of the kingdom. Frequently, our capacity for action exhausts itself in such unceasing quests, but it does not deal with external violence or stronger reactions. Such efforts fall apart even before they meet resistance; they are overwhelmed at the peak of their strength, and they compromise for no obvious reason. Nevertheless, the spirit of adventure that was responsible for all these weaknesses has decisively (though not exclusively) influenced our nation’s path. Among factors so diverse, such as the races that clashed here, the customs and ways of life they brought with them, and the ecological and climactic conditions that required a long process of adaptation, it was the spirit of adventure that was the preeminently harmonizing element. Moreover, that spirit motivated men to boldly confront Nature’s harshness and resistance, and thus create conditions suitable for social mobility. Precisely in this respect, the Portuguese and their immediate descendants are unmatched. Perhaps more easily than ever before in history, they succeeded in re-­creating in Brazil their own environment. Where there was no wheat, they learned how to eat what the land offered, and with such refinement—according to Gabriel Soares—that people of breeding ate only fresh yucca flour prepared daily. They accustomed themselves to sleeping in hammocks, as did the natives. Some, such as Vasco Coutinho, the land proprietor of Espírito Santo, went so far as to drink and chew tobacco, as recounted by witnesses of that time. They even adapted from the natives how to make various hunting and fishing tools and boats made out of bark or hollowed-­out tree trunks for sailing coastal rivers and waters. They also adopted the natives’ technique of cultivating land by first setting ablaze the forests. Even the Iberian house, severe, somber, and inward-­looking, became less circumspect in the new climate. It lost a little of its harshness and gained an outside veranda, a symbol of greater access and

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interaction with the world outside. The veranda, imported from East Asia, replaced the traditional Moorish patio. This new arrangement became a basic pattern for European houses in the tropics, and it is still used today. On their cane plantations, the Portuguese engaged in the large-­scale development of an already existing process, most likely brought from Madeira and other Atlantic islands, in which they used black Africans from Guinea for the heavy rural work. It is erroneous to say that the particular type of large agricultural holdings in Brazil displayed a kind of original management arising from the creative, and somewhat arbitrary, will of the Portuguese settlers. It arose in large part from accidental elements and from adaption to the advantages offered by production and the market. One cannot sustain the argument that the agricultural systems, indeed curiously uniform, of all the tropical and subtropical territories of America were the result of intrinsic and specific conditions of the environment. Rather, pre-­industrial Europe’s lack of natural products from warm climates, despite producing enough agricultural goods for its own consumption, made possible and even fostered the expansion of these agrarian systems. In England’s North American colonies, the same system could flourish only in regions appropriate for the production of tobacco, rice, and cotton, the typical “colonial” products. Since there were no opportunities to expand trade and manufacturing, which are based almost exclusively on free labor, the mid-­Atlantic and New England colonies had to be satisfied with simple subsistence agriculture. The climate and other physical conditions peculiar to tropical regions, therefore, contributed only indirectly to the presence of plantations. The Portuguese and to a lesser degree the Spanish undoubtedly introduced a system that would serve as a model for landownership and monoculture, one that other peoples would later adopt. Due to the good quality of land available for the highly lucrative production of sugar cane in the Brazilian northeast, the area was long a setting for the type of agrarian organization later most clearly characteristic of European colonies in the torrid zone. The abundance of fertile and still unexplored lands in this area turned great rural properties

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into true units of production. Only the problem of labor remained. When the first attempts to use native labor led to much frustration, it became clear that the easiest recourse would be the introduction of African slaves. The presence of the Negro was always obligatory in developing colonial plantations. The original residents of the land cooperated well, for a time, in the extractive industries, in hunting, in fishing, in performing certain mechanical tasks, and in cattle-­raising. They found it difficult, however, to adapt to the careful and methodical work required by sugar cane exploitation. The natives spontaneously tended toward less sedentary activities, where they could work without the forced regularity and the watchful supervision of others. Extremely versatile, they were incapable of certain ideas of order, constancy, and exactness, ideas that come as second nature and seemed to be basic requirements of social and civic life for Europeans.8 A mutual lack of understanding resulted, which, for the natives, almost always took the form of a stubborn resistance, even when silent and passive, to the impositions of the dominant race. In this they were similar to the Arawaks of the Caribbean, of whom the French colonists, comparing them to blacks, said: “To look at a native the wrong way is to beat him, to beat him is to kill him—to beat a Negro is to nourish him.”9 In this semicapitalist production, ultimately oriented toward external consumption, grossly quantitative standards necessarily prevailed. Only with some caveats can one use the term “agriculture” to refer to the various processes of land exploitation that were introduced with the sugar mills and that extensively spread throughout the country. Under such exploitation, European techniques merely served to make even more devastating the rudimentary methods used by the indigenous peoples in their plantings. An affectionate zeal for the land, so peculiar to rural man among genuinely agricultural peoples, was not felt by many a colonist who settled the aforementioned region. Indeed, the exploitative nature of large-­scale farming, as it was and still is practiced in Brazil, applies to mining almost as much as to agriculture. Without slave labor and ample land—land

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that could be wasted and ruined rather than carefully protected— such farming would not have succeeded. Evidently, the Portuguese came to seek riches, riches that required daring more than work; in short, they sought what they were used to receiving in India from spices and precious metals. In the beginning, the profits from planting cane and manufacturing sugar for European markets—accomplished with the hands and feet of African slaves—had made the efforts involved well worthwhile, but as time went on, the process had to be greatly simplified, and the various operations that were involved had to be limited to what was strictly necessary. Thus, the Portuguese did not establish a strictly agrarian civilization when they planted sugar in Brazil. This was, primarily, because the genius of adventure that brought them to America did not lead to that end; secondly, because the sparse population of Portugal did not permit a large-­scale emigration of rural workers; and finally, because agricultural activity was then not of primary importance in Portugal. In 1535, the very year when Duarte Coelho disembarked for his Pernambucan proprietary colony, the humanist Clenardo, writing from Lisbon to his friend Latónio, described the miserable conditions of fieldwork: “If agriculture was held in contempt anywhere—he said— it was unquestionably in Portugal. And above all, you should know that what amounts to the principal essence of a nation is extremely weak here; and even more, if there are people more given to laziness than the Portuguese, I don’t know where. I speak above all of those of us who live beyond the Tagus and breathe the air of Africa more closely.”10 Sometime later, when responding to criticisms directed by Sebastian Munster [a German geographer] at the inhabitants of the Hispanic Peninsula, Damião de Gois admitted that agricultural labor was less attractive to his compatriots than maritime adventure and the glories of war and conquest.11 When we complain about how agriculture in Brazil was confined to routine practices for so long and lacked the technical progress that might have raised production levels, we must recall such factors. Aside from those, it is important to note that the tropical

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environment often posed powerful and unexpected obstacles to such improvements. In some cases, the Portuguese colonists adopted certain agricultural techniques that, compared to those of Europe, were actually retrogressions and were even considered ancient forms of cultivation. Nature’s obstacles in the Americas, very distinct from those in Europe, contributed just as much to the settlers’ slow progress as did their inertia and passivity. The rare use of the plow in Brazilian traditional agriculture, for example, can be generally explained by the difficulties often caused by the residues of vigorous forest vegetation. It is therefore understandable that this tool was not widely used, although its use was attempted long before the period that is usually given for its introduction. According to the available information, the use of the plow was common among the more prosperous mill owners in the Bahian Recôncavo at the end of the eighteenth century. This use was limited to sugarcane production, where, to obtain regular harvests, land first had to be cleared, opened, and cultivated. However, evidence from the period indicates that planters ordinarily used teams of ten, twelve, or more oxen for each plow, because these animals were poorly adapted to Brazil and because the soils were resistant to the plow.12 As a rule, planters sought new lands extending well into the forest. As a result, little more than two generations of colonists remained on the same plantation; thus, the location or the owner of a plantation would change relatively quickly. This constant transience, which in turn arose from indigenous customs, served merely to confirm the routine nature of rural labor. Since no one thought of reviving exhausted soils with fertilizer, there was no incentive for any kind of improvement. The idea that only the seeder or the hoe could be used on the land quickly gained acceptance, even though in São Paulo, as in other places in Brazil, less rudimentary processes had been applied since the second century of the colony, if not earlier; “an iron plow” was included in the property left by a farmer around Parnaiba in an inventory dated 1637.13 This conviction soon spread to Portugal, as evidenced by a 1766 letter from a captain-­general to the then count of Oeiras. He writes that everyone believes that Brazil’s soil is only

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adequate on the surface, and that “the plow cannot be used as some have used it, because they lost everything; in the end, they all say the same thing.”14 It is not surprising that this happened with the Portuguese in light of the fact that even in our time, settlers of pure German origin use the same predatory and wasteful methods not only in the tropical environs of the Espírito Santo lowlands but also in relatively temperate regions such as Rio Grande do Sul.15 The docility of recent settlers in adopting techniques already used by Brazilians of Portuguese origin is largely explained by the fact that they were mainly of mercantile and urban backgrounds, had limited material resources when they moved from the Old World, and were comparatively few in number.16 In the agrarian economy, bad methods, whether these are rudimentary, harmful, or oriented only toward the immoderate and immediate advantage of those who apply them, have always tended to push out good methods. In Brazil, local conditions almost required, at least initially, many of those “bad” methods. Replacing them required patient and systematic energy. The Portuguese and their descendants definitely never felt motivated to exert such energy, especially compared to colonizers from other areas where a solid rural economy based on slave labor and devoted to monoculture on large estates, one similar to ours, would become dominant. In fact, the Portuguese always stood out by virtue of their large demands on the soil and the little they gave it in return. Except from a strictly quantitative point of view, their methods did not represent any essential progress over the earlier practices of the natives in Brazil. Even in the second half of the eighteenth century, the contrast between normal Brazilian agricultural practices and those of the southern United States was much more striking than the similarities, which some historians have complacently pointed out and exaggerated. Confederate farmers who emigrated to Brazil around 1866 and to whose influence, correctly or otherwise, the use of plows, cultivators, rakes, and graders on São Paulo rural properties has been attributed, did not share those historians’ opinion. Statements of the period indicate that many were shocked by the alarmingly primitive

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nature of the local agricultural processes. Brazilian slaves, according to one of those statements, plant cotton exactly as North American Indians plant corn.17 Since the earliest days of colonization in Brazil, the principle guiding the creation of wealth also applied to agriculture: extract the excess benefits from the soil without making any great sacrifices. Or, as the oldest of our historians said, they wanted to treat the land not as owners but as users, “only to despoil it and leave it in ruins.”18 Given this background, modifying the crude methods of the natives was not in order. Once Brazil’s colonizers accommodated to the convenience of large-­scale production, the law of minimum effort went into effect. The colonizers, who were largely passive, adapted easily. They yielded to the inclinations of the land itself and those of its first inhabitants, without bothering to impose on it fixed and indelible rules. In this respect, the Portuguese stood out, even compared to the Spanish. In most of their American possessions, the Spaniards rarely identified with the land and the native people: they often merely superimposed themselves on both. Among the Portuguese, European domination was generally bland and soft, less obedient to rules and regulations than to the laws of nature. Life in Brazil appears to have been incomparably smoother, more accommodating of social, racial, and moral dissonance. Brazil’s colonizers were mainly men who knew how to repeat what already existed or was routine. Comfortable on the land, they did not have great mental demands. To them, Heaven seemed a reality that was too spiritual, remote, and posthumous to interfere with their daily activities. The complete, or nearly complete, absence of any racial pride—or at least the obstinate and uncompromising pride characteristic of northern countries—among the Portuguese is another, quite typical, aspect of the social adaptability of the Portuguese. This side of their character, which approximates that of other nations of Latin origin and, even more, of Muslims of Africa, is explained to a large extent simply by their being Portuguese and also by the fact that they were already a mixed people at the time of Brazil’s discovery. A modern

24  Work and Adventure

anthropologist has distinguished the Portuguese racially from their own neighbors and brothers, the Spanish, because they exhibit a large proportion of Negro blood. This accounts for the fact that natives of East Africa consider them equals and respect them much less than they respect other civilized peoples. Thus, he says, Swahilis always differentiate between Europeans and Portuguese when designating different European peoples.19 In this sense, Brazil was not a brand-­new theater. Racial mixing began much earlier than in the mother country itself. Even before 1500, the work of blacks brought from overseas possessions, in clearing forests, draining swamps, and converting marshes into farming lands, made it possible to extend Portugal’s percentage of cultivated soil, prompting the foundation of new settlements. In a nation where servile jobs were regularly accorded little value, the immediate bene­ fits from all that labor continually drove the search for those black instruments of material progress.20 The laments of one Garcia de Resende from about 1536 appear to accurately reflect the alarm among prudent men caused by this silent and hidden invasion, which threatened to upset the very biological bases on which Portuguese society traditionally rested: We see joining the kingdom, So many captives growing, And the native-­born going Which, if it continues, there will be more Of them than us, in my view.21 The letter from Clenardo to Latônio, mentioned above, reveals that slaves in Portugal multiplied in that period. All service was rendered by captive Negroes and Moors, who were distinguished from beasts of burden only by their appearance. “I believe”—Clenardo noted—“that in Lisbon there are more male and female slaves than Portuguese.” It was hard to find a dwelling where there was not at least one black woman. Wealthier people had slaves of both sexes, and many of them made good profits from the sale of the children of slaves. “I am coming to the view,” the humanist added, “that they

Work and Adventure  25

raise them like those who raise pigeons for the market. Far from being offended by the ribaldry of the slave women, they applaud them, since the fruit follows the condition of the womb: neither the next-­door priest, nor anyone I know of, can complain about the African captive.”22 Although statistical calculations about the introduction of slaves into Portugal were generally scarce and only approximate, Damião de Gois, in defending the good names of the Portuguese and Spanish against the criticisms of Munster, estimated in 1541 that about 10,000 to 12,000 slaves from Africa entered the country annually. A decade later, according to the Summary of Cristovão Rodrigues de Oliveira, Lisbon had 9,950 slaves in a total of eighteen thousand people. That means that slaves formed about a fifth of the population.23 The same proportion still existed toward the end of the century, to judge by the reports of Filippo Sassetti, who traveled within Portugal between 1578 and 1583.24 The intrusion of foreign blood in Portugal did not diminish with the passage of time; it actually grew, and not only in the cities. In 1655, Manuel Severim de Faria complained that most farmers used slaves from Guinea as well as mulattoes. And at the end of the following century, the celebrated procession of Passos in Lisbon must have been a spectacle comparable to that of any Brazilian city, where the Negro contingent stood out. In 1798 a foreign visitor to Lisbon stated that between “4,000 and 5,000 souls” participated in the processions, “the greater part of them consisting of male and female Negroes and mulattoes.” In another statement, written seventy years earlier, the dark color of the Portuguese people was attributed to the effect of the climate and even more to “the mixture with Negroes, quite common among low-­class people.”25 Understandably, therefore, a feeling of distance between the masters and the working masses of colored men was rare in Brazil. The slave on the plantations and in the mines was not just a source of energy, like some kind of human coal awaiting its replacement by oil in the industrial age. Relations of slaves with their masters varied from dependent to protégé and even to solidarity and the like. Their influence stealthily penetrated the domestic sanctum and tended

26  Work and Adventure

to dissolve any idea of the separation of castes or races, or that of any discipline based on such a separation. Such was the general rule, though it did not prevent particular cases of efforts aimed at limiting the colored man’s excessive influence in colonial life. The royal order of 1726 prohibited any mulatto, up to the fourth generation, from holding a municipal job in Minas Gerais, and it extended the prohibition to include whites married to colored women.26 Other such resolutions—which apparently resulted from a conspiracy of Negroes and mulattoes some years earlier in that captaincy—were destined to remain on paper, and did not seriously affect the popular tendency to abandon all social, political, and economic barriers between white and colored men, free or enslaved.27 The crown itself did not hesitate at times to moderate the zeal of certain officials most adverse to that tendency. Such was the case, for example, when orders were issued to a governor of Pernambuco in 1731 for the appointment of a learned man named Antônio Ferreira Castro to the office of district attorney, despite allegations that he was a mulatto. The reason—according to the order of D. João V—was that “the defect of being dark is no obstacle in this ministry, and it is quite obvious that on those grounds you have excluded a learned man appointed by me, and have instead introduced and retained a man without a degree, which never could happen under the law if a learned graduate is available.”28 Such liberties were not the general rule; but in any case, “racial exclusivity,” as it would be called today, was apparently never the determining factor in measures that reserved the exercise of certain offices to pure whites. The traditional taint associated with completing the menial work demanded under slavery, which stigmatized not only those who performed such work but their descendants as well, was much more decisive than racial exclusivity. This, more than any other reason, explains the singular importance that, up to a point, qualifications as such 29 always assumed among the Portuguese. That reason would also explain why qualified natives and mestizos were often considered for duties from which blacks and

Work and Adventure  27

mulattoes were legally excluded. Recognition of the civil liberties of Indians—even where, according to the subtle legal differentiation, merely “guided” or “protected” liberties were concerned—tended to distance them from the social stigma associated with slavery. Interestingly, several traits ordinarily attributed to the natives that made them less fit for a servile role—their “indolence,” their aversion to all disciplined effort, their “lack of foresight,” their “intemperance,” and their marked taste for predatory rather than productive activities— matched the traditional lifestyles of the noble classes. This must be why, in trying to translate themes of the Middle Ages pertaining to European romanticism into Brazilian terms, writers of the last century, such as Gonçalves Dias and Alencar, would reserve the conventional virtues of ancient nobles and knights for the Indian. On the other hand, they were satisfied to cast the Negro, even in the most favorable light, as either an obedient or a rebellious victim. Far from condemning mixed marriages between natives and whites, the Portuguese government tried, more than once, to encourage them. A decree in 1755 determined that spouses in such cases “should not be ill thought of, but should rather be qualified for openings, at least where their children and descendants live. They will even have preference for any position, honor or reward, and do not depend on any special exemption. In addition, they may not be called mestizos or any similar term that might be considered offensive.” Blacks and descendants of blacks remained relegated, at least in certain official texts, to jobs of low repute, or Negro jobs,30 which were degrading to the individuals occupying them as much as to their descendants. Thus, in a decree from August 6, 1771, the viceroy of Brazil ordered that an Indian be dismissed from the post of captain of militia, because “it was shown that he had such a lack of feelings that he married a black woman, soiling his blood with that alliance, and as a consequence became unworthy of filling the position.”31 One of the consequences of slavery and the exaggerated growth of large-­scale agriculture in our colonial economic structure was the virtual absence of any serious cooperation among workers in other

28  Work and Adventure

productive activities. This was in contrast to developments in other countries, including Spanish America. Our history provides little evi­ dence of anything similar to the prosperity of the mechanics’ guilds that, according to a Peruvian historian, already existed in Lima in the first century after the conquest. These guilds provided for mayors and inspectors, minimum daily wages, competitive examinations, registration for legal purposes, Sundays as days off, and religious mutual aid foundations for different kinds of craft brotherhoods. A manuscript preserved by a charitable organization in the Peruvian capital provides a record of regulations for silversmiths in the “City of Kings.” These craftsmen, the majority of whom were Indians and mestizos, had a chapel in the left nave of St. Augustine Church. Their organization had well-­established privileges and old-­age pensions for guild members’ families. Also in Peru, guilds of shoemakers and tanners were founded in 1578, with the right to use the chapel of St. Crispin and St. Cris­ piniano in the cathedral for their functions and feasts. As in Brazil, though on a larger scale, some guilds gave names to the streets and squares where their tents and, at times, their dwellings were located. Examples of such guilds included buttonmakers, capmakers, rugmakers, shawlmakers, dealers in used clothes, tavernkeepers, hatmakers (of vicuña or straw), swordmakers, guitarmakers, brickmakers, soapmakers, and blacksmiths. There were also beltmakers, the majority of whom were whites, Indians, and mestizos, just as Negroes and mulattoes were usually surgeons and barbers. There were guilds of sealmakers and harnessmakers; foundry workers, carpenters, and builders; masons, tanners, and leatherworkers; and waxmakers, glovemakers, shoemakers, tailors or seamstresses (the whites were associated with the brotherhood of the great St. Francis), bakers, and pastrymakers. Those guilds, organized solidly by Francisco de Toledo, guaranteed prosperity, wealth, and stability for the viceroyalty for many years, despite the vicissitudes of mining and the decay of the Spanish colonial empire.32 In Brazil, occupations could not be organized along models imported from Portugal because of prevailing circumstances, namely, the overwhelming importance of slave labor; the existence of household

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industry, which guaranteed relative independence to the wealthy but hindered trade; and, finally, the shortage of free skilled workers in most villages and towns. Old municipal documents often register complaints about manual workers who went unpunished for violating the regulations governing their occupations, or about those who evaded required examinations but were protected by benevolent judges. In such cases, an ordinary license and a guarantor’s signature were enough to practice any occupation, and numerous loopholes were thus opened in the apparently rigid discipline of local rules. Those who succeeded in accumulating some capital soon tried to abandon their specialties in order to enjoy the rewards that were ordinarily denied to manual workers. That happened, for example, for one Manuel Alves, of São Paulo, who in 1639 left his job as a sealmaker to rise to the position of “noble man” and serve in government positions.33 At times, such a transition was not even necessary. In many cases, persons considered noble engaged in manual trades without losing their class prerogatives. That was not the general rule, however, but rather an abuse that was recognized as such, although one that was largely tolerated. The fact that this situation was the exception explains why, even at the beginning of the last century, a certain Martim Francisco was surprised that many residents of Itu, all of whom were “at least noble,” worked manual jobs, since “according to Portuguese laws nobility was thus canceled.”34 Although the law did not establish any hierarchy among different kinds of manual labor, undeniable discrimination was enshrined by custom, and greater intolerance always prevailed regarding jobs with the lowest social status. In 1720, Bernardo Pereira de Berredo, governor of Maranhão state, made one Manuel Gaspar a private [soldier], although he was chosen as an inspector, alleging that “quite far from being noble, he had been a servant.” The municipal senate soon concurred with the decision and in addition vetoed the selection of another individual who “sold sardines and bermibaus [Brazilian stringed musical instruments].”35 The same love of easy gain and the transience that characterized rural labor in Brazil were also evident in urban occupations. At the end

30  Work and Adventure

of the colonial era, someone noted that these conditions were mirrored in the fact that the most dissimilar things were sold in merchants’ shops; it was as easy to buy horseshoes from a pharmacist as it was to buy emetics from a blacksmith.36 Few individuals could devote themselves to a single activity in their lifetimes, without being attracted to another, apparently more lucrative, alternative. And rarely did an occupation remain in the same family for more than one generation, as was the norm in lands where the social structure had stabilized. This was one of the serious obstacles we faced in developing real craftsmanship among Brazilians, and even in training workers sufficiently for occupations that required a definite aptitude and a long apprenticeship.37 Another obstacle undoubtedly came from the rather common use of so-­called “freelance Negroes” or “self-­hired [black] youths,” whose masters gave them licenses and benefited exclusively from their services. Thus, persons with an air of nobility could make profits out of the most humble occupations without degrading themselves and without getting their hands dirty. J. B. von Spix and C. F. Ph. von Martius have emphasized how that custom differed radically from the medieval principle of craftsmen’s guilds, which was still quite active in many places in Europe at the beginning of the last century.38 In Brazil, we preserved relatively few aspects of Portuguese tradition, including aspects not rigidly upheld in the mother country, without modifying or relaxing them according to the adverse environmental conditions. However, the tradition that obliged master craftsmen to participate—with their insignia—in royal processions was, as one can easily imagine, relatively well-­maintained. This exception can be explained by the taste for ostentation and for colorful spectacles so peculiar to Brazil’s colonial society. Above all, what we lacked for the success of this and other forms of productive labor was the capacity for free and lasting association among the entrepreneurial elements of our country. Collective undertakings, when voluntarily accepted, usually occurred when they satisfied both collective sentiment and emotion, as exemplified by cases where certain occupations were related, in one way or another, to religion. Such cases included the building of the old cathedral of

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Iguape at the end of the seventeenth century, which involved cooperation between leading citizens and the townspeople, who carried rocks from the beach to the construction site;39 and the erection of the old cathedral of Itu in 1679 with the help of residents who, on a long-­distance pilgrimage, carried on their heads the rocky soil on which the building’s walls were constructed.40 Such cases, since the time of Tomé de Sousa and the building of the city of Salvador, reflect the survival of Portuguese customs implanted in Brazil. Other customs, like that of the cooperative work-­party in which settlers helped each other in tearing down forests, planting, harvesting, house building, and cotton spinning, were probably acquired from the natives. Those customs were apparently based on the expectation of mutual aid, as well as the excitement of the suppers, dancing, singing, and competitive games that always accompanied such activities. If men help each other, a seventeenth-­century observer noted, they do so “animated more by the spirit of liquor than by the love of work.”41 Evidently, such explanations are correct only to the extent that they indeed demonstrate the eccentric and flashy realism of coarse gesture and caricature. On the other hand, it would be an illusion to try to relate the existence of these forms of collective activity to some tendency toward disciplined and continuous cooperation. In fact, the material object of cooperative work is much less important in these cases than the sentiments and inclinations that lead an individual or a group of individuals to help a neighbor or friend who needs assistance. To determine the exact significance of this communal work, we turn to a distinction made in recent anthropological studies. After examining and comparing behavior patterns of various primitive peoples, these studies allow us to make a distinction between genuine “cooperation” and “helpfulness,”42 a distinction that previous scholars had already maintained, in a certain sense, between “competition” and “rivalry.”43 Competition, as much as cooperation, is a type of behavior directed, albeit in different ways, toward a common, material objective:

32  Work and Adventure

its relationship to a given objective is, first and foremost, what keeps individuals either separated or united. In the case of rivalry, on the contrary, as with helpfulness, the common, material objective is of secondary significance in practice; what matters most is the harm or the benefit that one party can render the other. In societies as clearly personalistic as ours, simple person‑to‑­ person links, independent and even exclusive of any tendency toward authentic cooperation among individuals, have almost always been, understandably, the most decisive. Personal groupings and relationships, although at times precarious, as well as struggles between factions, between families, and between regions, have made overall cooperation incoherent and amorphous. What is peculiar in Brazilian life has apparently been a singularly strong emphasis on the affectionate, the irrational, and the passionate, as well as a stagnation, or rather a corresponding atrophy, of characteristics that tend toward order, discipline, and rationality—that is, exactly the opposite of what appears desirable for a population in the process of organizing itself politically. The influence of blacks—not only as blacks but also, and especially, as slaves—did not offer serious obstacles. Early on, an affectionate and sugary sweetness invaded all aspects of colonial life. It found ways to express itself even in the domains of art and literature, principally after the 1700s and the Baroque period. A taste for the exotic, for sly sensuality, for flirtatious flattery, and for sentimental caprice seems to have furnished a heavenly sea of options. Crossing the ocean to Lisbon, it permitted the appearance of the erotic dances and popular songs of the mulatto Caldas Barbosa: We, there in Brazil, Our tenderness Tastes like sugar, It is very sweet. Oh, it is! it surely is. It has a very tasty honey

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And it is really good, really tasty. ..................... Ah, sweetheart, come hear Pure and true love, With lazy sweetness, What “Brazilian” Love is.44 The “morality of the slave quarters”—which was sinuous even in its violence, a negator of all social virtues, and a system that temporized and enervated any really productive energy—came to dominate the administration, the economy, and the religious beliefs of the people of that period. They understood the very creation of the world as a kind of abandonment, or neglect, by God. Successful colonization like that of the Dutch, on the other hand, was founded on the organization of an efficient defense system for a society of conquerors against such principles of disorganization. But would such a system be feasible among us? What the Dutch lacked in flexibility, they undoubtedly made up for by their possession of an excess of methodical and coordinated entrepreneurial spirits, a ca­pacity for work, and social cohesion. However, the types of settlers they sent during the period of their domination in the Brazilian northeast were the least suitable for a country in its formative stage. Recruited from adventurers of all kinds, from all the countries of Europe, these “men, tired of persecution,” came only in search of an impossible fortune; they had no plans for putting down strong roots in the land. The failure of several Dutch colonial experiments on the American continent during the seventeenth century is attributed in part, and perhaps justly, to the absence of a discontent in the mother country that would compel a large-­scale migration. That failure, as the historian H. J. Priestley has noted, testified to the success of the Dutch republic as a national community.45 The economic and political conditions in the United Provinces after the struggles for independence had reached such a high level of prosperity that, according to Caspar Barlaeus, a scholar of the history of Dutch Brazil, the only

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people who sought passage to Brazil at the offices of the West India Company were former soldiers who had remained homeless because of the Thirty Years’ War, as well as German refugees,46 small craftsmen, apprentices, merchants (including Jews of Portuguese origin), tavern-­keepers, schoolmasters, prostitutes, and “other lost individuals.” The army of the Company that fought in Pernambuco consisted principally of Germans, French, English, Irish, and Dutch soldiers.47 Among their most famous generals was the Polish nobleman, Christopher Arciszewski, who was forced to leave his country, where, according to reports, he had been persecuted because of his Socinian48 and anti-­Jesuit ideas. Another general was the German Sigmund von Schkopp, whose background remains uncertain. The Dutch immigrants, a cosmopolitan, unstable population that was predominantly urban in character, congregated in Recife or in the nascent Mauritsstad, which was beginning to develop on the island of Antônio Vaz. This fact helped instigate, early on, the classic division between the sugar mill and the city, between the rural landowner and the trader; a division that would dominate nearly all of Pernambucan history. This urban progress, which was new to Brazilian life, marked a strong distinction between the “Flemish” and the Portuguese colonizing processes. Whereas cities elsewhere in Brazil continued to be poor and simple dependencies of rural estates, the Pernambucan metropolis “lived by itself.” It contained monumental and ostentatious palaces, such as the Schoonzicht and Vrijburg palaces. Opulent parks sheltered the most varied examples of native flora and fauna, and readily provided Willem Piso and Georg Markgraf, two noteworthy German naturalists, the material they needed for their Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, as well as the backdrop on which Franz Post captured on canvas the magnificent colors of tropical nature. Scientific and cultural institutions, welfare undertakings of all types, and important political and administrative organizations gave New Holland’s seat of government a unique splendor and distinction that stood out from the misery in the Americas—in fact, the first parliament ever convened in the Western Hemisphere met in Recife in 1640. To complete the picture, Recife also had the traditionally dark aspects

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always associated with urban life: as early as 1641, Recife’s port area constituted, to some zealous Calvinists, a true “den of perdition.”49 Unquestionably, however, the Dutch faced difficulties in spreading the animating spirit of their notable colonial enterprise beyond the city walls. It could not be implanted in our northeastern rural life without losing its character and becoming perverted. Thus, New Holland exhibited two distinct worlds, two zones that were artificially brought together. The efforts of the Dutch conquerors were limited to the construction of a façade of grandeur, which masked the unwary and harsh economic reality in which they lived. Their attempt to make Brazil into a tropical extension of the European homeland succumbed disastrously to their inability to build up the prosperity of the land on its natural foundations, as was done, for better or worse, by the Portuguese. It appeared, in the end, that the success of the latter came precisely from their unfamiliarity or their inability to distinguish properly between the world they came from and the one they came to settle. Their weakness was their strength. The Dutch spared no effort to compete with their predecessors in agriculture. But the elements that they had at hand were not adapted to that effort. Only an occasional Dutchman risked abandoning the city for the sugarcane plantations. In 1636, the members of the Political Council, alarmed at the prospect of ruin given that the great sources of wealth in New Holland were in the hands of the Portuguese and especially the Luso-­Brazilians, planned to resolve the problem and avoid future complications by trying to import large numbers of peasant families from the motherland. “Only when we have many sons of the Low Countries residing among the Portuguese in the lands under cultivation will our mastery over the most restless element of the population be assured,” said the Statthalter and the Council to the directors of the West India Company in January 1638. Thus, they urgently demanded that Amsterdam send from one to three thousand peasants. But they hoped in vain. The peasants stayed at home, glued to their homes. An adventure that they had good reason to consider risky and doubtful did not seduce them.50 The failure of the Dutch experience in Brazil is really one more justification for the thesis, popular among some anthropologists, that

36  Work and Adventure

northern Europeans are incompatible with tropical regions. The isolated individual—observes an authority on the subject—can adapt to such regions, but the race, decidedly not; they have not even adapted to southern Europe. Unlike the Dutch, the Portuguese entered into intimate and frequent contact with the colored population. They yielded docilely to the attractions of the customs, languages, and sects of the natives and the blacks more than any other European people. They became Americanized or Africanized to a necessary extent; according to a venerable expression of the African coast, they became Negroes.51 The Portuguese language itself, unlike the Dutch, was particularly well received by many of these primitive peoples. As formulated centuries later by Martius, the invaders were able to observe early on that the Nordic languages presented practically insuperable phonetic difficulties for Brazilian Indians, while the Portuguese language, like the Spanish, was much easier for them to learn.52 The Protestant missionaries who came with the Dutch soon perceived that the use of the Dutch language in religious instruction promised little success, not only among Africans but also among natives. Older blacks learned absolutely nothing. Portuguese, on the other hand, was perfectly familiar to many of them. Experience finally showed that its use in sermons and prayers gave much more satisfying results than the use of the Dutch language.53 And so the Dutch sometimes used the language of the conquered in dealings with the blacks and natives of the land, almost as the Jesuits used the lingua franca to catechize natives, even the Tapuia Indians. More important, the Reformed religion of the invaders, unlike Catholicism, did not excite in any way the imagination or the senses of these people, and thus did not offer any basis for a transition by which their religiosity could accommodate to Christian ideals. The Dutch Calvinists established in New Holland cannot be compared, for example, with the Puritans of North America, who, animated by biblical inspiration, felt sufficiently identified with the people of Israel to assimilate individuals of another caste, another creed, or another color, like the Canaanites of the Old Testament, whom the Lord had delivered to the chosen people to be destroyed

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and subjugated.54 It is well known that the Dutch constantly tried to proselytize the blacks and natives of the country, and that those efforts were quite successful. Absent from such contact, however, were the tolerance and attractiveness that the Catholic Church, undoubtedly more universalist or less exclusivist than Protestantism, is able to infuse into men, even when relationships between them seem less than perfect. It is for that very reason that the Dutch apparently failed to convert as many, or as dedicated, proselytes to their faith as the Portuguese converted, seemingly without effort, to the Catholic religion. Some colonizers of the Antilles observed that the Dutch in Brazil were trying to sell them natives who had been imprisoned and enslaved. “It is easy,” according to one comment of that period, “to distinguish those converted to the faith by the Portuguese from those who remained in Recife with the Dutch, by their piety and devotion demonstrated in church, by their assiduousness at the divine service, and by their outward behavior, which is much more reserved and modest.”55 These characteristics of Portuguese colonists in Brazil, in addition to the aforementioned lack of any racial pride or prejudice, amounted to inestimable advantages for the Portuguese. Therefore, the mixing of race, a significant element of adaptation to the tropical environment, was not a sporadic phenomenon but a normal process in Portuguese America. It was mainly due to the process of miscegenation, not to any superhuman effort, that the Portuguese were able to construct a new motherland far from their own.

Appendix: The Persistence of Predatory Agriculture The testimony of an American observer, R. Cleary, is a significant source for understanding the persistence of predatory agriculture in Brazil. Cleary immigrated to Brazil after the U.S. Civil War and practiced his profession as a doctor in Lajes, Santa Catarina, during the last twenty or so years of the Brazilian monarchy. In a still unpublished work, the manuscript of which is in the Library of Congress

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in Washington, D.C., Cleary made the following comments regarding the German colonists in São Leopoldo. He claimed that they brought nothing to their adopted country and limited themselves to planting, in the same primitive and crude style, what Brazilians were already planting. I met an Irishman in Porto Alegre . . . who tried to introduce the general use of the plow among the Germans. He did not get the slightest results, since the colonists preferred to use hoes or shovels and, in the great majority of cases, simple wood sticks to make holes for seeds. This last detail calls for an explanation: our own rural workers will undoubtedly be amazed if I should tell them that, generally, planting is done with hoes, but rarely with shovels—this is true even when the cultivator is sufficiently enlightened to resist established habits, which consist of making holes for the seeds with the help of a simple piece of wood. Some, though very few in number, use shovels; however, they are nothing more than poor substitutes for the great symbol of civilization, the plow, which is the last work of Tubal Cain (the savior of the world).56 Since Cleary made these observations, the acquisition of superior techniques, which would be equivalent to a subversion of methods inherited from the natives of the region, has not progressed as desired. Technical development has generally aimed at economizing effort rather than increasing soil productivity. As a rule, however, the descendants of German or Italian colonists were undeniably more open than Luso-­Brazilians to accepting forms of intensive agriculture based on improved methods, following the initial, or pioneering, phase with its almost inevitable adherence to primitive procedures. These observations lead us to a relevant question: Why did European settlers in Brazil, or indeed in all of Latin America, generally retrogress from using the plow to using the hoe? Did they simply conform to the primitive methods of the natives?

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This book has attempted to show that such a situation can be attributed to the Iberian immigrants’ meager disposition toward agricultural labor. But since European settlers of different origins did not, despite everything, turn out to be much more progressive in this respect than the Portuguese or Spanish, we must conclude that, in addition to the reason given, other factors must be considered. This matter was the object of a careful inquiry by Herbert Wilhelmy. Published in Germany in 1940, his work has not had the impact it deserves.57 Wilhelmy shows that the recourse to burning must have seemed, to colonists established on virgin soil, such an obvious necessity that it did not even occur to them to resort to other methods of clearing. Apparently, to them, the productivity of soil that was cleared and opened without the help of fire did not sufficiently compensate for the effort involved in its cultivation, especially given that the prospect of a local market for lumber was usually minimal. Wilhelmy thinks that this was an illusory idea, since the economic reasons favoring one method or another do not depend solely on the expenditure required. A comparison between the yields of a hectare cultivated by other processes would be much more decisive. And such a comparison reveals that “the corn harvest in soil where there was no burning is twice as great as in lands cultivated with the help of fire.” In addition to hurting soil fertility and destroying vast swaths of natural vegetation, the burnings have other disadvantages, such as eliminating the ability of birds to build nests. “And the disappearance of birds implies the disappearance of an important factor in exterminating pests of all kinds. In fact, in regions where there was great forest destruction, plantations of yerba mate [a South American variety of tea] suffer rot and even the core of trunks and branches is penetrated, condemning the plants to certain death. Even caterpillars multiply considerably with the reduction of forests.” The German colonists, who sixty years ago used methods less devastating than burning, finally had to accommodate to the traditional Brazilian system, since—according to a comment of the

40  Work and Adventure

time—rotating the soil and pulling out roots incurred a surfacing of tiny mineral elements that hindered plant growth. After the initial deforestation, nothing prevented colonists from using the plow, which they must have known about in their countries of origin. However, with a few exceptions, that did not happen. The only such exception that Wilhelmy could find was that of Canadian and Russian Mennonites of German origin who settled in the interior of the Paraguayan Chaco between 1927 and 1930. They firmly intended to use plows in large areas. For religious reasons, they opposed burning techniques; they were so staunchly opposed that they refused even to entertain the possibility, when it later arose, of moving to the Brazilian forest areas of Santa Catarina state. For Wilhelmy, two factors explain the persistence of the more primitive agricultural methods used in the German colonies in southern Brazil. First, because those colonies were generally located in mountainous regions and occupied hills sloping down toward valleys, the very terrain limited the use of the plow. Although some of the colonists located in level areas ended up cultivating their lands in the European manner, many remained, and still remain, faithful to the hoe. The second factor is that the experience of several farmers showed that the use of the plow is often counterproductive in certain tropical and subtropical soils. Many of the more progressive colonists paid dearly for that kind of experience, as did those in Nueva Germania, a settlement founded in 1887 in northern Paraguay. Those who were not completely ruined returned to the use of the hoe. Their descendants today have no plan to abandon it, since they are fully convinced that forest soil can be destroyed not only by burning but also by the plow. Such failures should not be interpreted, however, as invitations for inertia and for continuing traditional habits, but rather for examinations of soil types before introducing improvements in agricultural techniques.58 The experiments mentioned above seem to indicate only that the plow becomes harmful when it rotates the soil so deeply that it buries the tenuous layer of humus under poor soils that lack the microorganisms and organic substances necessary for cultivating plants.

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Studies in other continents tend to corroborate the observations made by Karl Sapper and Wilhelmy in tropical America. Thus, when a large textile factory in Leipzig tried to promote planting cotton in Sadani, in Central Africa, according to modern methods and using plows that turned over the soil to a depth of thirty to thirty-­five centimeters, productivity levels fell immediately and disastrously. Once the reason for the failure was recognized, the farmers began to use surface plowing, with better results. How, then, did the early introduction of the plow by the Jesuits in their missions in Paraguay almost immediately provide good results? The reason must be that the plows brought by the Spanish to their possessions in America did not penetrate the soil very deeply. Sapper informs us that in this respect they were no different from the ancient Quechuas’ taclla, or foot plow, which was the most advanced example of agrarian technique in pre-­Colombian America, cultivating two or three times as much land in the same amount of time.59 A description from the middle of the eighteenth century states that the crude wooden plows used in the Jesuit missions penetrated only one-­fourth of a vara [1.10 meters] into the soil, yet everything planted grew well. Father Florian Paucke, in assessing certain European patterns, maintained that growth would have been even better and more abundant if, like iron plows, they had cut deeper and turned the earth over “as is the case in our German countries.”60 Portuguese America gained little familiarity with these and other progressive techniques that benefited the natives in the Jesuit missions in Paraguay. Agriculture in our nation continued to develop in, and at the expense of, the forests. Luis Antônio de Sousa, a captain-­ general of São Paulo, stated that farmers in 1766 “followed the virgin forest in such a way that the residents of Cutia, which is seven leagues from this city, today are already residents of Sorocaba, which is twenty leagues from Cutia.” Like the natives, they knew only how to “pursue the virgin forest, changing and establishing their domicile wherever it is.”61

C h a p t e r

3

The Rural Heritage Abolition: Dividing Line between Two Eras — Incompatibility of Slave Labor with Bourgeois Civilization and Modern Capitalism — From the Law of Eusébio to the Crisis of 1864 — The Case of Mauá — Patriarchialism and the Spirit of Faction — Reasons for the Leading Role Given to the Virtues of Imagination and Intelligence — Cairu and His Ideas — Aristocratic Integrity — Dictatorship of the Agrarian Regions — Contrast between the Vigor of Farming Areas and the Insignificance of Cities in the Colonial Era

The entire structure of our colonial society was based on a rural environment. This fact is essential to understanding the circumstances that continued to govern us, directly or indirectly, long after independence. The consequences of the long-­standing rural predominance are still palpable today. Although, as I contend in the previous chapter, the Portuguese did not establish a strictly agricultural civilization in Brazil, they 43

44  The Rural Heritage

unquestionably had rural roots. The life of the colony was effectively concentrated on rural properties during the initial centuries of European occupation: the cities were virtually, if not actually, their dependencies. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that this situation was not essentially modified until abolition. The year 1888 represents a dividing line between two eras, and it is of unique and incomparable significance in our nation’s development. Slaveholding-­planters and their sons, who were educated in liberal professions, monopolized politics during the monarchy. They elected their own candidates or had them elected, and they dominated parliaments, government departments, and generally all positions of authority. The stability of their institutions was based in their uncontested realm of influence and power. It was uncontested to such an extent that many representatives of the class of traditional gentlemen often took the luxury of anti-­traditional stances, and even initiated some of the most important liberal movements in our history. In a certain sense, we owe to them the material progress that eventually led to the toppling of the traditional order, for it gradually undermined the prestige of their class and its principal foundation: slave labor. Perhaps even after the founding of the republic, we were never involved in a fever of reform as intense and brief as that of the mid-­ nineteenth century, especially between the years 1851 and 1855. The movement to constitute corporations began in 1851; that same year, the second Bank of Brazil was founded; and three years later, it was reorganized into a new system with a unique monopoly for issuing money. In 1852 the city of Rio de Janeiro’s first telegraph line was inaugurated. In 1853 the Rural and Mortgage Bank, which did not enjoy the privileges of the Bank of Brazil but paid many more, voluminous dividends, was founded. In 1854 the country’s first railroad line was opened, covering the fourteen-­and-­a-­half kilometer stretch between the port of Mauá and the Fragoso station. Construction on the second line, which connected the royal court to the capital of the province of São Paulo, began in 1855. Those events had decisive consequences: the organization and expansion of bank credit—nonexistent until the first Bank of Brazil

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was liquidated in 1829—and the resulting stimulus for private initi­ ative; an acceleration and increase in business activity brought about by the more rapid spread of news; and the definitive establishment of modern transportation between agrarian centers and the great commercial centers of the empire. These developments encouraged new types of speculation, and their prosperity grew not only at the margin but at the expense of traditional agricultural activities. Such transformations opened up a road that logically could only lead to a fairly rapid liquidation of our old rural and colonial heritage, that is, the wealth based on slave labor and on the extensive and wasteful exploitation of agricultural lands. It was not simply a chronological coincidence that a period of exceptional vitality in business that was directed by and for the benefit of speculators, who, for the most part, did not have rural roots, occurred in the years immediately following the first step in abolishing slavery: the suppression of slave trafficking. That first step was unquestionably a decisive and truly heroic one, given the complex web of powerful mercantile interests and the deeply rooted passions and prejudices, to which the Eusébio de Queirós law would deliver a body blow. Using British parliamentary documents, Pandiá Calógeras has revealed a truly impressive picture of resistance and recalcitrance. On several occasions, the violence of repressive English cruisers—which even apprehended Brazilian ships inside our own ports—caused indignation, strengthening the opinions of those favorable to continuing the slave traffic by appealing to people’s patriotic sentiments. In addition, the eternal defenders of the status quo, who feared an uncertain and unpredictable future and wanted only to permanently retain institutions as they were, at all costs, continued their steady arguments against change. They naturally thought that in a new and sparsely populated country such as Brazil, the continued importation of slaves for some time ahead would be, at worst, an inevitable evil and, in any case, a lesser one when faced with the probability of widespread misery resulting from a labor shortage. The fact that the great fortunes made in the shadow of the slave trade were mostly Portuguese ones, not Brazilian, tended to work

46  The Rural Heritage

against the importation of slaves and, therefore, favored a government that was unhesitatingly disposed to confronting the numerous descendants of the caramurus1 of the Regency period. Anti-­Portuguese nativism became, directly or indirectly, a considerable influence in the movement to suppress slave trafficking. Those interested in continuing the trafficking succeeded in organizing an extensive network of preventive measures to protect their activities. These included developing a sophisticated system of coastal signals and warnings to indicate any danger to the arrival of the slave ships; subsidizing newspapers; bribing officials; and fostering political or police-­led persecution of their adversaries in every way possible. They thought that their immunity, as well as the invulnerability of their transactions, was assured forever. Calógeras describes one of these measures: Depending on the class of ship, the Brazilian and Portuguese documents required by regulations were supplied for between 800 to 1,000 contos [money of that period] so that the voyages could take place. On returning from the coast of Africa and unloading its human cargo, a ship would enter port with a notice of disease on board. For 500 contos, a health official would issue a certificate of confirmation, and the ship would be quarantined in the district of Santa Rita, where the justice of the peace was in partnership with the violators. Then all the notices about transporting blacks would be removed from the ship, and for 600 contos, they would get a new, clean bill of health. Thus, cleansed of guilt, the ship would anchor in the usual roadstead. Sometimes the slave ship would stop near Rasa Island, and the lighthouse-­ keeper would visit it: his silence was bought for 200 contos.2 Unsurprisingly, this arrangement enabled those interested in the traffic to promote an increasingly lucrative trade in, and especially after, 1845—the year of the Aberdeen Bill [authorizing search and seizure of slave ships by the British]—which would turn them into true magnates of the empire’s finances. The importance of the blow represented by the Eusébio de Queirós law can be appreciated by looking at the

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following figures: in 1845, the total of number of blacks imported was 19,643; in 1846, 50,324; in 1847, 56,172; in 1848, 60,000; in 1849, 50,000; and in 1850, 23,000. The sudden drop in 1850 resulted not only from the passing of the Eusébio de Queirós law on September 4, but also from the intensified British repression of the traffic. The efficacy of the measures against slavery is reflected in the fact that in 1851, only 3,287 blacks officially entered the country; and in 1852, only 700. After that, only two small landings were verified: that of Serinhaem in Pernambuco, and that of São Mateus in Espírito Santo, which resulted in the authorities apprehending more than 500 Africans. This extinction of a trade that had been the origin of some of the greatest and most solid Brazilian fortunes of the time inevit­ ably resulted in the increased availability of capital, which until then had been invested in importing Negroes. The possibility of seriously diverting that capital toward other types of business did not escape some enlightened minds. The very founding of the Bank of Brazil in 1851 was apparently related to a deliberate plan to use those resources to organize a great credit institution. Viscount Mauá, the promoter of the initiative, wrote almost thirty years later in his Presentation to the Creditors: “I devoted careful attention to the solution of that grave problem; I understood that the contraband trade could not arise again, since the ‘national will’ supported the ministry that decreed the suppression of the traffic. When I knew for certain that this step was irrevocable, my primary concern was putting together the capital, which had suddenly become displaced from the illicit trade, and making it converge on a center where it could nourish the productive forces of the country.”3 Thus, a power unprecedented in Brazilian commercial history arose from the ashes of the slave trade. The empire’s foreign trade statistics documented the sudden transformation. Until 1850 the value of Brazilian imports had never reached 60,000 contos a year. Between 1850 and 1851 they jumped to 76,918 contos; and in 1851–52 they reached 92,860 contos. From then until 1864 there were some declines, but these did not affect the general tendency toward a continuing increase in quantity and value.4

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A feverish desire for enrichment, encouraged by the excessive ease of credit, soon contaminated all classes and became one of the notable characteristics of that period of “prosperity.” This was a singular novelty in a land where the idea of property was still intimately linked to the possession of assets that were more concrete and less impersonal than a bank note or a company share. The planters, who went into debt because of their constant recourse to urban centers supplying the slaves, mistrusted the new remedies that, despite being labeled cures for momentary illnesses, seemed a permanent threat to the traditional bases of their prestige. In São Paulo a proposal to create a rural mortgage bank even led to talk of socialism. A deputy in the Provincial Assembly protested that socialists, who were “capital enemies of real property, intended to convert property into capital.”5 Some who got rich quickly, in a system of unlimited freedom of credit, suffered from unbridled optimism, in contrast to those more severely affected by the ending of the slave trade, who were left perplexed and discontented. Nabuco cites an example typical of the conservative spirit in reaction to the new habits brought on by speculative fever: Better good blacks brought from the coast of Africa for their happiness and ours, than all the morbid philanthropy of the British—which they neglect to apply to themselves and which allows their poor white brothers to die of hunger, like slaves without masters to take pity on them—these hypocritical and stolid British who ridicule the true philanthropy that is the fate of our happy slaves. Better good blacks from the coast of Africa to cultivate our fertile fields, than all the ornaments of Ouvidor Street [a main street in Rio]; than dresses costing one and a half contos for our wives; than oranges for four vintens [money of the period] apiece in a country that produces them almost spontaneously; than corn, rice, and almost everything needed to maintain human life abroad; than, in sum, ill-­advised enterprises far beyond our country’s legitimate capacity. These new enterprises have upset social relationships, have dislocated labor, and, more than anything else, have promoted shortages and high prices of all foodstuffs.6

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The very instability of new fortunes, which evaporated at the slightest ill wind, provided justification for those nostalgic for a rural and patriarchal Brazil. Two distinct and mutually hostile worlds opposed each other with growing rancor. They were two mentalities in opposition, as the rational opposes the traditional, as the abstract opposes the corporeal and the sensitive, and as the urban and cosmopolitan opposes the regional or parochial. The presence of such conflicts seemed to demonstrate the immaturity of slaveholding Brazil in the face of transformations that would profoundly alter its appearance. The suppression of the slave trade was the first step in abolishing barriers to the decisive triumph of urban merchants and speculators, but the work begun in 1850 would only completely end in 1888. Not only did openly retrograde elements, represented by unrepentant slaveholders, resist abolition during this forty-­year interval, but so too did forces seeking to restore a threatened equilibrium. How could one expect profound transformations in a country where the very situation to be overcome was maintaining the traditional foundations of society? As long as economic and social patterns inherited from the colonial era remained intact and powerful on the large properties served by slave labor, the boldest transformations would necessarily be superficial and illusory. In this sense, it can be said that the particularly detested Ferraz Law of August 22, 1860—a “masterpiece of a credit squeeze,” as it was called at the time—was an appeal to reality. It did not in fact provoke—rather, it merely precipitated—the enormous economic crisis of 1864, the first crisis in imperial Brazil that did not grow out of internal political commotion or international factors. That crisis was the normal conclusion to a strictly unsustainable situation, born from the ambition to dress a country still captive to a slaveholding economy in the clothes of a great, bourgeois democracy. In a certain sense, the commercial failure of Viscount Mauá is also an eloquent indicator of the radical incompatibility between lifestyles copied from more socially advanced nations, on the one hand, and Brazil’s centuries‑old patriarchalism and personalism, on the other.

50  The Rural Heritage

Many of the great progressive initiatives owed to him were tolerable and even admired, as long as they did not compromise those venerable patterns. But shocks were not always avoidable, and, in those cases, tolerance easily changed to distrust and distrust to heated opposition. The attitude of the liberal Silveira Martins in his invective against Mauá, who had placed his “commercial interests” above party loyalty in supporting the Rio Branco ministry in 1872, was precisely that of a conservative and a traditionalist in the broadest sense possible. The view that by becoming affiliated with a political party, an individual assumes commitments that cannot be broken without betraying it, very clearly belongs to a set of ideas and principles that the rising bourgeoisie had increasingly devalued. Under those concepts, factions are constituted like families, specifically, patriarchal-­based fami­lies, where the biological and emotional ties that unite collateral and related descendants, as well as all kinds of servants and persons in any way linked to the head of the family, must outweigh other considerations. Thus, forming an indivisible whole, members find themselves associated with one another by sentiment and duty, not by interests or ideas. Although a lack of comprehension of some of our political peculiarities by foreigners certainly stems from, despite many appearances to the contrary, the basic incompatibility between our system and that of countries more fundamentally characterized by the industrial revolution, particularly the Anglo-­Saxon countries, at least one foreigner did not miss the real reasons for this divergence. The American naturalist Herbert Smith wrote in 1885: “In Brazil, there is an almost universal idea that it is dishonorable for a person to abandon his party; those who do so are stigmatized as traitors.” He added, “Although that spirit of loyalty is in essence good, there are bad applications. A man does not act well when he deserts a relative, a friend, or a noble cause, but he does not necessarily act badly when he withdraws from a political party; at times the evil is in sticking to it.”7 Such a spirit of faction originates in the same aristocratic virtues or pretensions that are characteristic of Brazilian rural patriarchs. As

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someone stated at the end of the eighteenth century, undoubtedly expressing a more general conviction, the leading Brazilian sugar planters, independent farmers, farmers under some commitment to landowners, and even renters formed a body “so noble in nature that no other country could match.”8 Because of the solidity of their businesses, which were considered the colony’s mainspring of wealth and power, they were the real forces behind production, trade, navigation, and all other arts and crafts. In the countryside, the landed proprietor’s authority was unquestioned. Everything was done according to this individual’s often capricious and despotic will. The sugar mill was a complete organism and was self-­sufficient whenever possible. It had a chapel where mass was celebrated, as well as a primary school, where the priest-­teacher taught the children. The residents’ daily diet, and that with which guests were received and often welcomed, came from the plantations, from livestock, and from hunting and fishing within the region. There were also sawmills that produced furniture, equipment for the mill, and wood for the houses. The traveler Tollenare took note of these products from sawmills because of their “perfect execution.”9 In certain regions even today, particularly in the northeast, as Gilberto Freyre notes, the “toilets, benches, closets, and the mill’s other products stand out, revealing something rustic in their consistency and their distinctly heraldic air.”10 Concerning the Brazilian countryside’s singular self-­sufficiency, Friar Vicente do Salvador recorded for us a curious anecdote of a certain bishop from Tucumán, of the order of St. Dominic, who passed through the countryside at the request of the court of the Philips. The prelate, a great canonist and a man of sound understanding and prudence, noted that when he ordered a large chicken, four eggs, and a fish to eat, he was brought nothing because these things were not available in the market or at the butcher’s, but when he sought them in private homes, they were immediately provided to him. “Then the bishop said: ‘Truly, in this land, things are backwards, because it is not a republic; rather, each house is a republic.’ ” Friar Vicente then comments, “And thus the houses of the rich are furnished with everything they need (even at another’s expense, since many are in debt for

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all they own) because they have slaves, fishermen, and hunters who bring them meat and fish and barrels of wine and oil, which they buy wholesale in villages where often these are not for sale.”11 In Maranhão, in 1735, a governor complained that people did not live as a community, but rather lived privately, since the house of each inhabitant or each tribal chief was like a genuine republic, each maintaining those with specialized occupations, such as masons, carpenters, barbers, bloodletters, fisherman, and so on.12 This situation continued with little change until, and indeed well after, independence. It is known that during the great coffee era, there were always farmers in the province of Rio de Janeiro who boasted of having to buy only iron, salt, powder, and lead, since their own lands provided everything else in abundance. In the countryside, the type of family that was organized according to the classical rules of ancient Roman and canon law and that had been maintained in the Iberian Peninsula throughout innumerable generations prevailed as the base and center of all organization. Not just plantation and house slaves but also laborers expanded the family circle, and with it the immense authority of the paterfamilias. This social nucleus behaved like its model from antiquity in every way; the very term “family,” derived from the Latin famulus, was closely linked to the idea of slavery, and the children were the only free members, the liberi, of the vast body entirely subordinated to the patriarch. Of the various sectors of our colonial society, the sphere of domestic life was unquestionably the one where the principle of authority was least vulnerable to the corrosive forces attacking it from all sides. Always immersed in itself, not tolerating any outside pressure, the family group remained immune to any limitation or shock. In its modest isolation, it could ignore any higher principle that might try to disturb or oppress it. In this environment, paternal power was virtually unlimited, and few brakes on its tyranny existed. Cases like that of Bernardo Vieira de Melo, who condemned his daughter-­in-­law to death in a family council and ordered that the sentence be carried out because he suspected her of adultery, were not rare. The judicial system did nothing

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to prevent the homicide or to punish the guilty person, despite the way the criminal himself publicized his deed. Thus, the family scene became so powerful and demanding that its shadow persecuted individuals even outside the domestic sphere. The private entity always preceded the public one. A unique and nontransferable nostalgia for this compact organization, where preference based on bonds of affection necessarily prevailed, characterized Brazilian society, public life, and all activities. Representing the only sector with an undisputed principle of authority, the colonial family provided the most normal idea of power, respectability, obedience, and social cohesion. As a result, certain sentiments appropriate to the domestic community, which was naturally particularistic and antipolitical, dominated all other social relationships; the private sphere invaded the public, the family invaded the state. With the decline of traditional agriculture and the nearly concomitant rise of urban centers, which was precipitated significantly by the arrival of the Portuguese court in 1808 and later by independence, the rural landlords began to lose their privileged and unique position. Other professions began to demand the same status, especially those that were urban in scope, such as those engaged in political activity, the bureaucracy, and the liberal professions. It is easy to understand how members of these professions first began to fit in among the leading people of the country, which consisted entirely of the planters and sugar-­mill owners. Suddenly transported to the cities, these people brought with them the mentality, the prejudices, and, insofar as was possible, the lifestyles that hitherto had been part of their primitive condition. One can make a connection between those circumstances and a continuing feature of our social life: the supreme value usually given to certain qualities of imagination and “intelligence” over manifestations of a practical or positive spirit. The universal prestige of the word “talent,” with the overtones that word has especially in the regions where colonial and slaveholding agriculture left its strongest imprint, such as the northeast, undoubtedly came from the greater dignity that Brazilians attributed to the simple exercise of intelligence as opposed to activities requiring some physical effort.

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Mental work—that is, work that does not dirty the hands or tire the body—was considered an occupation in every way worthy for traditional slaveholders and their heirs. In this case, it does not necessarily mean the love of speculative thinking—in truth, although we presume the contrary, we generally do not value intellectual speculation highly—but rather the love of the sonorous phrase, of the spontaneous and abundant word, of ostentatious erudition, and of the rare expression. This corresponds well with how we generally regard intelligence: it should be an ornament and an aptitude, not an instrument of knowledge and activity. In our society, where certain lordly virtues still receive great credit, characteristics of the mind often replace titles. Certain material representations, such as a class ring and a bachelor’s degree, can be the equivalent of an authentic, noble coat of arms. In other eras, the use of abilities that involved intelligence but not the body was expressly considered as belonging to noble and free men. Apparently, that may have been the origin of the use of the term “liberal” for certain talents, as opposed to “mechanical” for those belonging to the servile classes. Not even Silva Lisboa, who was a noted agitator for new economic ideas in the first decades of the last century, remained entirely immune from the general view that manual labor, as opposed to activities of the mind, was not very dignifying. In his Estudos do Bem Comum, published after 1819, this future Viscount of Cairu proposed showing his compatriots, Brazilian or Portuguese, that the purpose of the economy is not to overload society with mechanical, manual, and burdensome labor. He asked, confusingly basing his question on a passage from Adam Smith, whether the quantity of labor or the quantity of intelligence contributed more, and how much more, to the wealth and prosperity of nations. That question does not appear in the relevant passage by Adam Smith, but instead is probably the result of a poor translation. Indeed, it is more faithful to the spirit of the translator than that of the original. The economist Silva Lisboa, however, decidedly took the side of “intelligence.”13 Intellectual talents, in his manner of thinking,

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contribute to the immense task of relieving physical activity “through the study of the laws and works of the Creator,” in order that “men may have the greatest possible wealth with the least possible work.”14 To the Bahian economist, it must have seemed inconceivable that the highly celebrated “intelligence” of his compatriots would not work wonders in the growth of material goods that usually make up the wealth and prosperity of nations. That, in summary, is the idea he puts forth in his book in order to correct or complete the thinking of the Scottish master. It does not occur to him for one moment that the particular quality of that highly admired “intelligence” is simply to be decorative, or that it exists for the purpose of its very contrast with physical labor, which cannot supply it or complement it. In short, he thinks that in a society of an aristocratic and personalistic coloration, it corresponds to the need of each individual to distinguish himself from his fellows through some apparently congenital and nontransferable virtue, similar in that sense to the nobility of blood. Thus, “intelligence,” which constitutes the foundation of the system suggested by Silva Lisboa, is essentially an antimodern principle. In effect, nothing is more opposed to the meaning of all economic thinking originating in the Industrial Revolution and oriented toward the progressive use of the machine than the primacy given to certain subjective factors that are irreducible to mechanical laws or mathematical terms. “The machine,” an astute observer has noted, “seeks the adaptation of the worker to his work, not the adaptation of the work to the worker.”15 Cardinal virtues in a craft economy, such as artistic taste, dexterity, and the personal touch, thus become secondary. The terrain of the individual whim, of creative and inventive genius, tends to become restricted in favor of one’s capacity to focus on the minute detail needed for greater productivity. The latter tendency is undoubtedly expressed most precisely in systems of rational work organization, as in Taylorism or the Henry Ford experiment, which maintain the ideal of complete worker depersonalization carried to extreme consequences. Clearly, the ornamental and declamatory kind of talent that Viscount Cairu admired among Brazilians of his time is especially

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difficult to reconcile with the “unintelligent,” impersonal activity increasingly demanded by the nature of the modern economy. Despite his familiarity with British economists, it is clear that the author of Estudos do Bem Comum did not contribute, other than in a superficial way, to reforming economic ideas. By 1819 he was already a man of the past, committed to the task of frustrating at any cost the elimination of concepts and lifestyles related in any way to Brazil’s rural and colonial past.16 Silva Lisboa’s philosophical opinions, his constant genuflections before power, and especially his characteristic notions about civil and political society all clearly mirror a similar commitment. In his works on civil and political society, he expresses a sort of prolonging or a broadening of the domestic community, an insistent leitmotif that recurs throughout all his writings. “The first principle of political economy,” he exclaims, “is that the sovereign of each nation should be considered the chief or the head of a vast family, and consequently should support all those in it, as well as their children and those who cooperate in the general happiness.” He continues: “The more the civil government approaches this paternal character and struggles to realize this generous and philanthropic fiction, the more just and powerful it is, resulting in a more voluntary and cordial obedience, and a sincere and unlimited satisfaction of the people.”17 The patriarchal family thus furnishes the great model on which political relations between the governing and the governed, between monarchs and subjects, are based. An inflexible moral law, superior to all calculations and human desires, can regulate the proper harmony of the social body, and therefore must be rigorously respected and carried out. This rigid paternalism was as far as one could possibly get from the ideas of revolutionary France, those political opiates, in the acrimonious words of the same Silva Lisboa, and also from the very principles that guided American statesmen in the foundation and constitution of their great republic.18 Did not one of those men, James Madison, maintain that moral and religious motives could not repress the causes of dissension among the citizens, and did he not present the principal purpose of governments—a purpose that would

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surely lead to their essential nature—as monitoring and accommodating divergent economic interests?19 In Brazil, the decorum corresponding to power and the institutions of government apparently could not be reconciled with the excessive importance attributed to material appetites, which for that reason were considered inferior and shameful vis-­à-­vis more generally accepted ideas. For institutions to be respected, they had to be supported by principles sanctioned by long-­time custom and opinion. Hipólito da Costa himself did not dare to defend some of his boldest convictions without trying to endow them with the seal of approval of antiquity and tradition. Thus, he resuscitated an apocryphal document—the famous record of proceedings of the court of Lamego, which held that royal power was associated with a contract between the first Portuguese monarch and the people—to confer nobility to and Portuguese ownership with the principle of social pacts, which was so abominated by all the reactionaries of the period.20 Traditionalists and iconoclasts indeed moved in the same ideological orbit. The latter, no less than the former, showed that they wanted to faithfully preserve the colonial legacy. The differences sepa­rat­ing them were merely formal and superficial. The Pernambuco revolution of 1817, although tinted with “French ideas,” was largely a repetition of the centuries-­old struggle of the native-­born Brazilian against the foreigner, or of the lord of the manor against the peddler. If the revolution had succeeded, it probably would not have led to any substantial transformation in our political and economic structure. We know very well that many of the movement’s leaders belonged to the so-­called nobility of the land. There was nothing to indicate that they were sincerely prepared to accept all of the consequences of their actions and to bid farewell to their ancient prerogatives. The statement with which Antônio Carlos justified himself to the judges of the court in Bahia for having participated in the uprising, intended as it was to win the goodwill of the magistrates, may not have expressed his opinions very accurately. The document manifesting his bitter opposition to the intentions, at least the theoretical ones, of a revolution

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aimed at abolishing all social barriers, contains some sincerity, since such a revolution would put him and the other members of the upper class on the same level as the lowest classes of the population. Or, to repeat his own words, the revolution would create a “system that, in removing me from the order of nobility to which I belonged, would make me the equal of the rabble and scum of all colors, and cut down in its flower the most well-­founded hopes of further advancement and of greater honors.”21 What was true in 1817 would continue to be true after independence. In 1847, when addressing the praieiros [Pernambucan revolutionaries] who had engaged in a fair, but vain, campaign against the overwhelming power of certain families of rural proprietors in Pernambuco, Nabuco de Araujo wisely noted that the antisocial and dangerous spirit represented by those families was a vice “of ancient origin that our revolutions and civilization have not been able to end.” And, he added: You have excited these generous sentiments in order to win popu­ larity and to triumph, but later and in reality, you have respected and conciliated your own feudalism, and thus only fought that of your adversaries; you have divided the province into conquerors and conquered; your efforts have been meant to give yourselves what you deny to others; you have excited and encouraged a nega­tive reaction; you have operated with the fury and hatefulness of a faction, not with the patriotism and the outlook of a political party.22 The purely external and superficial nature of the numerous conflicts among Brazilians in the years preceding and following independence reflects how difficult it was for political society to overcome the limits of the specific conditions generated by Portuguese colonization. One of the effects of improvising, nearly by force, a kind of urban bourgeoisie in Brazil was that certain attitudes, which up to that time were peculiar to the rural patriarchate, soon became commonly adopted as the ideal norms of conduct for all classes. The

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manor-­house mentality, stereotyped through long years of rural life, thus invaded the cities and conquered all occupations, even the humblest. John Luccock of Rio de Janeiro witnessed a typical case: a simple carpenter dressed like a nobleman, with a tricorn hat and buckled shoes, refused to use his own hands to carry his tools, preferring to have a black man handle them.23 Undoubtedly, similar causes are responsible for many of the problems that have always been observed regarding Brazil’s public services. In a country that was a land of masters and slaves for much of its existence and that had no trade, other than that engaged in by foreigners ambitious for wealth and nobility, finding a middle class numerous and qualified enough for such services would be impossible. Such conditions can be better understood if we consider that between the urban environment and the rural properties in Brazil, and indeed in most countries that were recently colonies, intermediate human institutions of the kind that are devoted to producing exportable goods hardly existed. This situation is particular to places where, as in Brazil and generally in Latin America, agrarian stability has always depended directly and solely on the natural productivity of the soil, and especially where the wastefulness in agricultural areas often meant dislocating rural settlements and creating in their place a large, deserted countryside or a dispersed population, not well-­rooted in the land.24 As a result, the distinction between the urban environment and the “farm” in Brazil and in all the Americas is the true equivalent of the classical and typically European distinction between the city and the village. Just like the word “peasant,” which indicates a person rooted in his place of origin through innumerable generations, the word “village,” in its most current and usual meaning, fails to correspond to New World reality.25 And with this distinction and the growth of urban centers, the process of absorbing rural populations in Brazil met less resistance than it did, for example, in European

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countries, unless there were lands to explore and ruin within close range. This chapter has tried to show how that process, at least initially, corresponded to the development of the cities’ traditional dependence on agricultural regions. In the absence of an independent urban bourgeoisie, candidates for newly created offices were in­di­vidu­als recruited perforce from among the traditional rural landowners, who brought with them the characteristic mentality and inclinations of that class. During the empire and even during the subsequent republican period, Brazil’s entire administrative apparatus had to coexist with elements that were tightly linked to the old seignorial system. Those conditions prolonged a very real and notable state of affairs that had prevailed during the colonial period: that is, for a long time, and to some degree until the arrival of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro, we were a structure sui generis, even when compared to other countries in the Americas, particularly those whose economies were also almost entirely supported by servile labor. The rule in all places and at all times was always the reverse: urban prosperity occurred at the expense of the centers of agricultural production. Without the growth of cities and the formation of non-­ agrarian classes, the land would gradually become concentrated in the hands of representatives of those classes, who generally resided in cities and consumed what was produced by the countryside, usually without reciprocating the economic equivalent.26 Although the opposite was not exactly the case in Brazil, it was because urban growth during the entire colonial period was precarious and relative. In that same period, however, the Brazilian urban centers always strongly resented the dictatorship of the countryside. This fact is significant and deserves emphasis because it helps to clarify the true character of Brazil’s colonial cities. In reality, landowners held the most important urban offices. Complaints by merchants and other city inhabitants against the monopoly of powerful town councils run by landowners were common. The aspirations of merchants to compete with rural proprietors were deemed impertinent and were censured as absurd by the court in Lisbon, since the

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title of lord of the manor was considered as important as the titles of nobility of the grandees of the kingdom of Portugal. Not surprisingly, then, the rural landowners were practically the only real “citizens” of the colony. Thus they had created a situation characteristic, perhaps, of classical antiquity but one that was no longer known in Europe—even medieval Europe. The typical citizen of classical antiquity was, first, a man who always consumed the products of his own lands, which was worked by his slaves. But he did not habitually reside on his lands. In some places along the Mediterranean basin, for example, in Sicily—Max Weber states—the farmers never lived outside the city walls due to the insecurity and the extraordinary dangers constantly present in the countryside. Roman “villas” were all mainly luxury buildings, serving as vacation homes rather than as regular residences of their proprietors.27 In colonial Brazil, however, the grandees lived regularly on lands devoted to agriculture. They traveled to urban centers only for festivals and formal occasions. In general, only civil servants, workers, and merchants lived in the cities. We are given a sense of the poverty of the inhabitants of Piratininga during the seventeenth century as a result of a letter from the priest Justo Mansilla van Surck to the general of the Company of Jesus, regarding attacks on the reductions of Guaira. The priest explained that the misery of Piratininga was due to the continual absence of its inhabitants, “because other than the three or four principal feast days, very few people, either men or women, are there; they are always on their property or in the woods and fields, where they spend their lives hunting Indians.”28 In Bahia, the county’s governmental center for most of the colonial period, Capistrano de Abreu stated that houses were closed for most of the year, and only filled up on public occasions. “The city,” he said, “departed from its slothful life very few times a year. Gabriel Soares spoke of a nice square where the bulls ran when convenient. Church holidays involved processions and images and open-­air songs; inside the church, comedies were shown and with so little formality that, a

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witness has sworn, anyone could sit at the altar. At such times, the sugar plantations emptied out; they [the people] could show off their luxury, which then was not limited to only one sex, like today.”29 Elsewhere, the same historian, again referring to the city of Salvador in the sixteenth century, called it “a strange city, with houses but without residents, since the proprietors spent most of the time on their rural lands, only coming in on festival days. The urban population consisted of workers who practice their specialties, merchants, and judicial, financial, and military officials required to live there.”30 According to other accounts, the other cities and towns of the colony identically mirrored this pattern. As a consequence, proprietors frequently neglected their urban dwellings, giving all of their attention to their rural residences, where they had the bulk of their possessions and luxury items and where they could receive guests and visitors with ostentatious generosity. It was like Florence during the Renaissance, where, according to Giovanni Villani, the “villas” of rich proprietors, which were located in the fields of Tuscany, were more beautiful than the city houses; what proprietors spent on their villas surpassed any reasonable amount. These references principally deal with the first and second centuries of colonization; in the third century, urban life in certain places acquired more character, probably because of the cities’ prosperous Portuguese merchants. In 1711, Antonil declared that having his children always at the manor meant “bring[ing] them up like hicks, since their conversation consisted only of dogs, horses, and cattle. To leave them alone in the city would give them freedom to develop vices easily and to contract shameful and difficult-­to-­cure diseases.”31 But even so, the comparison between urban and rural life must not have been very favorable to the cities in that period, especially if there was truth in what the Count of Cunha, first viceroy of Brazil, wrote in a letter to the king of Portugal in 1767. He described Rio de Janeiro as inhabited only by workers, fishermen, seamen, mulattoes, ignorant slaves, naked blacks, and some businessmen, very few of whom deserved that title unless they also served as councilmen or in official positions, since persons from noble and distinguished houses lived away on their plantations and manor houses.

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The count’s letter confirms that conditions characterizing our colonial life since the beginning clearly persisted into the second half of the eighteenth century. Compared to urban insignificance, the strength of the countryside represents a phenomenon that began when Portuguese colonists settled the land. This peculiar phenomenon contrasts with the Dutch experience in Pernambuco. The previous chapter noted that, despite all its efforts to encourage rural immigration during its conquest of the northeast, the West Indies Company merely succeeded in increasing the number of arriving urban colonists. Urban life thus developed abnormally and prematurely. For the captaincies of the south in 1640, which were settled by the Portuguese, urban defense was sometimes regarded as a serious problem because of the shortage of inhabitants. Recife faced the exactly opposite situation: a notable shortage of dwellings to house new residents who did not stop coming. Dutch documents recount that improvised beds for the recent arrivals to the colony were found everywhere. Sometimes three, four, six, or even eight people lived in a single room in intolerable heat. If the Dutch authorities did not adopt rigorous measures to facilitate lodgings for all of these people, there would be only one remedy: to live in the port’s inns. “And these,” according to a Dutch report, “are the most common whorehouses in the world. What a shame for the poor family girl that ends up there! She will be permanently condemned to disgrace.”32 By every indication, the overwhelming predominance of ruralism was more a typical phenomenon resulting from the efforts of our colonizers than a result of their environment. And this is worth our attention because it seems more interesting and, for some, more flattering to the national vanity to believe that a certain mysterious “centrifugal force,” distinctive of the environment of the Americas, forced our rural aristocracy to abandon the cities and to seek the isolated life on sugar mill plantations and the rustic life of raising livestock.

C h a p t e r

4

Sowers and Builders The Founding of Cities as a Means of Domination — The Urbanistic Zeal of the Spanish: The Complete Triumph of the Straight Line — The Sea and the Interior — Routine versus Abstract Reason — The Spirit of Portuguese Expansion — The New Nobility of the 1500s — Portuguese Realism — Role of the Church Appendices 1. Intellectual Life in Spanish America and Brazil — 2. The Lingua Franca in São Paulo — 3. Aversion to the Economic Virtues — 4. Nature and Art

The primacy of rural life in colonial Brazil is in harmony with the spirit of Portuguese domination, which refrained from imposing imperative and absolute rules. Rather, the Portuguese always made concessions where immediate convenience so advised, and they paid more attention to achieving riches within easy reach than to constructing, planning, or planting foundations. 65

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City life is essentially opposed to nature and, to the degree that it is opposed, is associated with manifestations of spirit and desire. The most decisive instrument of domination for many conquering nations was the building of cities. Max Weber admirably showed that in the Near East, and particularly the Hellenic world and Imperial Rome, the founding of cities represented a particular way to create local organs of power. He added that the same phenomenon occurred in China, where, during the last century, the subjugation of the Miao tribes was identified with the urbanization of their lands. The conquering peoples had good reason to use such methods, which experience determined to be the most lasting and efficient ones. The economic frontiers established in time and space by the founding of cities in the Roman Empire also became the frontiers of the world that later would exhibit the heritage of classical culture.1 On the other hand, the freer the countryside was from the influence of the founding of urban centers—that is, the further it was from frontiers—the more important it became. For examples, one need not stray far, historically and geographically. On our own continent, Spanish colonization was broadly characterized by what the Portuguese lacked: an insistent use of methods that ensured the mother country’s military, economic, and political predominance over the conquered lands, mainly through the creation of large centers of stable and orderly settlements. Meticulous zeal and foresight guided the founding of Spanish cities in America. At first, ample freedoms were permitted for those individuals seeking to acquire, through memorable deeds, new glories and new lands for the crown of Castile. Soon afterwards, however, the strong hand of the state clamped down on the colonies: it imposed discipline on both new and old residents of the Americas; it appeased their rivalries and disputes; and it channeled the colonists’ raw energy toward the greater benefit of the mother country. The Ordenanzas de descubrimiento y nueva población expressly recommended in 1563 that only after—“not before”—the complete settlement and construction of buildings were the governors and settlers to try, with great diligence and sacred dedication, to bring all the natives of the land peacefully

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into the bosom of the Holy Church and under the obedience of the civil authorities. From the very start, the design of urban centers in Spanish America reflected a determined effort to overcome and correct the capricious fantasy of the native scenery: it imposed a defined act of human will. The streets could not model the meandering roughness of the land; rather, the Spanish imposed a voluntary emphasis of the straight line. Unlike the construction of the cities of Latium and later the Roman colonies, in accordance with Etruscan rites, this regular plan did not arise from any religious idea; it was simply a triumph of the aspiration to organize and dominate the conquered world. The characteristic straight line, which expressed the direction of the Spanish will toward a planned and chosen purpose, clearly demonstrated this decision. Thus, this characteristic decidedly governed all those Spanish cities, the first “abstract” cities that Europeans built on our continent. Numerous laws upheld by descendants of the Spanish conquerors prevented any initial eccentricity or caprice in the building of urban centers. The provisions of the Law of the Indies, which governed the founding of cities in the Americas, showed the same bureaucratic sense of minutiae that guided the casuists of that period, who were concerned with enumerating, defining, and examining complicated matters of conscience in order to edify and direct confessor priests. In searching for places to settle, the colonists sought to carefully verify which regions were the healthiest, by observing whether there were plenty of disease-­f ree, young and old men of good complexion, disposition, and color; sufficiently large and healthy animals; healthy fruits and food supplies; no poisonous or harmful things; a good and happy society; and a clear and benign sky with pure and pleasant air. For locations along the seashore, they considered a port’s protection, depth, and capacity for defense, and they also sought places safe from southwest currents. For settlements inland, they ruled out locations with unusually high altitudes, high exposure to wind, and difficult accessibility; nor did they consider very low, often unhealthy, places. The ideal location would be of medium altitude and open to

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both north and south winds; the presence of any nearby mountain ranges running east to west would be ideal. If a riverside locality were selected, the sun should shine first on the settlement and then on the water. Construction of the city would always begin at the so-­called main square. Along the sea, that square would be at the port landing; on land, in the settlement’s center. The square would be quadrilateral in shape, with its width measuring at least two-­thirds of its length so that horses could race there on feast days. Its absolute size would be in proportion to the number of inhabitants, and, with the understanding that settlements could grow, it would measure no less than 200 feet wide by 300 feet long and not more than 800 feet long by 532 feet wide. A well-­proportioned medium would be 600 feet long by 400 feet wide. The square would serve as the starting-­point for the street plan: the four principal streets would each start from the center of each side of the square. Two more would start from each corner, and care would be taken that the four angles consider aspects of the four winds. In cold places, the streets were to be wide; in hot places, narrow. And where there were horses, wide streets were always best.2 The settlement began with a center; the main square played the same role as the cardo and the decumanus in Roman cities. The two lines traced by the lituus3 of the founder—from north to south and from east to west—served as a reference point for the future plan of the urban grid. Although the orderly grouping in the plan of Spanish American cities was intended simply to reproduce the cosmic order itself on Earth, it also expressed the idea that man can arbitrarily and successfully intervene in the course of events, and that history does not only “happen” but can be guided and even manufactured.4 This thought reached its finest expression and its apogee in the Jesuits’ organization of their reductions. The Jesuits introduced this practice into the material culture of the Guarani missions, creating geometric cities of wrought stone and adobe in a region rich in wood and extremely poor in quarries, and they even extended it to institutions. Everything was so regulated, said an observer, that in reductions located in territory that is today Bolivia, “at the sound of a bell at midnight, the Indian wives would be roused to have intercourse.”5

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In Portuguese America, however, the Jesuits’ work was a rare and miraculous exception. Alongside the colossal prodigy of will and intelligence in their work, to which Spanish colonization also aspired, Portugal’s timid undertaking seemed poorly equipped for success. Compared to that of the Spanish in their conquests, the Portuguese effort was distinguished principally by commercial exploration, thus repeating the example of colonization of ancient times, especially that of the Phoenician and Greek; the Spanish, on the contrary, wanted to impose their own organic character on their occupied territories. Although Castile did not follow this route to the very end, they undeniably set out on this path. The desire to make the new lands more than simple commercial establishments sometimes led the Spanish to begin constructing the colonial edifice from the top. In 1538 they created the University of Santo Domingo. The University of San Marcos in Lima, with the privileges, exemptions, and limitations of those in Salamanca, was founded by royal authorization in 1551, only twenty years after Francisco Pizarro began the conquest of Peru. The University of Mexico City also dates from 1551, and it commenced courses in 1553. Several other institutions of higher learning were also founded between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. At the end of the colonial era, Castile had established in its diverse possessions no less than twenty-­three universities, six of the highest caliber, not counting those of Mexico and Lima. During the period of Spanish dominion, tens of thousands of people born in America passed through these establishments and completed their studies without having to cross the ocean.6 This example shows but one of the faces of Spanish colonization, and it also illustrates the creative will that animated it. This does not mean that this creative will always characterized the Spanish effort, nor that its good intentions always or consistently prevailed in the face of human inertia. But it was undoubtedly the main feature distinguishing Spanish colonization from the Portuguese presence in Brazil, where the colony was simply a place of temporary passage for both the government and its subjects. Indeed, such was Koster’s impression of Brazil even in the nineteenth century. For their part, the Spanish continued their centuries-­old struggle against the infidels



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in the New World. Columbus’s arrival in America in the same year that the last Moorish bulwark fell in the Iberian Peninsula seemed a providential coincidence that indicated that there should be no discontinuity between Spanish exploration of the New World and the expelling of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula. In colonizing the Americas, the Spanish reproduced the same methods—improved through experience—that they had used in colonizing their lands within Spain after expelling the followers of Mohammed. And, significantly, in the regions of our continent that the Spanish colonized, the climate generally did not pose great problems for them. Many of those regions were located outside the tropics, some at high altitudes. Even in the city of Quito, located on the equator itself, the Andalusian immigrant encountered a continually even temperature, one no more rigorous than that of his native land.7 The great population centers built by the Spanish in the New World were located precisely in areas where the altitude permitted the Europeans, even those in the torrid zone, to enjoy a climate similar to what they were accustomed to in their own country. Unlike the Portuguese, who colonized coastal and tropical zones, the Spanish deliberately avoided settling near the sea, preferring interior lands and highlands. Their regulations for discovery and settlement contained such explicit recommendations. Do not choose, stated the legislator, sites for settlement in maritime locations because of the danger of pirates, because such places are less healthy, and because the natives there neither work nor cultivate the land, nor do they have  well-­established customs. New settlements should be established along the coast only if they had good harbors, and even then, only if they were indispensable to facilitate entry, trade, and defense of the land. As for the Portuguese, who feared depopulating the coast, they created every possible difficulty for expeditions exploring the interior. The regulations of the first governor general of Brazil, Tomé de Sousa, expressly stipulated that no person would receive special permission from the governor or from the administrator of the royal treasury to

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travel into the interior. It added that such permission would not be granted unless the person undertaking such a journey had a “good reason, and that no harm would result from his trip and his dealings.” It further asserted that “this person was not even to travel from one captaincy to another by land without permission of the captain or administrator, [and] that they would travel only through peaceful territory, to avoid any inconvenience that might result.” Such a person would be “under penalty of being whipped if he or she were a peasant, or, if of higher status, this person would be required to pay twenty cruzados [the currency of that period], half for the captives and the other half for the accuser.”8 Another measure apparently intended to keep the population on the coastline stipulated that letters granting captaincies were to contain clauses by which the captains could build as many settlements as they wished near the sea and navigable rivers. However, “on land, in the direction of the backlands, the settlements had to be at least six leagues from each other, so that their limits would be at least three leagues from each other. When such settlements were established, they would have assigned limits and, without prior permission of His Majesty, no other settlement could be established on land within those limits.”9 In São Vicente a 1554 notice by Ana Pimentel, the wife of the ruler, revoking her husband’s prohibition of coastal residents from trading in the countryside of Piratininga, left the royal councilmen so perplexed that they called on her to send them the decree containing the new resolution. The measure must have seemed so imprudent that she was bitterly criticized, even in the last years of the eighteenth century. Men such as Friar Gaspar da Madre de Deus or the inspector Cleto even complained about the losses suffered in the captaincy’s coastal lands as a result of that revocation. With the creation of the village of Santo André da Borda do Campo and later with the founding of São Paulo, São Vicente decayed, and even the city of Santos grew more slowly than initially expected. The coastal lands north of Bertioga and south of Itanhaém likewise had no settlers; the coastal sugar mills no longer functioned, and shipping from the captaincy to both Angola and Portugal

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stopped because of a lack of goods to transport. To Friar Gaspar, Martim Afonso’s measures seemed best adapted to the general welfare of Portugal and the most appropriate for developing the captaincy, even after the Paulistas [residents of São Paulo], thanks to their energy and ambition, had corrected, on their own, the treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which extended the colony toward the backlands. As the first captain of the region, Afonso understood the state’s real interests better than its many subsequent governors. He intended not only to avoid wars but also to stimulate coastal settlement. He anticipated that the easy entry of whites into Indian villages could lead to endless disputes, altering the peaceful conditions so necessary for land development. He did not forget that D. João III had ordered colonies founded in such a far-­off country for the express purpose of benefiting the government through the export of goods of Brazilian origin. He knew that goods produced near the coast could be easily transported to Europe. Conversely, products from the backlands took time to arrive at the shipping ports, and if they did arrive, it was at such high cost that for the farmers, “it would not make sense to sell the products on the coast.” This was according to Friar Gaspar less than a century and a half ago. He added: “For those reasons, settling coastal regions was preferable to the backlands. Anticipating that distributing the settlers along the coast would happen never or only very slowly, movement to the interior was made difficult, and that was to be left for the future, after lands closest to the ports were full and well cultivated.”10 The influence of Portuguese coastal settlement continues today. When one uses the term “interior,” it conjures up the idea, as it did in the sixteenth century, of a sparsely populated region, hardly touched by urban culture. The accomplishments of the Paulista expeditions cannot be fully understood unless the Portuguese effort is highlighted as a self-­explanatory undertaking. It never dared to cut its ties to the European motherland, and, defying all laws and all dangers, it gave Brazil its current geographic silhouette. It was not by mere accident that the first step toward colonial autonomy, the welcome of Amador Bueno, occurred precisely in São Paulo. São Paulo was an

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area of weak contact with Portugal and of a considerable mixture of outsiders and natives, where, even in the eighteenth century, children learned Portuguese in the region’s schools the way today’s children learn Latin.11 A genuinely new moment in our history occurred on the Pirati­ ninga plateau when, for the first time, the diffuse energy of the colonial population acquired its own form and it found an articulate voice. The expansion by the Paulista pioneers12 did not have its roots across the ocean; it did not need the motherland’s stimulus, and it often went against the mother country’s wishes and immediate interests. Besides that, those audacious Indian hunters, discoverers, and treasure hunters were, above all, pure adventurers—they became settlers only when forced to do so by circumstances. When their successful expeditions were over, the explorers usually returned to their villages and farms. Therefore, before the discovery of the mines, these colonizing efforts were only sporadic. In the third century of Portuguese domination, Brazil received a greater flow of emigrants beyond the coastal strip, especially with the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais, gold that, as a chronicler of the time observed, “is transferred in dust and in coin to foreign kingdoms, while the smaller part remains in Portugal and in the cities of Brazil; that is, except for what is spent in carnival dances, metal bracelets, and other items laden more on the hands of mulatto women of bad repute than on those of ladies.”13 Despite fierce obstacles artificially instituted by the government, this migration continued. Foreigners were definitely excluded from this migration (only subjects from friendly nations, English and Dutch, were tolerated—but just barely), as were monks, who were considered among the worst violators of royal privileges; unemployed priests; business men and innkeepers; and basically, all individuals who might not exclusively serve the motherland’s insatiable greed. In 1720 the government even resorted to prohibiting travel to Brazil. Only those in public office could embark for the colony, accompanied only by indispensable servants. Among ecclesiastics, bishops and missionaries could come, as well as clerics who had already worshiped in Brazil and were returning to their convents. In

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exceptional cases, permission was given to private persons who succeeded in demonstrating that they had important business and who committed to return within a definite period. It was then and only then that Portugal decided to intervene more energetically in the activities of its overseas possession. This intervention, however, was purely repressive, aimed more toward exploiting everything of immediate benefit than toward building anything permanent. That was particularly confirmed in the so-­called Diamond Demarcation [of Mato Grosso], a kind of state within a state, with rigidly defined boundaries that no one could cross without the express permission of the authorities. The residents, ruled by special laws and governed despotically by the superintendent general, formed something like a family. “This idea of a territory where all civic circumstances were subordinated to the exploitation of the Crown’s exclusive property,” observed Martius, was “historically unique.”14 After 1771 the residents of this district were subject to even stricter control. Whoever could not show proof of identity and satisfactory character had to leave the region immediately. If the person returned, he or she was subject to a fine of fifty pieces of gold eighths [oitavas; money of the period] and six months in prison; if repeated, the punishment was six years of exile in Angola. And no one could independently apply for residence in the district without first justifying their intent in great detail. People could not even settle in lands close to the demarcation without obtaining the prior consent of the superintendent. “There was always general surveillance,” said a historian, “like an immense, infernal web, maintained by mysterious denunciations, weaving in the darkness to enmesh the victims. Treasury officials often engaged in slander and private vengeance to further their interests and ambitions.”15 The discovery of the mines, especially the diamond mines, finally persuaded Portugal to establish somewhat more order in its colony. This order was artificially maintained by the tyranny of those interested in mobilizing all of the country’s economic power in order to effortlessly enjoy its benefits. Had it not been for the discovery of the mines, the easy way— the settlement of coastal areas—would have undoubtedly prevailed indefinitely and, as a result, the benefits it generated would have

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remained relatively accessible. It would be difficult to imagine a Portuguese captain making a gesture like that attributed to Hernán Cortés, who ordered that the vessels that took him to New Spain be dismantled to use the wood for construction on land. Yet nothing was more legitimately Spanish than that truly symbolic act of the new system of colonization about to begin. Pizarro later repeated this action in 1535. Besieged by an army of fifty thousand Indians in Peru, he ordered his ships withdrawn from the port in order to deny his men any opportunity to desert. Meanwhile, the conquest of the great empire of Tahuantinsuyu16 triumphantly continued. For those explorers, the sea existed only as an obstacle to be overcome. Coastal lands existed only as a means of accessing the interior and the temperate or cold lands.17 The most progressive and densely populated centers in Central America are indeed located near the ocean, but the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic, which was the natural road for conquest and trade. Attracted by the more moderate climate on the plateaus close to the west coast, the Spanish chose such locations to establish their first settlements. Even in our time, historians and geographers are surprised that descendants of old settlers made no serious attempt to occupy the Caribbean coast between Yucatán and Panama. Although that coast was almost within sight of the island possessions of the Spanish crown, and although colonizing it would have shortened the distance between the motherland and population centers along the Pacific coast, the Spanish abandoned that coast to the mosquitoes, savage Indians, and English interlopers. Even today, several of the larger Central American population centers are isolated from the east coast by a barrier of nearly impenetrable virgin forest.18 The ease of communication by sea and by river, which the Spanish so disdained, was, in contrast, the basis of Portugal’s colonizing effort. When dealing with regions far from the coast, the regulations of the Portuguese crown always insisted that settlements be located along the banks of large, navigable rivers, such as the São Francisco River. Spanish legislation, on the other hand, hardly referred at all to river navigation as a means of communication; people and supplies could be transported by land.

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The fact that the Brazilian coast was inhabited by a single ethnic group of indigenous peoples, who spoke a similar language from north to south, facilitated Portuguese coastal exploration. And that language, which was quickly learned, domesticated, and, in some areas, modified by the Jesuits to the rules of classical syntax, served as a means of communication with other peoples of the country, even those of different lineages. According to all indications, relatively recent and extensive migrations of Tupi peoples always preceded the Portuguese expansion along the coast. Throughout the colonial period, the Portuguese settled in areas previously defined by those migrations. The settlement of the Tupi-­Guarani tribes along the coast seems to have occurred relatively recently, around the time the first Portuguese reached our shores. A contemporary scholar of the Americas claims that the Tupi-­Guarani tribes probably settled the coast beginning in the fifteenth century. At the time of Gabriel Soares, that is, at the end of the sixteenth century, the memory of the expulsion of the non-­Tupi peoples to the backlands was so fresh in Bahia that Soares was even able to provide us with the names of the “Tapuia” nations in the lands later conquered by the Tupinaé and Tupinambá tribes. Even after the beginning of Portuguese colonization, the territory of the Tupi continued to expand into new lands, reaching Maranhão and the banks of the Amazon. The Capuchin monk Claude d’Abbeville, who lived in Maranhão in 1612, personally knew some witnesses of the first Tupinambá migration to those regions. Metraux believes, on the basis of powerful reasoning, that the migration occurred between 1560 and 1580.19 The supposed conquest of the coastal strip by Tupi tribes shortly before the Portuguese arrived is also confirmed by the cultural identity of all the coastal inhabitants. According to Gandavo, “even if divided and even if their nations have different names, their similarities, conditions, customs, and native rites are one.”20 While mingling with the principal coastal natives, whose lands they occupied, or while pushing them into the backlands, the Portuguese inherited many of their enmities and idiosyncrasies. The other

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natives, the non‑Tupis or the “Tapuias,” were largely ignored during the colonial period; about them, however, colonists circulated the most fantastic legends and explanations. Significantly, Portuguese colonization did not become firmly based or prosperous outside the regions populated earlier by the natives of the lingua franca. These natives, it might be said, prepared the terrain for the Portuguese conquest. Where the Tupi expansion stopped, so too did the white colonization, except in a few cases, such as that of the Goianás of Piratininga, who at the time of João Ramalho were already being absorbed by the Tupiniquim, or the Cariris of the backlands north of the São Francisco. The Espírito Santo coast, the “vilão farto” captaincy of Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, as well as that south of Bahia, or the old captaincies of Ilheus and Porto Seguro, were nearly forgotten by the Portuguese. The only explanation was that in those exact regions, the Tupi, who did not succeed in dislodging the area’s first inhabitants, were greatly dispersed. In his História do Brasil, Handelmann even states that except for the Upper Amazon, that region was the most sparsely populated in the whole empire, and he was amazed that after three hundred years of colonization, there was still a region so wild or so poorly cultivated as that between the Bay of All Saints and the bay of Rio de Janeiro. In Espírito Santo, the Portuguese promoted an artificial migration of coastal Indians in order to support and defend the poorly populated centers against the invasions of other native groups. It was only in the nineteenth century, thanks to the Benedictine zeal of Guido Tomás Marlière, that the Portuguese begin to catechize those who were presumably the last descendants of the fierce Aimoré of the banks of the Doce River, who were at one time the scourge of the settlers. Thus, by camping in the places inhabited earlier by natives speaking a lingua franca, the Portuguese hardly knew anything about the natives from the backlands, especially those who spoke “another language,” as Father Cardim described them. As mentioned above, the colonizers were not very concerned about populating and becoming acquainted with lands beyond the coastal region, which facilitated

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communications with the mother country. Finding these lands inhabited by only one race of men, who spoke the same language, gave the Portuguese an inestimable advantage. The mercantile, somewhat Semitic character of Portuguese colonization was notably expressed in the system of coastal settlements near ports, just as was the imbalance mentioned earlier between rural splendor and urban misery. These two manifestations were especially significant because of the light they projected on the later phases of our social development. In a letter from 1552, Father Manuel da Nóbrega exclaimed: “Of all those who came here, no one has any love for this land . . . all desire their own gain, even at the expense of the land, because they expect to leave.” In another letter in the same year, he returned to the subject, complaining of those who preferred to see many ships leaving Brazil loaded with gold rather than many souls leaving for Heaven. And he added: “They do not wish the land well, since their affection is for Portugal; nor do they work that much to help it, but rather to profit in any way they can; that is the case generally, although there are some exceptions to this rule.”21 Friar Vicente do Salvador, writing in the next century, still complained that until then, the Portuguese lived by “crawling like crabs along the coast,” and lamented that the settlers, however rooted they were to the land and however rich, intended to take everything back to Portugal. He continued: “If their farms and assets could speak, they would also be taught to speak like parrots, and the first thing they would be taught is: a royal parrot for Portugal, because they want everything to go to Portugal.”22 Even at their best, Portuguese achievements in Brazil emphasized exploitation more than colonization. Large undertakings were undesirable unless they produced an immediate benefit. Nothing was attempted that would precipitate larger costs or any loss for the motherland. The mercantilist precept, adopted by all colonial powers up to the nineteenth century, and by which mother country and colonies had to mutually complement each other, fit in well with that viewpoint. Thus, producing goods in the overseas possessions that could compete with those of Portugal was strictly prohibited. When the captaincy of São Pedro do Rio Grande began exporting wheat to

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other parts of Brazil at the end of the eighteenth century, the cabinet in Lisbon summarily suspended the production of this grain. A decree dated January 5, 1785, ordered the end of all gold, silver, silk, cotton, linen, and wool manufacturing on Brazilian territory. That decree alleged that since the colony’s residents had all they needed through farming and cultivation, adding the advantages of industry and crafts for clothing would make “those inhabitants totally independent of their ruling capital.” Even so, the Portuguese administration in some ways seems relatively more liberal than that of the Spanish possessions. Contrary to what happened in the latter, Brazil allowed free entry for foreigners who wanted to work. Innumerable arriving Spaniards, Italians, Flemish, English, Irish, and Germans took advantage of this tolerance. Foreigners were also permitted to travel the Brazilian coast as merchants, as long as they paid ten percent of the value of their merchandise as an import tax and did not deal with natives. This tolerance prevailed, at least during the beginning of the colony. It changed only in 1600, during the Spanish domination, when Philip II ordered that all foreigners be excluded from Brazil. Their employment as agricultural administrators was prohibited; a census of their numbers, residences, and holdings was undertaken; and in certain places, as in Pernambuco, they were ordered to leave for their countries of origin. Twenty-­seven years later this prohibition was renewed, to be partially revoked for the English and Dutch only after the Restoration. The Spanish exclusivity was indeed a necessary and inalienable part of their system, in contrast to the relative liberality of the Portuguese. Understandably, Spanish rule must have viewed any deals and partnerships with foreigners as undesirable, because it could threaten their ability to maintain good discipline over their subjects in recently conquered lands, where their hold remained uncertain. By comparison, the Portuguese liberality, although seemingly negative and ill-­defined, originated partly from their self-­interested morality—a trader morality, albeit of traders still bound by many powerful ties to medieval tradition.

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Our colonizers had few concerns about lax and insecure discipline, except when an application of restrictions could bring immediate advantages to their down-­to-­earth interests. An innate aversion to any impersonal ordering of their existence was also a contributing factor. Among the Portuguese, the desire for domination did not counterbalance this aversion, since they were at the mercy of their relatively scarce national resources. They also lacked the pronounced tendency toward that ascetic rigidity that the rough landscape of Castile seemed to inflict on its natives, often inclining them to subordinate their lives to rules and abstract norms. The odd way in which the streets and dwellings of our cities were often arranged, when compared to those of Spanish America, undoubtedly reflects such an aversion to order. In the largest urban center of the colony, Bahia, a traveler at the beginning of the eighteenth century noted that houses were located at the whim of the residents. Everything was so irregular that even the principal square, where the palace of the viceroys was being erected, seemed to be in its location only by chance.23 Even in the first century of colonization, the houses in São Vicente and Santos were aligned in such a way that the first governor general of Brazil complained of not being able to put walls around the two towns, because that would require a lot of work and cause great damage to the residents.24 A rectangular layout for streets and buildings was followed—in Rio de Janeiro it already was in the plans—until it met natural obstacles. It would be an illusion to think that such a layout resulted from an attraction to fixed and preestablished forms and an expression of a strong will to build. Those forms were generally based on rational and aesthetic principles of symmetry established by the Renaissance and inspired by the ideals of antiquity. Whatever the case, however, the geometric layout never attained among us the importance that it had in lands of the Spanish crown. In Brazil, the subsequent development of urban centers often rejected that initial layout in favor of obedience to the topography. Routine, not abstract reasoning, guided the Portuguese in this and in so many other expressions of their colonizing activity. They preferred to act through a succession of experiments that were not

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always well coordinated, rather than lay out a plan beforehand and follow it to the end. Those establishments that did not change location once, twice, or even more often were considered rare in Brazil. The presence of the classic old towns alongside certain urban centers of colonial origin is an enduring testimony of that hesitant and wasteful attitude. Thus, a keen observer, Vilhena, lamented the fact that at the beginning of the last century, when building the city of Salvador, the Portuguese chose a steep hill “full of so many ups and downs,” despite the proximity of a site “perhaps among the best in the world for founding a city, stronger, more pleasant, and free of the thousand inconveniences to which it is subject in the place where it is.”25 The city that the Portuguese build in America is not a mental product. It does not contradict nature’s framework, and its silhouette is linked to the line of the landscape. The city was founded with no rigor, no method, no preparation, but simply with that significant abandonment expressed by the word desleixo [laxity]—a word that the writer Aubrey Bell considered just as typically Portuguese as saudade [nostalgia], and which, in his opinion, implies less a lack of energy than an intimate conviction that “it’s not worth the trouble.”26 This conviction, far from expressing indifference or disdain for life, is linked rather to a fundamental realism, which renounces the transformation of reality through delirious imagination or codes of regulations and formal rules (except in cases where these rules have already become conventional stereotypes and thus do not require any effort or artifice). In short, it accepts life as it is: without ceremony, without illusion, without impatience, without malice, and often without happiness. This plain and rough realism can perhaps be attributed to the fact that many of the memorable deeds of the Portuguese in the Age of Discovery have failed to seduce the rather Romanesque taste of some historians, even in our time. Compared to the delirious ecstasy of a Columbus, for example, even the great Vasco da Gama’s accomplishment unquestionably offers a background of good sense, attention to

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detail, and cautious and pedestrian reason. Nearly his entire journey took place through already charted waters—coastwise shipping in the grand style, said Sophus Ruge—with a predetermined destination. When he crossed the Indian Ocean, he had available to him experienced pilots such as Ibn Majid. The expansion of the Portuguese in the world was above all a work of prudence, of discreet judgment, of an understanding “based on experience.” And it seems certain that this was the case from the beginning, despite all the poetic pomp with which the conquest of Ceuta, for example, has been surrounded.27 Courage, unquestionably stubborn but rarely spectacular, is a common trait of all the great Portuguese sailors, with the exception of Magellan. The heroic greatness of their deeds, as well as the universal and lasting importance of the wisdom that guided them early on, is clearly what the Portuguese valued above all. The idea that they outstripped the legendary deeds of Greeks and Romans stands out as a commonplace of all literature in the 1500s. Significantly, this literary glorification grew in scale just as the discrediting and the decline of Portuguese power were becoming tangible. It is a kind of retrogressive aggrandizement, with an almost pedagogical intent, that we encounter, for example, in the pages of the historian João de Barros. And the “great and sonorous fury” of Luis de Camões can only be well understood if, in addition to the Lusíadas, we read the Soldado Prático of Diogo do Couto, which provides, if not a perfectly faithful picture, at least the necessary reverse side of that grandiose, poetic idealization. To say that any of the great Portuguese overseas enterprises were truly popular in the kingdom would be incorrect. As is well known, the king decided on the discovery of the passage to India against the express wish of his counselors. It seemed imprudent to them to put aside the certain for the vague or problematic. In the words of Damião de Gois, peaceful dealings with Guinea and the honorable conquest of places in Africa benefited traders, helped the kingdom’s revenues, and allowed Portugal to exercise its magnanimity. Later, when the allure of the spice trade began to depopulate Portugal, other reasons were added to condemn the undertaking in

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the Orient. The rapid accumulation or expectation of wealth began to blind individuals to the benefits of productive labor, which were naturally modest and dull, to the point where they only really believed in chance and good fortune. The harmful influence of the overseas conquests on the Portuguese spirit, as is well-­known, was a constant theme of the poets and chroniclers of the 1500s. Such influence, not entirely by accident, generally coincided with the rise of the merchant bourgeoisie, which was established at the time of the royal line of Aviz but grew significantly after D. João II succeeded in reducing the arrogance of his nobles. The relative flexibility of social classes meant that the rise of the bourgeoisie did not cause a major problem in Portugal, in contrast to countries where the feudal tradition had deep roots and where stratification was thus more rigorous. Since grandsons of mechanics were not always prohibited from becoming nobles and from mingling with them, all aspired to such positions. As a result, the social and spiritual values traditionally linked to the nobility also became attributes of the rising bourgeoisie. In this transition, however, ethical patterns that were significantly different from those of the nobility could not be consolidated or fully developed, and the dominant establishment of the new values that ordinarily accompany bourgeois revolutions remained incomplete. To the extent to which the popular classes rose in social status, they no longer bore the mentality of their original class but rather adhered to that of former dominant groups. Therefore, none of the “economic virtues” traditionally linked to the bourgeoisie gained credit. Characteristically, under these circumstances, words such as traficante [trafficker] and, especially, tratante [dealer], which initially and currently simply mean “the businessman” in Spanish, became derogatory terms in Portuguese. Associated virtues that are favored by the Genovese—stubborn diligence, parsimony, preciseness, punctuality, and social solidarity—never satisfactorily accommodate the Portuguese.28 The “new nobility” of the 1500s was particularly adverse to those virtues. This new class considered them unworthy of their status,

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perhaps because they evoked the social position of city merchants, to which they felt somehow linked in origin but not in pride. Consequently, this new class displayed a continual desire to break their ties with a past that connected them with humble origins and, with all the ardor of parvenus, to fortify themselves with what seemed an inseparable attribute of genuine nobility. The exaggerated embrace by the new nobility of the ideals associated with its new class fulfilled its need to compensate for its imperfect integration into this class. Invention and imitation replaced tradition as guiding principles, especially in the sixteenth century, when the gaps separating the different, already porous, levels of Portuguese society widened. In the words of the practical soldier [of Diogo do Couto’s O Soldado Prático], one witnessed that in military parades, captains gradually detached themselves from ancient and austere customs and ostentatiously displayed their new class consciousness. Thus, the famous veterans—with beards down to their knees, with shorts, and with rusty bayonets in their hands or shooting‑bows on their backs—disappeared. Those who paraded wanted to wear an ornate velvet cape, blouse and trousers of the same material, plaited stockings, hats with golden ribbons, a gilt sword and dagger, hair piled very high, and beards clipped or shaved entirely. Thus, the old Portuguese concepts of dignity and valor were lost. As Diego do Couto once put it, expressing these lost values, “war is not waged with inventions, but with stout hearts; and nothing leads more to the fall of great empires than a change in dress and laws.”29 Diogo do Couto wanted the Portuguese to be less open to innovation and more faithful to an ideal of unchangeability, which, in his view, brought about the lasting greatness of other peoples, such as the Venetians or the Chinese. To him, rightly, the new nobility seemed to be a simple caricature of the authentic nobility, which was conservative in essence. What the nobles of the 1500s prized above all were appearances or external symbols that would distinguish them from the commoner. Basing all their elegance on the ornaments they wore, the first concern of these nobles was to guarantee what was of utmost importance to them. And since they wanted to ride only in litters, they

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no longer used horses and thus forgot the art of horsemanship so necessary for war.30 Their very games and tournaments, which were some of the best traditions of the aristocracy and were created by the ancients so as “not to lose the use of arms,” as D. João I put it, were more concerned with ostentation than with a “show of strength.”31 Because many still did not dare to exchange soldiering for trade, which was then a low profession, they exchanged it for the toga, as well as for civil administration and literary positions, in order to safeguard both their dignity and comfort. As a result, they used “gavels instead of lances, laws instead of harnesses, and scribes instead of soldiers,” even in lands surrounded by enemies such as India, where it was expected to have one’s sword at the ready. Expressions that had fallen out of favor, such as charge, countercharge, response, counter‑response, continuances, disqualifications, and others of the same flavor and quality, came back into style, even among the illiterate.32 One should superimpose on this picture of decadence not just Antônio Ferreira’s nativist exasperation but also, and especially, the “great and sublime sound” of the Lusiadas, which by contrast complements and highlights it. In Camões’ work, the epic ink enameling the great deeds of the Portuguese corresponded more to a melancholic glance back at extinct glories than to a generous and rising aspiration. In this sense, the poet contributed more to disfiguring than to eternally establishing the true moral features of the heroes of overseas expansion. Portuguese tradition rarely manifests itself in the pure desire for glory and in the grandiloquent glorification of heroic virtues; on the contrary, it seems to express itself in the discreet use of those virtues. Camões found the right tone to formulate that tradition precisely in the final stanzas of his epic, in which he counsels King Sebastian to favor and promote the most experienced, who know “how, when, and where things fit,” and exalts military discipline, which learns by assiduous practice—“seeing, dealing, struggling”—not by fantasy— “dreaming, imagining or studying.” In this realm of understanding or feeling, neither artifice, nor pure and useless imagination, nor science can sublimate men. Authority has to come from the hand of nature, like a gift from God,

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or by the exercise of good sense, ripened by experience, which makes human activity possess more nature than art. The old Sá de Miranda had already observed that Little can we do by force, Rather, how did it happen? All evil lies in extremes, All good lies in the middle. A century earlier, King Duarte put “complete will” above “spiritual will” in order to “build a foundation for real prudence.” He said he preferred those who follow “judgment with reason and understanding” and “the path of discretion, which in our language we call true wisdom,” rather than those who perform deeds of knighthood. The latter are those who “put themselves in all kinds of danger and difficulty; show no respect to those who, because of their status and power, are ranked above them”; and follow all that pleases them “intemperately, not taking care to eat, sleep, or get the orderly rest that the body naturally requires.”33 This son of the Master of Aviz demonstrated his adherence to these rules of calm moderation and lack of rigor. In many ways he was quite far from aristocratic and feudal ideals. In his treatise [Leal Conselheiro], he counseled readers to discipline their consciences well, “not to act on other than a sure foundation, nor take seriously signs, dreams, or bits of truth.”34 He thus exemplified a realism that rejected abstractions or mystical expressions of delirium, and, as a result, in his religion he was more inclined to tangible manifestations of divinity and personal forms of devotion. If, in Portuguese medieval literature, we find the recurrent theme of the struggle of the individual against the world, is it not true that that same struggle implies a positive interpretation, that is, a preference for the world and for life? Far from expressing a complete disdain for human society or a mission to separate one’s self from it, this attitude almost always reflects the incapacity to fully abandon frivolous earthly matters. Even Amadis himself, a model of valor and courtesy, could not become a genuine

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anchorite in the hermitage of Penha Pobre, because the indelible memory of Oriana occupied all his thoughts and activity. We find this attitude in its raw state in the lyrics of ancient songbooks. The outpourings of the heart, tender or somber memories, failed aspirations, supplications, and disillusionments would never be subject to the impersonal constructs later admired by Renaissance and classical artists; rather they constituted a rustic garden of intimate emotions. All theoretical approaches are uncalled for here, since accidents of individual experience maintain unique and decisive value. Many evils would be avoided, says a character in Jorge de Montemor’s Diana, and many misfortunes would not happen “if we would stop believing that free hearts utter well‑crafted words and nice‑sounding reasons, because such words and reasons make evil sound good, whereas evil, when true, triumphs over all.” This reflection echoes another from Menina e Moça: “One can say nothing of sadness in an orderly manner, because sadness happens in a disorderly way.”35 Although Portuguese poetry attributes a positive and nontransferable character to such conditions, it never, not even after the Romantic period, totally disintegrates the personality. In this respect, it clearly belongs to the Latin and Iberian worlds. Portuguese poetry does not lose itself in trances or metaphysical imaginings, which can be solutions for all types of nonconformity. It sings of disillusionment but does not pretend to attract storms, invoke the devil, or fabricate gold. It does not accept the order that men produce with work, but rather accepts the one that they carelessly and freely create: this is the order of the sower, not that of the builder. And this order is also one that naturally accommodates both divine and natural things, since, as Antônio Vieira said, if the stars are in order, “it is order which has influence, not order which leads to work. God did not make Heaven on a checkerboard of stars.”36 The vision of the world that is thus manifested with precise form in literature, above all in poetry, left its mark in the most diverse spheres of Portuguese activity, especially in the domain that particularly interests us: colonial expansion. Indeed, no external stimulus

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would incite the Portuguese to try to seriously control the course of events or distort the order of nature. And in this case, the contrast between them and other Hispanic peoples is instructive. The centralizing, codifying, and standardizing force of Castile, a force most clearly expressed by its taste for meticulous rules—rules capable of being exercised, as has already been emphasized, even in the layout of colonial cities—comes from a people internally disunited and under permanent threat of disaggregation; a people that struggled, within its own peninsular borders, not only with the Aragonese, the Catalans, and the Basques until 1492, but also with the Moors until 1611. The Spanish monarchy cast its shadow over Flemings and Germans, Burgundians and Milanese, Neapolitans and Sicilians, Muslims of Berberia, and Indians of America and the Orient. Unsurprisingly, a kind of mechanical compulsion to regulate everything, at least in theory if not in practice, automatically accompanied the Spanish monarchy’s expansion beyond its original frontiers and the oceans. This desire for rules was the product of a skillful and still insecure amalgamation—or better yet, of an aspiration to unity—of disconnected parts. It was expressed in the words of Olivares when he exhorted Philip IV, king of Portugal, Aragon, and Valencia, and count of Barcelona, to “reduce all the kingdoms which make up Spain to the style and laws of Castile, since he would thus be the most powerful sovereign in the world.”37 The exaggerated love for uniformity and symmetry arose, then, as the result of a lack of true unity. In this respect, Portugal was a relatively problem‑free country. Politically unified since the thirteenth century, earlier than any other modern European state, and having freed itself from the Saracens by colonizing lands to the south, Portugal was able to achieve considerable ethnic homogeneity. This early achievement allowed it to concentrate all its energy on an objective that transcended current reality. This concentration of energies allowed those regions that were more advanced in their ability to abstract and formalize to grant priority to concrete and individual situations—as the old saying goes, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” In turn, this focus on concrete and individual situations is perhaps related to the “realism” or the

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“naturalism” that the Portuguese demonstrated so often in the course of their history. The above may also explain why natural conservatism, or letting things be—“laxity”—could often mean more to the Portuguese than an ambition to shape the future or to subject the historical process to rigid laws dictated by motives beyond human foresight. In their hearts there remained a force sufficiently powerful and deep‑rooted to impart cohesion and spiritual meaning to their simple ambition for wealth. Against the charges of the sixteenth-­century Italian historian Paolo Giovio, who accused the Portuguese of greed and of a lack of scruples in the spice trade, the humanist Damião de Gois could protest that the profits from goods were needed to cover the costs of unexpected wars to propagate the Catholic faith. And if there were abuses, all of the blame would fall on the merchants, peddlers, and wholesalers for whom no law existed beyond the one that favored their profit-­seeking. If not in the mother country itself, then at least in Portugal’s overseas dependencies, this pious excuse did not prevent an association between Catholicism and the usual laxity. Strictly subject to civilian power, the Catholic Church, particularly in Brazil, also followed that power’s vicissitudes and circumstances. As a result, the grand master of the Order of Christ in Brazil had discretionary power over ecclesiastical matters. That power was exercised especially following a confirmation in 1551 by His Holiness Pope Julius III, in his bull Praeclara Carissimi, which transferred patronage over discovered lands to the Portuguese monarchs. The latter thus proposed and named candidates for bishop under a clause of pontifical ratification, charged tithes for the practice of their religion, and established all kinds of religious foundations according to their passing convenience. The Church became a simple arm of secular power, a department of lay administration, or, as Father Giulio Maria said, an instrumentum regni [instrument of the kingdom]. The fact that our clerics often stood out for their opposition to discipline in society and even to respect for legal authority—the

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celebrated “liberalism” of Brazilian ecclesiastics from different times—appears to be closely related to those circumstances. As an organization, the Church could be allied with and even a faithful accomplice to civil power when it involved restraining certain popular passions; as individuals, however, the clergy were continually opposed to that power. The constant intrusion of the authorities into church matters tended to provoke in the clergy an attitude of latent revolt against the government, not just during the colonial period but also during the empire, which maintained the tradition of patronage. That revolt was reflected in the Brazilian episcopate’s collective pastoral letter of March 1890. Even though the bishops could not approve in principle the idea of separation between church and state, the letter began with almost outspoken approval for the republican regime established four months earlier. The document ridiculed those cabinet members who ordered the bishops to comply with canons of the Council of Trent on establishing parishes; who prohibited them from leaving their dioceses without government authorization, under penalty of declaring the seat vacant and having civil authorities name a successor; who required subjecting seminary students’ compendia of theology to approval by lay administrators; who forbade regular orders from receiving novices; who denied vicars the right to demand banquet candles; and who established the authority to name mace‑bearers in cathedrals. Referring to the effects of the patronage underlying this unquestioned supremacy of temporal power, the pastoral letter concluded: “It was a protection that smothered us.” In addition, the indiscriminate subordination of clergy and laymen to a power that was simultaneously capricious and despotic was far from propitious for the influence of the Church—and, to some degree, the influence of Christian virtues—in forming Brazilian society. Bad priests—that is, negligent, greedy, and dissolute priests— were always the rule in our colonial environment. And those who tried to react against the pervasive laxity generally had a hard time finding a way to do so. The majority of them thought like our first bishop, who said that in a land so new, “it is much better to dissemble than to punish.”38

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Appendix 1. Intellectual Life in Spanish America and Brazil The disappearance of several university archives, such as those of Lima and Chuquisaca, is one reason for the lack of precise data on the number of students who graduated from those establishments. However, the estimate provided by one historian of about 150,000 students for all of Spanish America would not be an exaggeration. It is known for certain that the University of Mexico alone granted 7,850 bachelor’s degrees and 473 doctor’s and master’s degrees between 1775 and independence.39 In contrast, the number of those born in Brazil who graduated during the same period (1775–1821) in Coimbra was ten times less, or exactly 720.40 Equally surprising is the contrast between Spanish and Portuguese America regarding the introduction of another important instrument of culture: the printing press. It is known that books were printed in Mexico City by 1535, and that four years later the printing shop of the Lombard Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli), agent of the German printing house Juan Gronberger, of Seville, was installed there. As for New Spain, the typographic art was brought to Lima even at the end of the sixteenth century. Authorization for establishing a printing office in the Peruvian capital dates from 1584. Graphic establishments existed in all the principal Spanish American cities around 1747, the year in which the printing shop of Antônio Isidoro da Fonseca appeared in Rio de Janeiro, only to close soon afterwards by royal order.41 A royal letter on July 5 of the same year ordered the “press letters” sequestered and returned to Portugal, with the expense to be covered by the owners. This letter alleged that in Brazil it was not desirable for “the papers to be printed at the present time, nor, where the costs are greater than in Portugal, was it useful for the printers to work in their shop, where books and documents can be printed at the same time that they require permission of the Inquisition and of the Overseas Council, without which they cannot be printed nor can the work go ahead.” Before the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the press was fully introduced into Brazil with the arrival of the Portuguese

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court, the number of works printed in Mexico alone, according to the evidence acquired by Jose Toríbio Medina, had increased to 8,979, and was distributed as follows: Sixteenth century Seventeenth century Eighteenth century

251 1,838 6,890

From 1800 to 1821, an additional 2,673 works were published in Mexico City, which raised the total number produced by these printing shops during the colonial period to 11,652 works. It is not surprising that toward the end of the seventeenth century,42 the journalistic press in America began in Mexico City with the publication, starting in 1671, of the first Gaceta, which was issued from the shop of Bernardo Calderón. Although considerably smaller than that of Mexico, the list of works printed in Lima is nevertheless noteworthy. Medina was able to specify, either by sight or through reliable references, 3,948 titles of works that came out of the shops of the Peruvian capital between 1584 and 1824. Among the more recent works regarding the colonial press in Spanish America, the excellent and exhaustive study of José Torres Rovello, Orígenes de la imprenta en España y su desarrollo en America española, is worth consulting. The same author also has another work more specifically related to legislation on the book and the press in Spanish America: El libro, la imprenta y el periodismo en America durante la dominación española.43 The studies published in the review Mexican Art and Life, no. 7, from July 1939, dedicated to the fourth centennial of the introduction of the press in Mexico, are interesting and profusely illustrated, especially that of Federico Gómez de Orozco, entitled “Mexican Books in the Seventeenth Century,” as is the work of Ernest Wittich, “Die Erste Druckerei in Amerika,” published in Ibero-­Amerikanisches Archiv, Berlin, April 1938. The Portuguese government placed obstacles in the way of the development of intellectual culture in Brazil to prevent the circulation

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of new ideas that could destabilize its rule. And significantly, authorities were more tolerant of foreigners whose work could contribute to the improvement of the colony than of those whose presence might incite thoughts of insubordination and rebellion among residents of Brazil. A well-­known example of this trend was the order issued by the prince regent at the dawn of the nineteenth century to the governors of the captaincies of the north, even to those as far north as Ceará, to prevent entry into lands of the Portuguese crown of “a certain Baron Humboldt, born in Berlin,” because his trip appeared suspicious and “highly prejudicial to the political interests.”44 Hearing of the order, the Count of Barca reportedly hurried to intercede with the prince regent in favor of Alexander von Humboldt. At least, a letter that Eschwege sent to Humboldt in 1848 relates in detail this event, which occurred nearly half a century earlier. In the margin of the copy of the order, Humboldt wrote in his own handwriting the following, dated March 1854: “I want this document to be published after my death.” The following excerpt from the diary of Varnhagen von Ense of August 11, 1855, is also interesting: Humboldt was recently made a knight of a great Brazilian order, on account of arbitration between Brazil and Venezuela respecting a large tract of land. His opinion was worth an appreciable portion of territory to the Empire.45 “They formerly intended, in Rio de Janeiro, to arrest me as a dangerous spy and send me back to Europe, and the order drawn up for the purpose is still shown there as a curiosity. Now they make me an arbitrator! I, of course, decided for Brazil, because I wanted the decoration; the Republic of Venezuela has none to confer!” I interrupted these words, spoken with cheerful irony, exclaiming: “How times change!” Humboldt answered: “Yes. First, they give the order to arrest, and then the decoration.”46

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Appendix 2. The Lingua Franca in São Paulo The author presents this subject, recently the object of some controversy, in articles in the Estado de S. Paulo of May 11 and 18 and June 13, 1945, the texts of which are reproduced below almost in their entirety. Let us assume in general, especially after Teodoro Sampaio’s studies, that Brazil’s extraordinary richness of place names of Tupi origin is due more to the expeditioner than perhaps to the native. But this assumption is made without deep conviction, since it seems evident that a “primitive” population, though still numerous, inevitably tends to accept the patterns of its most successful masters. Thus, there have been many reservations to one of the arguments invoked by Teodoro Sampaio, namely, that in the era of the expeditions, the Paulistas used the Tupi language in their civil and domestic dealings just as they use Portuguese today. That argument is based on precise observations that leave little room for doubt, such as Father Antônio Vieira’s famous statement reflecting doubts of São Paulo residents about the thorny problem of native administration. “It is certain,” maintained the great Jesuit, “that the families of the Portuguese and Indians of São Paulo are so linked to each other today that domestically the women and children are brought up together, and the language spoken in those families is that of the Indians, and the language that children learn in school is Portuguese.”47 Given the source of this statement, it could not have been a pious invention of Vieira’s to support those who were opposed to delivering the natives to private individuals and partisans of the village system, where the Indians could be spiritually indoctrinated and could live by the law of the Church. Rather, his scruples and internal contradictions tended to hinder Vieira’s own views, since “how can a natural union like this be disunited” without complete cruelty toward those who “were brought up like that and have lived like that for years?” Trying to anticipate such an objection, the Jesuit reached the point of admitting that if the Indians, male or female, really loved their so‑called masters so much that they, of their own free will,

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wanted to stay with them, then they would have stayed with no other obligation beyond that love, which is the sweetest kind of captivity and the freest kind of liberty. However, Vieira—who was aware of what was happening in São Paulo only through information he received—may have been easily led to repeat certain fables regarding residents of the southern captaincy that were circulating among his companions of the cloth. Therefore, to find out the truth, other contemporaneous statements on the subject should be collected. The steadfast commitment of the seventeenth-­century Paulistas to bestow vicarages in the captaincy to those born in Brazil can be attributed to the same nativist fervor that would later explode during the struggle of the emboabas [Portuguese vs. native‑born Brazilians]. However, another plausible motive for this preference, one presented more than once in favor of that viewpoint, is that clerics from the outside, who did not know the language of the country well, had difficulty getting along with residents. A statement presented by local officials in São Paulo and sent to the king in 1725 may further explain this motive.48 In 1698, in requesting from His Majesty that the supply of parish priests for the churches in the southern region should include clergy who knew the lingua franca of the natives, Governor Artur de Sá e Meneses expressed himself in these terms: “The majority of the natives, principally of the feminine sex and all servants, do not express themselves in any other language, and we suffer an irreparable loss from this shortcoming, as we have seen in São Paulo with the new vicar sent to that Church, who requires an interpreter.”49 These comments reveal that the lingua franca was used mainly and often exclusively among women, and they significantly support Vieira’s observations. Usually linked more closely to the home than men, women were the stabilizing and conserving element par excellence, the great custodians of domestic tradition. This particular case clearly reveals a tradition introduced by the native women who entered into the society of the first conquerors and settlers. The preeminent place often occupied by women is precisely the reason favoring the explanation that, to an appreciable degree, a

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similar situation persisted in São Paulo during the entire seventeenth century. Cases such as that of Inês Monteiro, the famous Matrona of Pedro Taques, support the idea of such preeminence. Almost single-­ handedly, she sought to guarantee the life of her son and the survival of her people against terrible adversaries. Expeditions periodically drew a considerable part of the captaincy’s masculine population to distant backlands, and thus indirectly created a virtual matriarchal system, to which children were often subjected before and even after the age of catechism. Women and servants, both equally ignorant of the foreign language, were strictly secluded at home, an environment that provided for them the most natural and common form of communication. In a report written around the year 1692, Governor Antônio Pais de Sande stated that “beautiful and strong” Paulista women “were accustomed to leave their husbands in charge of running their houses and farms.” A few lines later he added that “the children learn the native language before their maternal one,”50 that is to say, Portuguese. A century after Antônio Vieira, Artur de Sá e Meneses, and Antônio Pais de Sande, Félix de Azara observed the same situation in Curuguati, Paraguay, that, according to his statements, prevailed in São Paulo in the last decade of the 1600s: women spoke only Guarani, and men did not communicate with them in any other language, although they sometimes used Spanish among themselves. Such bilingualism disappeared, however, in other parts of Paraguay, where both men and women indiscriminately understood each other only in Guarani; only the most educated men knew Spanish. In passing, we should note that the same Azara observed the coincidence between what he had observed in Paraguay and what the Paulistas of that time stated. “The exact same thing,” he wrote, “has happened in the immense province of São Paulo, where the Portuguese, having forgotten their language, speak only in Guarani.”51 At the time that Azara’s travel notes were edited, that particular observation relating to São Paulo already belonged to the past, but it remained alive in the memory of Spanish inhabitants of Paraguay and the River Plate, lands so often threatened and traveled by the old bandeirantes.

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It is precisely the overly generic character of the above observations that might lead to attenuating, but not completely demolishing, the claim that the lingua franca was in fact used more commonly than Portuguese itself among seventeenth-­century Paulistas. These observers may have referred especially to the more humble (and naturally more numerous) social classes, in which the excessive mixture and cohabitation of Portuguese with Indians almost required the continuous use of an indigenous language. One can easily understand, in comparing their standard of living to residents of other captaincies, why the educated and more prosperous Paulistas were more versed in the native lingua franca. In fact, one Jean de Laet states exactly this fact in his history of the New World, a work published in 1640 and certainly based on second‑hand information. After referring to the Tupi language, which in his opinion was easy, prolific, and quite pleasant, the then director of the West India Company exclaimed: “The children of Portuguese born or brought to these provinces at an early age know it as their own, principally in the province of St. Vincent.”52 Other examples are more helpful in understanding these observations. One is the inventory of Bras Esteves Leme, published by the Archives of the State of São Paulo. Upon legalizing that inventory, the judge for orphans had to swear in Álvaro Neto, an expert in native languages, in order to understand the statements of the daughter of the deceased, Luzia Esteves, “because she did not know how to speak Portuguese well.”53 This judge for orphans, Francisco Rendon de Quebedo, was a new resident in São Paulo, arriving in the state after 1630; the inventory in question dated from 1636. That fact explains why he, although a resident of the captaincy, needed an interpreter for a commonly used language. The example of Luzia Esteves is not, however, among the most convincing. Although on her paternal side she belonged to the leading people of the region, she herself was of mixed race, Indian and white. The case of Domingos Jorge Velho, the conqueror of Palmares and the explorer of Piauí, is undoubtedly more important in elucidating the matter. The Portuguese element frankly dominated in the ancestry of this great leader from Parnaiba. Despite the general rule,

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however, he was not free from race‑mixing with the natives: if the genealogists are not mistaken, he was, on one side, the great‑great grandson of the daughter of Piquerobi and, on the other, a great‑great grandson of Pedro Afonso’s anonymous Tapuia wife. Curiously, Domingos Jorge had to take along an interpreter when dealing with the bishop of Pernambuco at Palmares in 1697, “because he did not know how to speak,” the bishop claimed. And the bishop added: “He was no different from the most barbarous Tapuia except for saying that he was Christian, and despite being married a short time, he brought seven Indian concubines with him; from this one can infer the rest of his behavior.”54 A serious obstacle to fully accepting this observation is that Domingos Jorge wrote and signed various documents in his own handwriting, revealing a certain intellectual ability that the above comments fail to suggest. In the same volume containing the statements of the bishop of Pernambuco, one reads the words with which the famous chieftain tried to excuse and even glorify the behavior of the backwoodsmen who preyed on Indians, in the face of the bitter censure so often directed at him by the priests of the Company of Jesus. First, he observed, the Paulista bands were not registered in the books of His Majesty, nor were they accountable to him for their pay or ammunition. Their purpose was not to take captives, but rather to introduce savage natives and cannibals to civil and urbane society. And then, if these fierce Indians were put to work in farming tasks, it was not a blatant injustice, “since they do it to support themselves and their children, as we do with ours.” Far from amounting to captivity, it was a highly useful service for those unfortunate ones since they learned to cultivate the land, to plant, and to reap; that is, they learned to work for their own subsistence, something that they did not know how to do before the whites instructed them. That, in his opinion, was the only rational way to ensure that the Indians would receive what they needed for their eternal salvation through the light of God and through the mysteries of the sacred Catholic religion, since, as he observed, “to try to make them angels before making them human is to labor in vain.”

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Leaving aside all the rustic and specious pedagogy that Domingos Jorge used to disguise the forced labor of the natives for the benefit of private masters, one cannot deprecate the exact opinion registered by him against the priests’ system. The Jesuits really tried to manufacture angels, not men, in their villages and, as a rule, failed to create either. Even today, this is undoubtedly the most serious criticism of the old Jesuit missions. There is still the problem of certifying whether the “barbarous Tapuia,” who did not even know how to speak—that is, speak Portuguese—was really the author of such subtle reasoning. Even if by chance the handwriting with which those documents were written was his own, can we assume that the words, and even more, the ideas, really were his? Whatever the case, there is no point in repeating all of the Pernambucan bishop’s statements, despite his rancor and aversion toward the explorer, whom he denounced from beginning to end. Regarding Domingos Jorge’s scarce knowledge of Portuguese, the letter is just one more observation, among many similar ones, about the Paulistas of the seventeenth century. In this special case, the observation may merit criticism and reservations, but it should not be disregarded. In addition to these explicit testimonies, most dated from the seventeenth century, another circumstance deserves our attention. If we rigorously examine the nicknames prevalent in old São Paulo, we can verify that during that period, most were of native origin. Manuel Dias de Silva was known as “Bixira”; Domingos Leme da Silva was “Botuca”; Gaspar de Godói Moreira, “Tavaimana”; Francisco Dias de Siqueira, “Apuçá”; Gaspar Vaz da Cunha, “Jaguaretê”; Francisco Ramalho, “Tamaratuca”; Antônio Rodrigues de Gois, or da Silva, “Tripoí.” According to a plausible version of the story, Bartolomeu Bueno, who probably had a maimed or injured eye, owed the Tupi nickname Anhangüera [devil] to his contemporaries and not to the Goiás Indians, who in fact did not even speak the lingua franca. The episode, commonly associated with Bueno, of throwing fire into a cup of aguardente has been attributed by Pedro Taques to another backwoodsman, Francisco Pires Ribeiro.

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In the same century, nicknames of pure Portuguese origin were rare. One of the few exceptions was “Perna-­de-­Pau” [Wooden Leg], attributed to Jerónimo Ribeiro, who died in 1693. On the other hand, there were plenty of names or nicknames of authentic Portuguese origin that had an augmentative Tupi suffix, a trend that mirrored, through an occasionally picturesque combination of dissimilar languages, the assiduous mixture of two races and cultures. By that process Mecia Fernandes, the wife of Salvador Pires, became Meciuçu. And Pedro Vaz de Barros became Pedro Vaz Guaçu. A manuscript in the National Library of Rio de Janeiro shows that Governor Antônio da Silva Caldeira Pimentel was given the nickname of Casacucu, because he always wore a long coat.55 It seems that the so-­called language of the land lingered, at least at certain social levels, even in the middle of the seventeenth century. And the previous example is not an isolated case. Born in Itu and nicknamed “Sarutaiá,” Salvador de Oliveira Leme lived until 1802. These isolated, spontaneous cases were exceptions to the general rule. What can be verified, as time passes, is the increasing and more exclusive frequency of Portuguese nicknames, such as “Via-­Sacra” [Sacred Way], “Ruivo” [Redhead], “Orador” [Orator], “Cabeça do Brasil” [Head of Brazil], and one with a Ciceronian flavor, “Pai da Pátria” [Father of the Country]. Those of Tupi origin, dominant in the 1600s, continued to diminish until they practically disappeared. This chronological coincidence does not appear to be totally fortui­ tous, and it suggests a greater and more progressive infiltration of Portuguese blood in the captaincy’s population, one that paralleled the great discoveries of gold in Minas Gerais and the nearly concomitant decline of Indian-­hunting expeditions. Approximately when did the use of the Tupi language by residents of the Paulista plateau begin to diminish? The cited texts indicating that language’s predominance are mainly from the seventeenth century, or to be precise, from the last decade of that century: Antônio Pais de Sande’s report is from about 1692 or 1693; Father Antônio Vieira’s famous vow regarding the doubts of the captaincy residents bears the date of 1694; the bishop of Pernambuco’s observations about Domingos Jorge Velho were made in 1697; Governor

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Artur de Sá e Meneses’s letter recommending that the supply of parish priests in São Paulo, as well as in all the territory of the southern region, favor priests fluent in the native language is from 1693. Precise, albeit less numerous, references to the same thing still appear in the first part of the 1700s. According to a manuscript document kindly sent to me by Professor Afonso de Taunay, Antônio de Albuquerque Coelho de Carvalho came upon a conversation in 1709 between corporals of Paulista forces camped near Guaratinguetá, which the Portuguese governor was able to understand only because he was a former captain-­general of Maranhão, an area where Tupi was used, or perhaps because his escort included a priest familiar with the natives. The significant testimony of the biographer, or near-­hagiographer, of Father Belchior de Pontes adds to these texts. As Manuel de Fonseca assures us, he was a perfect master of the “language that those natives used, because it was at that time common to the whole region.”56 Since Belchior de Pontes was born in 1644, this means that in the second half of the seventeenth century, the language of the natives was commonly spoken throughout the entire captaincy. But that was no longer the case by the middle of the following century, based on Father Manuel da Fonseca’s reference to the past. So it can be said that the process of effectively integrating Paulistas into the world of the Portuguese language very probably occurred during the first half of the eighteenth century. This integration process, however, may not have been entirely completed during that first half of the century in certain places or among families most removed from contact with new groups of Europeans. Hercules Florence, writing in 1828, stated in the Langsdorff expedition diary that nearly fifty years earlier—that is, around the year 1780—Paulista ladies conversed naturally in the Brazilian lingua franca, the language of friendship and of domestic intimacy. “In Paraguay,” he added, “it is commonly spoken among all classes, but (as formerly was the case in São Paulo) it is used only within the family, since Spanish is spoken with foreigners.”57 This observation fits in with that of Félix de Azara, and we can verify it not only in the Republic of Paraguay but in the Argentine

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province of Corrientes and in southern parts of our own Mato Grosso. In the province of São Paulo, where he arrived in 1825, Florence himself was still able to hear the lingua franca from the mouths of some older men; this was a likely circumstance, considering his stay of more than six months in Porto Feliz, a district where native labor was prevalent and where, according to the Reminiscências of old Ricardo Gumbleton Daunt, at the beginning of the last century, “Guarani was only spoken behind closed doors.”58 The Portuguese language unquestionably dominated in places where there were few Indians under our administration, as in Campinas, for example. Even in Campinas, however, there were still some who could speak Tupi properly. Basing himself on oral tradition, Gumbleton Daunt states that Sebastião de Sousa Pais, a son‑in‑law of Barreto Leme, “knew that language deeply.” It is important to note that Sousa Pais was born before 1750—he died a centenarian in the following century—and was by origin and ancestry from Itu [São Paulo], as were perhaps the majority of Campinas’s principal residents. That is, he was from a place where there were a considerable number of Indians under Portuguese administration during much of the 1700s. The large-­scale use of such Indians in domestic and farm work before black slaves were widely imported must be attributed to the lesser degree of docility with which, in certain rural areas, the natives yielded to the ever-­expanding prestige of the Portuguese language. Even at the beginning of the last century, Juana Furquim de Campos, daughter of a Portuguese, used several words of the old language of the land when she spoke. According to Francisco de Assis Vieira Bueno, this stemmed from the circumstance that her father, then established in Mogi-­Guaçu, had “domesticated” a large number of “native slaves” there.59 Notably, the influence of the lingua franca on the vocabulary, on the pronunciation, and even on the syntax of our rural population continued even when the employed natives were not of the great Tupi-­Guarani family: such was the case for the Bororo and especially the Pareci, who, in São Paulo in the eighteenth century, played a role comparable in every way with that of the Carijo in the 1600s,

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the age par excellence of the expeditions. Usually domesticated and catechized in the lingua franca of the coast, they did not understand their masters in any other language. We know that the expeditionary expansion owed its initial impulse to São Paulo’s shortage of farmhands, or rather to the lack of financial resources that would permit the majority of farmers to use African labor. In turn, this lack of resources resulted from the lack of easy or fast transportation from the more fertile centers of production located on the plateau to the large, consumer markets overseas. Contrary to the situation in the northeast, for example, lands appropriated for sugar cultivation in São Paulo were located a significant distance from the coast, beyond the mountains. The narrow coastal strip, primarily sought by Europeans, was already partially worn-­out and unusable for agriculture before the end of the sixteenth century. Transporting farm products through the rough escarpments of Paranapiacaba was almost always a heavy, and rarely rewarding, undertaking. Overcoming such obstacles required Indian-­hunting. The great slave-­hunting expeditions and the transporting of slaves to the coast had a well-­defined objective: to secure the same kind of sedentary life for their owners as that led by the northern sugar barons, without having to leave their estates. Strange as it seems, the Paulistas’ greater mobility and dynamism in this case were a function of the same ideals of permanence and stability that were generally cultivated, with little effort, in other regions ever since the first period of colonization. But if the Portuguese could not live on the plateau without the Indians, they also could not survive with them in a pure state. In other words, they would have to renounce many of their hereditary habits, their lifestyles and relationships, their techniques, their aspirations, and, what is more significant, their language; and in fact, this happened in reality. What they gained in the end, and through the work of their mixed-­race descendants, was a vast and opulent world, a prize they had not imagined at the time of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Portuguese colonial empire was described by the historian R. H. Tawney as “little more than a line of fortresses and trading posts ten thousand

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miles long.”60 During the empire of the 1500s, the colonists, even those in Brazil, crawled along the coast like crabs. But by the eighteenth century, the situation had changed, and the sources of Brazil’s livelihood and those of the mother country, Portugal, were based in the remote backlands, tamed by the expeditions. Perhaps it was no coincidence that Francisco José de Lacerda e Almeida, a son of São Paulo and the grandson of both whites and Indians, took the first definitive step in crossing and exploring the African continent. So memorable was his feat that many decades later, savage blacks61 preserved it in their memory, as Livingstone attested in his diary. In his monumental work on the nature of the discovery and conquest of America by the Europeans, Georg Freiderici included these words about the activities of the expeditions: “The discoverers, explorers, and conquerors of the interior of Brazil were not the Portuguese, but Brazilians of pure white blood and, most especially, mixed-­race Brazilians, Mamelukes. And, united with them, were the primitive natives of the land. The whole vast backlands of Brazil were discovered and revealed to Europeans, not by Europeans themselves but by Americans.”62 I do not agree entirely with the German ethnologist and historian, since he seems to systematically diminish the significance of the Portuguese accomplishment in the discoveries and conquests when contrasting the Portuguese to other peoples. I truly believe that in their capacity to adapt to all environments—at the cost, at times, of their own racial and cultural characteristics—the Portuguese revealed themselves as better colonizers than other peoples, who were perhaps more rigidly attached to Old World peculiarities. And I would not even hesitate to subscribe to viewpoints such as those recently maintained by Júlio Mesquita Filho, which hold that the expeditionary movement substantially fits within the framework of the achievements of Portugal’s citizens in Africa, in Asia, and in America, stretching back to the time of Prince Henry the Navigator and Sagres.63 But I would subscribe to it with this important reservation: that the Portuguese had to submerge themselves for some time in order to win in the end, like the grain of wheat in the Gospels, which has to first die in order to grow and be fruitful.

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Appendix 3. Aversion to the Economic Virtues The moral characteristics naturally required for a life in business are different from the ideal virtues of the nobility, in the sense that they respond primarily to the need for credit, not glory or fame. They are virtues that are above all lucrative, in that they strive to put simple professional honor above knightly and royal honor, and the growing rationalization of life above personalistic ties. However, it is precisely the firm rejection of all types of rationalization, and thus of depersonalization, that was and is one of the most constant traits of the peoples of Iberian origin. To retain a sure advantage in transactions with Portuguese and Spaniards, many foreign businessmen know that it is more advantageous to establish close ties with them than to retain only the formal relations that are ordinarily the rule in dealings and contracts. André Siegfried, cited elsewhere in this book [chapter 5], tells an anecdote that illustrates the point well, concerning a Philadelphia businessman who discovered that to win over a customer in Brazil or Argentina, it was necessary to first establish a friendship. In referring to the Spanish people, another observer notes: From friends, one can demand and receive everything, and this type of intercourse is common to different social relationships. When one wants something from a person, the sure way to get it is to be friends with this person. This technique extends to cases in which the provision of services is required, and then an authoritative attitude is considered particularly out of place. As a result, relations between employer and employee are usually friendlier here than anywhere else.64 The same observer, the fine psychologist Alfred Ruhl, was struck by this fact: that Spaniards consider it perfectly normal to obtain certain kinds of personal advantages through individuals with whom one has affectionate or comradely relations, but cannot understand that a person who holds a certain public office should refrain from bestowing on friends and relatives favors dependent on that office.

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All‑too‑human sentiments are required from officials. How is one to explain in any other way, he asks, the fact that railroad companies are constantly embarrassed by the avalanche of requests for free passes or reduced prices, requests that, as a rule, come precisely from the most well-­off classes of people?65 Thus, business is rarely conducted in a sufficiently rationalized manner; the customer or client by preference usually has to be a friend. The principal obstacles that Spain and all the Hispanic countries— including Portugal and Brazil—have erected against a rigid application of standards of justice and of legal rules were likely based on a system of relationships with essentially direct, personal ties. In addition, whether certain peoples’ economic relations with the Spaniards and Portuguese are successful depends on their capacity to adjust to these kinds of relationships. The contrast with the so-­called capitalist mentality is not a recent phenomenon, as suggested by the historical evidence. Thanks to Henri Sée, we know, for example, of a circular directed in 1742 by the governor of Brittany to his sub­dele­ gates, which stated that local businessmen, “in learning to trade with the Portuguese, expect them to be unreliable; if the Portuguese are so unreliable, they are that way with all nations; however, the Dutch trade effectively with Portugal and the English trade with them to an astonishing extent and benefit; it is the fault of the French, then, for not knowing how to take the right steps to establish secure trade in Portugal.”66 Regarding the “unreliability” of the Portuguese traders, Sée mentions the case of a certain shipping merchant of Saint Malo who, from 1720 to 1740, generally shipped lots of textiles to Lisbon using his customers’ accounts and only rarely used his own account, since he mistrusted the “exactness” of those traders, who always asked for excessive credits.67 This unreliability and lack of precision in business dealings with foreigners undoubtedly reveal the disorderly and imprudent taste for gain of the Portuguese in the 1700s and in other periods. Whoever tries to find the germ of the capitalist spirit here will be mistaken. Qualities of simple greed and a love for riches accumulated at the expense of others—principally, foreigners—belong to

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all eras and do not characterize the capitalist mentality, unless they are accompanied by certain economic virtues that tend to contribute decisively to making business rational, such as honor and exactness, which differ from a loyalty owed to one’s superiors, friends, and the like. Nothing indicates that the taste for and the prestige of material goods are more pronounced among the Portuguese and the Spanish than they are among other people. In Renaissance Italy, where some of those bourgeois virtues were born, the Catalans arriving from the Iberian Peninsula, who, according to the saying, “could suck bread from stones,”68 stood out as greedy and miserly.69 Even the author of Guzmán de Alfarache, the famous picaresque novel published in 1599, complained that all kinds of financial and exchange transactions as well as various merchant stratagems, instead of being a privilege of the Genovese, had become common means of profit everywhere, “especially in Spain,” where numerous speculative deals, such as proper fixed-­term loans secured by gold and silver, and particularly so-­ called “dry exchanges”—condemned by the Church as usury—were considered.70 In those times, the Iberian peoples were not completely removed from the general growth of financial institutions, as witnessed by improvements in certain kinds of credit operations in the Spanish markets of Villalón, Rioseco, and Medina del Campo, as well as those of Genoa, which would later spread to other countries. In the era of the great discoveries, Portuguese businessmen contributed to the development of commercial law, most notably to the progress of marine insurance. Portugal even produced the first body of doctrine on insurance: Tractatus perutilis et quotidianus de assecurationibus et sponsionibus Mercatorum [The Very Useful and Daily Treatise on Insurance and on Guarantees for Merchants] by Santerna (Pedro de Santarém), which was published in 1554 and reedited several times during the sixteenth century. We must finally remember the relevant, although largely forgotten, role of Spanish bankers and merchants in the history of finance in the Antwerp stock market during that century—principally that of the Burgos, not just Catalans or Jews—which disappeared only

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with the state’s second bankruptcy in 1575. Ehrenberg, the historian of the Fugger family,71 informs us of prominent people in the third quarter of the century such as Curiel de la Torre and Fernández Esposito, who outdid all their competitors with their lack of scruples in the use of capital. “They were authentic usurers,” he declared, “and in the current meaning of the word, not only in the canonical meaning.” The administrators for the Fugger family in Antwerp were constantly scandalized by the unlimited greed of those men. One claimed that the king found more virtue among the Genovese, who were traditionally accustomed to all kinds of speculation, than among the Spanish merchants.72 Despite all of the emphasis on lineage, the Portuguese nobles who traveled in the Orient did not scorn the advantages of fortune, putting aside, in certain cases, some of the prejudices associated with their class and position. Diogo do Couto again gives us examples of nobles and even viceroys of his time who did not hesitate to “take off their arms and deal with finance”; who stopped being captains and became merchants, “dropping the obligations of their positions and neglecting fleets and everything else to satisfy their appetites”; or those to whom it mattered little if they “put India on the scale just to satisfy their passions.” “And I do not know,” he said, in the words of his soldier, “if the plague of exchanging this kingdom for that state has yet ended, because everybody arrives there saying: you are worth what you have.”73 Liberality itself, a capital virtue of the old nobility, fell into discredit, or at least in practice, among some of these decadent nobles. Only then did the former begin eating alone and in silence, so as to avoid sharing with the poor, and considered it infamous rather than honorable and great to clothe and support the poor. In this, they resembled the story of Corte da Aldeia, in which a miserly son of a noble father piled up an immense quantity of gold for many years and guarded it with solicitous care, “as is common for those who acquired it by cupidity and labor.”74 The Spanish and Portuguese were no more temperate in their taste for riches than other peoples among whom that typically bourgeois creation, the so‑called capitalist mentality, came to flourish. It

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was not even because they were less miserly than others, a sin that medieval moralists presented as one of the most fatal forms of greed. Rather, what primarily distinguished them was a certain incapacity, which could be called congenital, for permitting any form of impersonal and mechanical order to prevail over organic and communal relationships based on kinship, neighborliness, and friendship.

Appendix 4. Nature and Art In the famous “Sermon of the Sexagésima”75 delivered in 1655 in the royal chapel in Lisbon, Antônio Vieira asserted that preaching is in every sense comparable to sowing, “because sowing is an art that has more of nature than of art; let it fall where it may.”76 This thought is apparently rooted in old Portuguese naturalism. Vieira must have taken the comparison between preaching and sowing directly from the scriptures, elaborating on it to fit his own argument. The same cannot be said of his image of the starry sky, which fit into conceptions of that period and in countries besides Portugal. H. von Stein once observed that the man of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, on hearing the word Nature, immediately thought of heaven; the man of the nineteenth century thought of a landscape. In this respect, a comparison (not attempted until now) with a certain passage by Baltasar Gracián, another disciple of St. Ignatius and possibly one of Vieira’s sources, may be illuminating. In the first part (Crisi II) of Gracián’s novel, El Criticón, published four years before the sermon of the Sexagésima mentioned above, Andrênio, surprised at the position of the stars in the sky, asks: “Why, since the Sovereign Artificer so beautified this ornamental arch of the world with so many stars, why did he not arrange them in order and concert so that they would interweave showy bows and create elegant decorations?” “I understand you,” replied Critilo, “you want them to be well-­shaped, with an ingenious border, and a small precious jewel, artistically distributed and well-­proportioned.”

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Andrênio then says, “Yes, yes, exactly. Because in addition to their excelling and providing a very pleasant spectacle for the eyes, a very brilliant creation, the divine creator would with this act completely destroy that foolish scruple of having made it by chance and would declare his divine Providence to all.”77 The last word naturally belongs to Critilo, for whom the Divine Wisdom, in shaping and distributing the stars, took care of another and more important relationship, “which is that of their movements and of tempering their influences.”

C h a p t e r

5

The Cordial Man Antigone and Creon — Modern Pedagogy and the Anti‑Family Virtues — Patrimonialism — The “Cordial Man” — Aversion to Ritualism: How It Is Manifested in Social Life, in Language, and in Business — Religion and the Exaltation of Cordial Values

Contrary to what some theoreticians assume, the state is not a broadening of the family circle, and it is even less an integration of certain groupings or of certain particularistic desires best exemplified by the family. There is no gradation between the family circle and the state, but rather discontinuity and even opposition. The fundamental lack of distinction between the two is a romantic prejudice, which had its most enthusiastic supporters during the nineteenth century. Those who espouse that doctrine maintain that the state and its institutions descended in a straight line and through simple evolution from the family. The truth is quite different: they essentially belong to different orders. The state is born, and the simple individual becomes a citizen, taxpayer, voter, eligible for office, a potential recruit, and responsible 111

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to the laws of the city only by transgressing the domestic and family order. This fact reveals a clear triumph of the general over the particular, of the intellectual over the material, and of the abstract over the corporeal, rather than a succession of purges, a spiritualization of more natural and rudimentary forms, or a procession of substances, to speak in Alexandrian philosophy. The family order in its pure form is abolished through transcendence. No one has expressed the opposition or even the fundamental incompatibility between the two principles more intensely than Sophocles. Creon incarnates the abstract, impersonal idea of the city in a struggle against that concrete and tangible reality: the family. By burying Polyneices against the orders of the state, Antigone draws the ire of her brother,1 who acts in the name not of his personal will, but of the supposed general will of the citizens, of the city-­state. And if any makes a friend of more account than his fatherland, that man hath no place in my regard. The conflict between Antigone and Creon belongs to all ages and maintains its eloquence even in our times. In all cultures, the process by which the general law supplants the particular law is accompanied by serious and prolonged crises that can affect the structure of society profoundly. The study of these crises is one of the fundamental themes of social history. Whoever, for example, compares the labor system of the old corporations and craftsmen’s guilds with the “wage slavery” of modern factories possesses a precious element for judging the social unrest of our days. In the old corporations, the master and his apprentices and day-­workers made up a family, whose members were subject to a natural hierarchy but shared the same privations and comforts. The modern industrial system, by separating employers and employees in the manufacturing process and increasingly differentiating their functions, has suppressed the intimate atmosphere between the two and has stimulated class antagonisms. The new system made it easier, moreover, for the capitalist to exploit the labor of his employees in exchange for trifling wages.

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For the modern employer—as an American sociologist points out—the employee became just a number; the human relationship disappeared. The large-­scale production, the organization of great masses of labor, and complex mechanisms to reap colossal returns seemingly accentuated and exacerbated a separation from the producing classes. As a result, those directing manual workers inevitably lost feelings of responsibility for the lives of those workers. Compare the system of production as it existed when the master and his apprentice or worker worked in the same room and used the same tools, with what happens in the normal organization of the modern corporation. In the former, employer-­employee relations were personal and direct; there were no intermediate authorities. In the latter, between the manual worker and the last proprietor—the stockholder—is a hierarchy of officials and authorities, as represented by the factory manager, the general manager, the president of the corporation, the executive committee of the board of directors, and the board of directors itself. From one extreme to the other, it is easy to delegate away any responsibility for work accidents, inadequate wages, or unsanitary conditions.2 The crisis associated with the transition to industrial work, mentioned above, gives only a faint idea of the difficulty in replacing the traditional family order with one where institutions and social relations, based on abstract principles, tended to replace ties of affection and blood. Based on the latter ties, some of these “backward” families still remain, scattered here and there, even in large cities; they concentrate on themselves and obey the old ideal that calls for educating children only for the domestic circle. But these ties tend to disappear when faced with the imperative demands of new living conditions. According to some present-­day pedagogues and psychologists, family education should merely introduce one to societal life outside of the family. And if we think carefully about modern theories, we see that they increasingly tend to separate the individual from the domestic community, to liberate him, so to speak, from family “virtues.” It is

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said that this separation and liberation represent the primary and required conditions for any adaptation to “practical life.” In this sense, present-­day scientific pedagogy follows a direction exactly opposite from those who praised the old educational methods. According to one of the followers of the older method, for example, obedience—a basic principle of old-­style education—should be stimulated insofar as it permits the child himself to adopt, to a reasonable extent, the opinions and rules that he recognizes as formulated by adults experienced in the social sectors that he seeks to enter. “In particular,” this writer adds, “the child should be prepared to disobey in situations where his parents’ predictions may be fallible.” He should progressively acquire individuality, “the only just basis of family relations.” The frequent cases where young people are dominated by mothers and fathers in their choice of clothing, toys, their general interests, and activities, to the point where they become socially as well as individually incompetent, if not psychopaths, are too frequent to be ignored. . . . Not only narrow-­minded parents but especially those who are extremely scrupulous and intelligent, should avoid such a mistaken attitude, since really intelligent parents ordinarily are more inclined to exercise domination over the child. Good mothers probably cause more damage than others, in the most general and popular acceptance of those words.3 Wherever the notion of family prospers and has a very solid base—usually where the patriarchal type of family predominates— the formation and development of society along current lines tend to be precarious and face strong limitations. The difficulty of individuals to adapt to social mechanisms is especially acute in our times, given the decisive triumph of certain antifamily virtues, such as those based on the spirit of personal initiative and on competition between citizens. Even during the empire, it became evident that overly narrow and often oppressive family ties could later limit the lives of individuals. Of course, there were many ways to correct early disadvantages,

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which often resulted from certain patterns of conduct originating in the domestic circle. It would not be an exaggeration to say that institutions of higher education, especially the study of law, which existed since 1827 in São Paulo and Olinda, broadly contributed to the formation of capable public men. These institutions, almost as much as they provided knowledge, also gave many adolescents, wrenched from their provincial and rural environments, the potential to “live for themselves” and to gradually free themselves from old domestic ties. We know that very particularistic traditions, usually decisive and influential during the first four or five years of a child’s life, mold the child’s social personality as a student. Students are forced to adjust to new situations and to new social relationships that are important when revising, at times radically, the interests, activities, values, sentiments, attitudes, and beliefs acquired within the bosom of the family.4 This was the only way that many young men who moved far away from their parents, deemed “exiled sons” by Capistrano de Abreu, were able to gain a sense of responsibility that they were once denied. Certainly, their new experiences did not always extinguish the domestic connection or the mentality formed in a patriarchal environment, one so opposed to the demands of a society of free men of an ever-­increasing egalitarian bent. For that very reason, Joaquim Nabuco could say that “in our politics and in our society . . . the orphans and the abandoned win the struggle, rise, and govern.”5 The recent tendency of certain countries to create vast social security and welfare systems has been criticized for leaving too little room for individual action and for condemning all kinds of competition to a weakened state. Such reasoning belongs to an age in which, for the first time in history, competition among citizens and the resulting consequences have become a positive social value. A rigorous answer to those who, from their viewpoint, condemn overly narrow and demanding family circles for similar reasons— that is, those who condemn the family for excessively circumscribing a child’s horizons within the domestic scene—is that only now have such environments often become schools for those who cannot adapt and even for psychopaths. In other periods of history, everything contributed to a greater harmony and accord between the virtues

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formed and required in the home and those ensuring civic prosperity and order. Not too long ago, Dr. Johnson submitted to his biographer a crude apology for inflicting corporal punishment on his pupils and recommending the rod for the “general terror of all.” To him, such tactics seemed better than telling a pupil, “If you do this or that, you will be more highly thought of than your brother or your sister.” According to Boswell, the rod has no permanent effect, whereas those who are motivated to emulate and compare themselves to what is superior will free themselves from a permanent harm, such as the harm caused when brothers and sisters hate each other. In Brazil, where the primitive type of patriarchal family dominated for a long time, urbanization—which results not only from the growth of cities but also from the growth in the means of communication, thus attracting vast, rural areas into the urban sphere of influence—caused a social disequilibrium with lasting effects. It was not easy for public officials, who were formed in this society, to understand the fundamental distinction between the private and public domains. Thus, according to Max Weber’s definition, they were precisely characteristic of what separates the “patrimonial” official from the pure bureaucrat. The “patrimonial” official regards political activity itself as a matter of private interest; the functions, jobs, and benefits that one obtains from it are related to one’s personal rights. In contrast, in the true bureaucratic state, objective interests— functional specialization and efforts to assure legal guarantees to citizens—prevail.6 Those deciding who holds public office under a patrimonial system place more emphasis on their personal trust in the candidates than on their abilities. In every sense, patrimonial systems lack the impersonal order that characterizes life in the bureaucratic state. Patrimonial officialdom can, by dividing up functions progressively and by rationalization, acquire bureaucratic aspects. But the more characteristic the patrimonial type is in its essence, the more different it is from the bureaucratic type. Only in exceptional cases has Brazil had an administrative system and a body of public officials purely based on and dedicated to

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objective interests. Throughout our history, private desires continue to dominate within an environment of closed circles that are impermeable to impersonal order. Of those circles, that of the family was undoubtedly the most strongly expressed and developed in our society. One of the decisive effects of the unquestionable and absorbing supremacy of the family nucleus—the sphere par excellence of ties of blood and the heart, the so-­called “primary contacts”—is that relations formed in domestic life were always the mandatory models for any of our social groupings. This also happens even when democratic institutions based on neutral and abstract principles try to establish society on an anti-­particularistic basis. A joyful expression states that the Brazilian contribution to civilization will be that of cordiality—we will give the world the “cordial man.”7 The affability in relationships, hospitality, generosity, and virtues extolled by visiting foreigners are indeed well-­defined traits of the Brazilian character, at least to the extent that the ancestral influence of patterns of human relations, formed in a rural and patriarchal environment, remain active and flourishing. It would be a mistake to think that those virtues can mean “good manners,” or civility. Above all, they are legitimate expressions of an extremely rich and overflowing emotional base. There is something coercive in civility—it can be expressed in commands and judgments. Among the Japanese, as we know, politeness, which involves the most ordinary aspects of social relationships, can at times become conflated with religious reverence. Some observers note, significantly, that the external forms of venerating the divinity in the Shinto ceremonial are not essentially different from social ways of showing respect. No person is further from this ritualistic idea of life than the Brazilian. Our ordinary form of social relations is fundamentally the very opposite of politeness. It can be deceptive in appearance, as is explained by the fact that a polite attitude consists precisely of a kind of deliberate mimicry of manifestations spontaneous in the “cordial man”; it is a natural and living form converted into a formula. Moreover, politeness is somehow a defense mechanism against society. It is

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reserved for the external and superficial part of the individual, and it can even serve, when necessary, as a means of resistance. It is equivalent to a disguise that permits each of us to keep intact our sensibility and emotions. Similarly, adopting external patterns of cordiality, which do not have to be legitimate to be manifested, reveals a decisive triumph of the spirit. Armed with this mask, the individual succeeds in maintaining his or her supremacy over society. In effect, politeness implies the continuous and sovereign presence of the individual. For the “cordial man,” social life is, to some extent, a true liberation from the panic that he feels from living with himself and from depending on himself under all the circumstances of existence. His way of revealing himself to others continually reduces the individual to the social and peripheral part of life, which, for the Brazilian—like a good American—tends to matter most. More than anything, he lives through others. Nietzsche addressed this type of human being when he wrote: “Your inadequate self-­love makes you a captive of isolation.”8 This aversion to social ritual is very significant, since at times it requires a strongly homogeneous and overall well-­balanced personality, which is why Brazilians usually find it hard to feel prolonged reverence for a superior. Our temperament allows, even to a considerable degree, for formulas of reverence, but for the most part only when these do not wholly prevent the possibility of a more familiar relationship. The respect normally manifested by other peoples has its counterpart in Brazil in the desire to establish intimacy. And that is even more notable when one takes into account the attachment that the Portuguese, who are close to us in so many ways, often have for titles and signs of reverence. In the realm of linguistics, for example, such behavior is reflected in the exaggerated tendency to use diminutives. The ending “inho” added to words serves to bring us closer to people or objects and to simultaneously pay more attention to them. It is a way of making them more accessible to our feelings and closer to our hearts. The Portuguese frequently make fun of certain excesses in our attachment to and abuse of diminutives, which is as ridiculous to them as

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Portuguese sentimentality, tearful and bitter, often is to us.9 A careful study of our syntax would surely yield precious revelations in this area. The same applies to the tendency to omit family names in social relationships. As a rule, the given, or baptismal, name prevails. That tendency, which among the Portuguese comes from a tradition with ancient roots—as we know, family names only began to predominate in Christian Europe in the twelfth century—grew even stronger, oddly enough, among us. Perhaps this suggests that the use of someone’s first name implies abolishing certain psychological barriers resulting from the existence of families different and independent from each other. It fits in with the natural attitude of human groups that accept considerable closeness or “concord,” and that reject relationships based on abstract reasoning, or not based, to use Tönnies’s terminology, on community of blood, place, or spirit.10 The rejection of any form of relationship not based on an ethos of emotion is an aspect of Brazilian life that few foreigners can easily understand. And this trait is so characteristic among us that it does not even disappear in activities normally based on competition. A Philadelphia businessman observed to André Siegfried that he was astonished to discover that in Brazil and Argentina, you have to befriend the customer to win him or her over.11 Our old Catholicism, so characteristic of us, which permits us to treat saints with an almost disrespectful intimacy, and which must seem strange to really religious souls, has the same explanation. The popularity of St. Thérèse of Lisieux—our Santa Teresinha—is largely a result of the intimate manner in which we worship her, a kindly and almost fraternal worship, which does not adjust well to ceremony and which minimizes distance. That also occurs with our Child Jesus, a playtime companion of children who makes one think less of Jesus of the canonic Gospels than of various apocryphal texts, especially various versions of the Gospel of Childhood. Those who attend the festivals of Bom Jesus de Pirapora in São Paulo know the story of the Christ who comes down from the altar to dance the samba with the people. This form of religion, which had antecedents in the Iberian Peninsula, also appeared in medieval Europe. There, it exactly coincided

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with the decay of a palace religion that was superior to the individual, in which the common will was expressed in the building of great Gothic monuments. Following that period, a historian affirms, there arose a more human and simple religious sentiment. Each house wanted its own chapel, where the residents could kneel before their patron saint and protector. Christ, Our Lady, and the saints no longer appeared as privileged beings, exempt from any human feeling. Everyone—nobles and plebeians—wanted intimacy with the sacred creations, and God himself was a familiar, domestic, and close friend—the opposite of the “palace” God to whom a kneeling knight would pay tribute, as if to a feudal lord.12 Similarly, the disdain for distance, which today seems to constitute the most specific trait of the Brazilian spirit, was characteristically transposed into the religious sphere. Notably, in this case we behave exactly opposite to the above‑mentioned Japanese attitude, where ritual invades the area of social behavior and gives it greater rigor. In Brazil, it is precisely the rigor of the ritual that is loosened and humanized. This aversion to ritual does not fit well—as can easily be imagined—with a truly deep and conscientious religious feeling. Newman, in one of his Anglican sermons, expressed the “firm conviction” that the English nation would greatly benefit if its religion were more superstitious, more bigoted,13 if it were more accessible to the influence of the people, and if it spoke more directly to the imagination and the heart. Precisely those noncompulsory, lenient, and intimate and familiar aspects of our kind of worship could, with some degree of impropriety, be called “democratic.” Such worship—exempting the faithful from all effort, all diligence, and all self-­oppression— fundamentally corrupted our religious sentiments. Significantly, at the time of the famous ecclesiastical question during the empire, a long and furious struggle shook the country because Bishop Vital de Oliveira (1844–1878, bishop of Olinda) stubbornly refused to abandon his “excess zeal.” Even more seriously, the number of Catholics, or those who sincerely imagined themselves Catholics, who accused Vital de Oliveira of unpardonable and criminal intransigence was by no means small.

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A superficial religiosity, one less attentive to the intimate meaning of the ceremonies than to the colorful and external pomp, was almost carnal in its attachment to the concrete and in its bitter lack of understanding of true spirituality. Although tolerant, because it facilitated agreements, certainly no one expected it to be elevated enough to result in any powerful social morality. It was a religiosity lost and confused in a formless world, and for that reason did not have the power to impose its order. Thus, political development could only be shaped outside of it, outside a religion that appealed only to feelings and sentiments and almost never to reason and will. One is not surprised to find that our republic was created by the positivists or agnostics and that our independence was the work of Masons. Our first emperor delivered himself to the latter with so much publicity that it alarmed Prince Metternich, because of the dangerous example implied by his approach. The lack of devotion among Brazilian men and even Brazilian women impressed all foreign travelers from the time of Father Fernão Cardim, who observed that Pernambucan women of the 1500s were “very much ladies but not very religious; they do not attend masses, admonitions, confessions, etc.”14 Auguste de Saint‑Hilaire, who visited the city of São Paulo during Holy Week in 1822, tells us that the lack of attention of the faithful during religious services bothered him. “Nobody took the spirit of the proceedings seriously,” he observed. “The most distinguished men participate only out of habit; the people are there as if it were a party. In the Holy Thursday ceremonies, the majority of those present received communion from the bishop’s hand. They looked right and left, talked before that solemn moment, and began talking again right afterwards. The streets,” he added, “were full of people who ran from church to church but only to look at them, without the slightest sign of fervor.”15 Indeed, very little could be expected from devotions that wanted continual seasoning with strong condiments, and that in seeking to touch souls, first needed to touch the eyes and the ears. “Amid the noise and confusion, the mirth and the parade of all these ‘glorious,’ ‘splendid,’ and ‘pompous’ celebrations,” noted the pastor Kidder,

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“one must be a singularly devout person who can find any room for spiritual worship, not to say any incitement to it.”16 Another visitor in the middle of the last century expressed profound doubts about the possibility of some day implanting more rigorous forms of belief in Brazil. It is said that even Protestants soon degenerate here, he stated. And he added: “The climate is against the severities of northern sects. Neither stringent Methodism nor Puritanism can ever flourish in the tropics.”17 For the Catholicism represented by the Council of Trent, the glorification of the values of cordiality and of a more tangible religiosity seemed to require, in the face of Reformation, an attempt to spiritually propagate the faith anew. In Brazil, such glorification encountered a favorable environment and accommodated itself well to other characteristics of our social behavior. Our aversion to ritual, in what the first European observers deemed a “remiss and somewhat melancholy land,” is partly explained by the very idea that ritual is ultimately unnecessary for us. Normally, we do not react defensively to our immediate, familiar surroundings. The inner life of the Brazilian is neither cohesive nor disciplined enough to envelop and dominate the whole personality and integrate it, as a conscious element, into society. Brazilians are free, then, to give in to and to assimilate any broad repertory of ideas, gestures, and forms that they may encounter.

C h a p t e r

6

A New Era Finis operantis — The Meaning of Credentialism — How to Explain the Success of the Positivists — The Origins of Democracy in Brazil: A Misunderstanding — Ethos and Eros. Our Romantics — Byzantine Attachment to Books — The Mirage of Literacy — The Disenchantment of Reality

A tendency toward social solidarity is not very important when considering the common good. That explains why we are reluctant to accept principles of organization over the individual, and why religious belief itself becomes excessively human and down to earth in Brazil. All of our usual modes of behavior often reveal a singular attachment to the values of personality, configured around the home. In such cases, individuals affirm that with respect to their fellow citizens, they care little about the general law when that law contradicts their emotional inclinations, and care only about what distinguishes them from others, or from the rest of the world. Thus, we rarely apply ourselves, body and soul, to an object outside ourselves. And when we evade rules, we do so by a simple gesture 123

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of withdrawal, disorderly and uncontrolled, and never governed by free initiative. We are notoriously averse to slow-­moving and monotonous activities, ranging from aesthetic creativity to servile activities, where a subject must deliberately submit to an external order; the individual personality finds it hard to put up with taking orders under a demanding and disciplined system. Frequently, Brazilians who consider themselves intellectuals find it easy to nourish the most varied styles of doctrines and simultaneously support convictions completely at odds with those doctrines. It is enough for such doctrines and convictions to be showy and, by using pretty words or seductive arguments, to appeal to the imagination. Any possible contradiction so little shocks them that some would be alarmed and sincerely indignant at our inability to find the legitimacy of their capacity to display the same enthusiasm toward these contradictions. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that nearly all of our very talented citizens are a little like this. In work we seek only our own satisfaction. Its purpose is for ourselves and not for the task: for the finis operantis, not the finis operis [for the end of the agent, not the end of the action]. Professional activities are mere accidents in the life of individuals, unlike what happens among other peoples, whose very language indicates how such activities can acquire an almost religious meaning.1 Doctors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, professors, or government officials who limit themselves to practicing their own professions are still rare in Brazil. We see again and again the fact observed by Burmeister [a German naturalist] at the beginning of our life as a free nation: No one here tries to follow the natural course of the career they entered, but each aspires to jump to high and well-­paying positions: and they often find them. . . . The second lieutenant of the line jumps to major or colonel in the militia, and later plans to return to the regular army with that rank. The government official makes efforts to get a position as an engineer, and the most talented military engineer abandons his career to take a position

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as a collector of customs. The naval officer aspires to the uniform of chief of squadron. It is not unusual to have five or six positions at the same time and fulfill none of them.2 Our academies give degrees to hundreds of new graduates every year. Only in exceptional cases do they use what they learned during their courses of study in practical life. The general inclination toward liberal professions, which in an earlier chapter we tried to interpret as connected to our colonial and agrarian background and related to the abrupt transition from the rural sphere to urban life, is in fact not, as some publicists maintain, a phenomenon that is peculiarly ours. Few countries, for example, were apparently as infected by the “plague of degree‑granting” as the United States during the years after its War of Independence. The graduates3 of New England had roles of great importance, despite all the precautions of Puritanism against legal experts, and they seemed to want to put simple human laws above the law of the Lord.4 And to those who censure us for being a country of lawyers, where, as a rule, only law graduates rise to the highest positions and public offices, it could be observed that even in that respect we are not unique: the majority of the members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were lawyers by profession; lawyers make up half of state legislatures and the United States Congress; besides generals, all American presidents have been lawyers, excepting only Harding and Hoover.5 The same is true in Brazil. The critiques of that trend in the United States are almost as frequent as those in Brazil, in evident contrast to trends in Great Britain, where not a single prime minister during the century from Perceval to Asquith was a lawyer.6 However, although economic and social factors—common to all American countries—contributed greatly to the prestige of the liberal professions in Brazil, the same prestige also traditionally surrounded them in the motherland. In nearly all periods of Portuguese history, a degree was worth almost as much as a letter of recommendation in contending for high public office. If one is to believe the Arte de Furtar,7 during the seventeenth century more than a hundred

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students succeeded each year in getting degrees from the University of Coimbra as a means of obtaining public jobs, without ever being in Coimbra. Still speaking of the vice of credentialism, our tendency to glorify the individual personality above all else stands out as a value in itself, beyond whatever contingencies may arise. The dignity and the importance conferred by the title of doctor permit the individual to go through life with discreet composure. Sometimes this dignity can free him from the unceasing hunt for material goods, which can subjugate and humiliate one’s personality. Although our current social environment no longer permits this privileged situation to continue as before, and although the prestige of the graduate is above all a throwback to material conditions that no longer fully exist, only a minority of us hold detectably different views than those of our grandparents on the subject. What is important to emphasize here is that the origin of the seductiveness offered by the liberal professions is closely linked to our nearly exclusive preference for values of the personality. This also explains how that seductiveness survives in the nonconforming material environment. Indeed, there is no other explanation for the anxiety in seeking a definitive lifestyle that provides security and stability, while simultaneously requiring only a minimum of personal effort, application, and subjection of personality, as happens so frequently with certain public offices. A pronounced love for established forms and generic laws, which contain a complex and difficult reality within the sphere of our desires, is one of the most constant and significant aspects of the Brazilian character. Constructed by intelligence, these artifacts are a respite for the imagination, comparable to the requirement of regularity to which the musical beat invites the body of the dancer. Our spiritual background is assiduously determined by the prestige of the written word, the lapidary phrase, the inflexible thought, and the horror of the vague, both hesitant and fluid. This combination requires cooperation, effort, and, therefore, a certain dependence and even abdication of the personality. Everything that dispenses with persistent and exhausting mental effort and with lucid, definitive ideas, and that also

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prefers a kind of inertia of intelligence, seems to us to constitute the true essence of wisdom. One can understand the success of positivism among us and among other related peoples, such as Chileans and Mexicans, precisely through the respite provided to the spirit by the irresistible and compelling definitions of Comte’s system.8 For his followers, the greatness and the importance of that system are linked specifically to its capacity to resist the fluidity and mobility of life. The certainty that those individuals put into the final victory of their new ideas is truly edifying. The world would irrevocably end up accepting these ideas, just because they were rational, or just because there was no doubt of their perfection, which all men of goodwill and good sense would perforce come to recognize. Nothing could prevent, much less eliminate, the decisive rise of a new spirituality demanded by the totality of human needs. The scientific and intellectual furniture that the Master deeded to Humanity would be sufficient to attend to such needs at all times and in all lands. Our history and our traditions were re‑created in accordance with those inflexible principles. In fact, in their political structures, the positivists candidly imagined respect for our “preexisting state,” our own features, and our special antecedents. For example, in a document dated Homer 102, that is, two months after the republic was formed, they proposed that the country be divided into two kinds of states: “the Brazilian Western States, systematically confederated, which would come from the fusion of European elements with African and aboriginal American elements,” and the “Brazilian American States, empirically confederated, constituted by scattered, magic-­worshiping tribes throughout the territory of the republic. The federation between the Brazilian Western States and the Brazilian American States would be limited to maintaining friendly relations, as is a duty between different and friendly nations, and to guaranteeing the protection of the Federal Government against any violence, etc.”9

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At rock bottom, might this confidence in the miraculous power of ideas reveal that we are secretly horrified by our reality? In Brazil, the positivists were always paradoxically negative. They were not positive—one can say—according to any of the meanings that Auguste Comte attributed to the term in his Discourse on the Positive Spirit. They were anesthetized by a stubborn belief in the truth of their principles and in the certainty that the future would judge them and their contemporaries by their individual and collective conduct regarding those principles. In the privacy of their offices, those convictions defended the positivists from the rest of the country, since all of them were great readers. And the rest would end up inevitably— the adverb that figures most insistently in their writings—by coming to them, by accepting their teachings, and by following their truths. At one time the positivists formed the aristocracy of Brazilian thought, that is, our intelligentsia. The positivists were the favorite advisers of some government leaders, and they had a role similar to that of those famous científicos with whom the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz liked to surround himself. But their essentially negative impulses made it impossible for them to impart any constructive or positive meaning to our public affairs. Their virtues—probity, sincerity, and personal detachment—did not give them the necessary power to struggle against more active and less scrupulous politicians. Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães, honored by many with the title of Founder of our Republic, never voted except in the last year of the monarchy. And even in that case, he did it in order to help a family friend, Counselor Andrade Pinto, a candidate for senator. Constant was in the habit of saying that he could not stand our politics.10 A close friend of his told us that, just before the new regime was inaugurated, he had such an aversion to public affairs that almost certainly he did not even read the newspapers. And this friend added: “He did not care whether Pedro or Martinho, liberal or conservative, governed. In his opinion, all were useless. And I often marveled at Benjamin’s indifference and neglect of our politics, which all Brazilians with some education generally like. I tried to tell myself that his strange attitude was because he was so superior in spirit that he did not concern himself with

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these petty things, and because his devotion, ardor, and passion for serious study of mathematics left him little time for anything else.”11 But the positivists were only the most characteristic examples of a group that considerably prospered in our country as soon as it gained self-­consciousness. During our difficult political and social adolescence, a belief in the magical power of ideas has seemed to Brazilians the most dignified means of avoiding reality. We brought a complex and complete system of precepts from strange lands, but we did not know to what degree they would fit the conditions of Brazilian life, and we did not think of the changes that such conditions implied. The impersonal ideology of democratic liberalism never came naturally to us. We effectively assimilated those principles only to the extent that they coincided with the pure and simple rejection of uncomfortable authority, confirming our instinctive aversion to hierarchy and allowing us to deal with our leaders in a familiar fashion. Democracy in Brazil was always a lamentable misunderstanding. Rural and semifeudal aristocrats imported it and tried to accommodate it, wherever possible, to their rights and privileges, those same privileges that were the target of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy in the Old World. Thus, they were able to incorporate into our traditions, at least as an external façade or ornament, those slogans that seemed most appropriate for the time and that were glorified in our books and speeches. Curiously, apparently reformist movements in Brazil almost always started from top to bottom; they were inspired intellectually, if that can be said, as much as they were inspired sentimentally. Our independence and the liberal triumphs that we enjoyed during the course of our political development came almost by surprise. The masses reacted to these developments with indifference or even hostility. These developments did not emanate from a particularly spiritual and emotional predisposition or from a well-­defined and specific concept of life that had reached full maturity. The champions of the new ideas often forgot that ways of life are not always expressions of personal opinion; they are not “done” or “undone” by decree. The

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famous letter of Aristides Lobo about the proclamation of Brazilian independence is a revealing document in that it shows how unaware we were of the realization of the republican idea, despite all the propaganda and all its popularity among private school students. “For now,” said the famous mentor of the new regime, “for now, the tone of the government is purely military and it will have to be that way. The achievement was theirs, only theirs, because the cooperation of the civil element was virtually nil. The people, stupefied, astonished, and surprised, witnessed it without knowing what it meant.” The liberal ferment that preceded the proclamation of independence was the work of passionate minorities. Its repercussions among the people were quite limited, undoubtedly much more limited than those who put together our country’s history wanted us to believe. Saint‑Hilaire, who noted his impressions at the time, while traveling in the Brazilian interior, observed that in Rio de Janeiro, liberal agitation before January 12 was promoted by Europeans, and that the revolutions in the provinces came from a few rich and powerful families. “The mass of the people,” he said, “were indifferent to everything, seeming to ask, like the donkey in the fable: Will I not have to carry a heavy load all my life?”12 We first saw the serious threat to the persistence of the old colonial patterns after the events following the forced migration of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil in 1808. The growing cosmopolitanism of certain urban centers was not an immediate danger to the supremacy of the agrarian landlords, a supremacy supported by tradition and opinion. However, it certainly opened new horizons and suggested new ambitions that would, in time, disturb to some degree the old delights and leisure of their rural life. Caught suddenly by the demands imposed by a new state of affairs, especially after independence and the crises of the regency, many of them did not know how to adapt quickly to the changes. The distance between the “conscious” element and the Brazilian masses became increasingly obvious, a distance that would later manifest itself at every key moment in the life of the nation. In books, in the press, and in speeches,

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reality unfailingly became a hard, sad reality. The transition from the harmony with nature to the more regular and abstract existence of the cities must have stimulated a voracious and subterranean crisis in our people. The best, the most sensitive of them, began to frankly detest life, or, to speak in the language of the time, “the prison of life.” Our romanticism was artificial and insincere in certain formal details, even when it copied Byron, Musset, and Espronceda, and even when it conventionally glorified the Indian—already anticipated by Chateaubriand and Cooper in nearly every detail—or when it transposed the high-­sounding words of Victor Hugo into elevated stanzas. As was the case everywhere else, the Brazilian Romantics tried to abandon classical conventionalism to the extent that it pretended to create a poor and ridiculous caricature of Arcadian scenery from our tropical nature. Concentrating its preference on the personal and on the instinctive, the movement could have had a more powerful role— and to some degree, it did. For that purpose, it was not necessary to descend to the obscure bases of existence; being content with spontaneity would have been enough. Indeed, it brought us nothing truly new: pessimism, dying from love, and even its tearful sentimentality were constituted from lyrical traits that came to us from the motherland. The spread of a feminine, decadent, and lifeless sensibility was even cause for alarm, especially at a time when we had just awakened to life as an independent nation and should have marshaled all our energies against any support for negative stimuli. However, appearances should not delude us to the point of thinking that the ups and downs of that romantic literature amounted to anything more than a superficial mark on Brazilian life, despite the fundamental sincerity of those who most typified it. A love of letters quickly allowed us to create an out‑of‑this‑world existence that served as a comfortable distraction from the horror of our daily re­ ality. Rather than a healthy and fruitful reaction, one that could seek to correct or prevail over our reality, that love of letters simply forgot it or hated it, leading to premature disillusionment as well as illusions of maturity. Machado de Assis was the flower of this greenhouse plant. All of our thinking in that period basically revealed the same fragility, the same inner inconsistency, and the same indifference to

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the social situation; any aesthetic pretext could determine its content. We can apply to it what Junqueira Freire said of philosophy in his autobiography: “It was no more than a luxurious new language for saying the same thing. No truth, no beauty, more art than science; more superficial exterior than foundation.” Even when our men and women of ideas applied themselves to legislation or to concerns about organizational and practical matters, they were generally pure men and women of words and books; they were wrapped up in themselves, in their dreams, and in their imaginations. Thus, everything conspired toward the fabrication of an artificial and bookish reality, where real life died of asphyxiation. Like accomplices who paid little attention to the world in which we lived, we wished to re‑create another world that was more docile to our desires or whims. It was the way for us not to lower ourselves, not to sacrifice our personalities when in contact with petty and contemptible things. Like Plotinus of Alexandria, who was ashamed of his own body, we too, by forgetting the prosaic facts that make up the real web of daily existence, would end up dedicating ourselves to more ennobling activities: to the written word, to rhetoric, to grammar, and to formal law. The Byzantine love for books often seemed a guarantee of wisdom and a sign of mental superiority, like a class ring or a graduate degree. And—be it said in passing—the exaggerated value that we confer on those concrete symbols is noteworthy; it has been said that ideas would not be accessible to us without the assiduous intervention of the body and the senses. Pedro II, who, in his time, was the prototype of our official intellectuality, carried his devotion to books to such an extreme that he was said, somewhat unfairly, to tend to it more assiduously than to the affairs of state. A biographer of Pedro II offers us, with no malice, a picturesque statement in this regard: The emperor, we hear from the learned Ramiz Galvão, said he liked books that satisfied the five senses, namely: visual, from the external impression or aspect of the book; tactile, from the smoothness or harshness in handling the pages;

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auditory, from the soft crackling on leafing through it; olfactory, from the pronounced smell of the printed paper or the fine leather of its binding; and gustatory, that is, the intellectual, or even physical, flavor of the book, from lightly moistening the tips of the pages to turn them.13 This emperor, who someone once compared to a Protestant pastor officiating in a Catholic temple, is not in fact an unusual figure in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century.14 In many of his traits, he is comparable to the positivists mentioned above: they too were great friends of the printed page, where they learned to re‑create reality to conform to their taste and judgment. There is nothing really unique in such an attitude: Pedro II represents his time and country well, so well that, paradoxically, he helped pioneer the transformation through which the old colonial nobility, a nobility of agrarian landlords—our men of the manor house—yielded their positions to an urban nobility, characterized by talent and a devotion to letters. Following the decline of the old rural world and its most conspicuous representatives, the aristocracy of the “spirit” would naturally be indicated to fill the void. No group was so well equipped to preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the essentially aristocratic quality of our traditional society as those persons of cultivated imagination who read French literature. The simple presence of those qualities, which are generally acquired in a childhood and adolescence free from demanding material concerns, was more than enough to reveal the beati possidentes [blessed state] of one’s ancestry. Yet there are other ways in which our intellectuals reveal their clearly conservative and lordly mission. One, which is still in vogue today among its advocates, is the presumption that real talent must be spontaneous and must come from one’s origins, as with true no­ bility; hard work and careful study may lead to knowledge, but by monotony and repetition, the two resemble the low occupations that degrade man. Another is precisely the voluntary alienation from the surrounding world that is typically expressed by a transcendent and nonutilitarian nature. Consider also the frequent—even if not always

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manifest—tendency of individuals to distinguish themselves through their knowledge and thus rise above common mortals. In this case, the motivation for knowledge is not so much intellectual as it is social, and it primarily seeks to elevate and dignify those who cultivate it. At times, the result is a certain type of erudition that is, above all, formal and external, where the use of rare names, supposedly scientific phrases, and citations in a foreign language are meant to dazzle the reader as if they were a collection of brilliant and precious stones. The prestige of certain theories that bear the stamp of foreign and complicated names and the simple fact of introducing such a stamp seem closely linked to this tendency. It also involves a worldview that tries to simplify all things in order to put them more easily within the reach of lazy processes of reasoning. A complex world would require laborious and detailed mental activity and thus would exclude the seductive words or formulas of an almost supernatural virtue that, like magic wands, resolve everything with a simple wave in the air. Uncounted numbers of our pedagogues of prosperity seize upon certain solutions, which at best sustain only partial truths, and transform them into a compulsory and unique requirement for all progress. The mirage of general literacy, for example, is quite typical. Much useless rhetoric is wasted to prove that all our problems would be solved instantly if the ABCs were broadly taught in primary schools. Certain simplifiers maintain that if we copied the United States in this respect, “Brazil would be fully literate in twenty years and thus would rise to the position of the second or third great power in the world!” One of them even argues: Let us suppose, for example, that years ago the governments of the twenty-­one states of Brazil had by now cultivated an educated population and developed a school system equal to those present in each of the North American states, thanks to the foresight of Americans. In such a case, we would have achieved extraordinary progress in all our states in Brazil. All of them would

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today be equipped with railroads built by private initiatives; all of them would be full of very rich cities, covered with opulent agriculture, and populated by a strong, vigorous, and healthy race.15 It would be hard to convince many of these preachers of progress that mass literacy is not a required condition for the kind of technical and capitalist culture that they admire, the most complete model of which is found in North America; or that the United States, with six million illiterate adults, unfavorably compares in this sense with other, less “progressive” countries. In just one community of about 300,000 inhabitants in the American Midwest (a community, by the way, that boasts of its appreciation for culture to the point where it considers itself a second Boston), the number of children who do not attend and are not headed for school is, according to an American authority in educational matters, greater than the number of children who do not attend school in all of Germany.16 Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that, independent of the cultural ideal, simple mass literacy is not necessarily a desirable goal. Isolated from other fundamental and complementary elements of the educational system, it is tantamount in some cases to a firearm in the hands of a blind man. Although, on the one hand, this and other similar panaceas seem to indicate shortcomings in the reasoning of those who promote them, on the other hand, they disguise an overwhelming disenchantment with our actual conditions. The discourses vary in their tone and content, but they always have the same meaning and the same secret origins. Many of those who criticize imperial Brazil for spreading a kind of grotesque and insipid national and romanticized self-­conception forget that the problem did not diminish with time; perhaps it was only our sensitivity to its effects that diminished. Regarding the propaganda supporting the republic, the intention surely was that the new regime would introduce a system that was more in accord with the supposed aspirations of a nation: the country was finally going to live with its own best interests in mind, and it

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would not have to exhibit capricious and antiquated political forms, which made it unique in the Americas. In reality, however, a negative motivation still inspired the propagandists: Brazil ought to begin in a new direction because “it was ashamed” of itself, of its biological reality. Those who fought for revival may have expressed, even more than their predecessors, the idea that the country cannot grow by its own efforts; it must be created from the outside, and it must merit the approval of others. Precisely in this respect, it is no exaggeration to say that our republic surpassed the empire in more than one sense. In the empire, the principle of the emperor’s Moderating Power was the key to the entire political system and to the idea of the pouvoir neutre (neutral power) by which Benjamin Constant, the European, defined the real position of a constitutional chief of state. This principle was corrupted quite early due to the people’s lack of experience, since they were the foundation for our tutelary monarchy. The corruption of this principle is understandable in a society dominated by a patriarchal agrarian system. A division of politics into two parties—following the English model—which represented people and families rather than ideas, satisfied our fundamental need for solidarity and struggle. Finally, parliament itself had to fulfill an essential function in the framework of our national life: it provided the visible image of that solidarity and struggle.

C h a p t e r

7

Our Revolution Political Agitation in Latin America — Iberianism and Americanism — From the Lord of the Manor to the Planter — The State Apparatus in Brazil — Politics and Society — Caudillismo and Its Opposite — A Vertical Revolution — The Oligarchies: Prolonging of Personalism in Space and Time — Democracy and the National Character — The New Dictatorships — Prospects

If the date of abolition of slavery in Brazil marked the end of agrarian predominance, then the political framework established the following year was an attempt to adequately respond to the demands of a new, recomposed society. A secret link connects these two events and several others with a slow, but sure and planned, revolution— the only one that we have truly experienced over the course of our nation’s existence. Granted, this revolution took place without great fanfare, which historians often exaggerate through their detailed and easy zeal for recording the external changes in peoples’ lives. Compared to this revolution, most of the agitation during our republican 137

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period, similar to that in Spanish American nations, seems like a simple change in direction of the political and legal life of the state, comparable to those old “palace revolutions” so familiar to connoisseurs of European history. Some observe—and perhaps correctly—that such movements have the same basic meaning and utility as the presidential elections in the United States; the former shock society probably no more deeply than the latter. “By all odds,” says an American author, “those revolutions do not hurt business more than our presidential elections in the United States; and they are not as expensive.”1 The great Brazilian revolution cannot be defined by a precise moment; rather, it is a lengthy process that has lasted for at least three-­quarters of a century. Its culminating moments are patterned like diverse peaks in a mountain chain. An earlier chapter described the year 1888 as perhaps the most decisive time of our entire development as a nation because afterwards, some of the traditional constraints could no longer stop the advent of a new, and shortly thereafter inevitable, state of affairs. It was in that sense that abolition became the most visible marker distinguishing the two eras. Henceforth, the terrain was better prepared for a new system whose center of gravity was no longer the countryside, but rather the urban centers. Although the movement subverting the pillars of our society during the empire was perhaps still far from its final solution, we had unquestionably entered its acute phase. Today we still see, and we will surely continue to see for some time, the final waves of the slow cataclysm aimed at destroying our culture’s Iberian roots and replacing them with a new style. We may be deluding ourselves when we label this style American, but its characteristics are quickly becoming more marked in this hemisphere. Brazil is not the only country where Iberianism and agrarianism are mingled, despite the arguments of eminent scholars, such as Oliveira Viana. The breakdown of the rural world and of the whole cycle of specific overseas influences brought by the Portuguese, in addition to the unrelenting onslaught of cities, led to the decay of both of these movements.

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That our cultural formation is still broadly Iberian and Portuguese should be attributed especially to the inadequacies of “Americanism,” which can be largely summed up as a kind of exacerbation of foreign features—that is, of decisions imposed from the outside that are foreign to the country. Inside, we are still not American. “The blood is chemically reduced by the nerves, in American activity,” said one of the great poets of our time.2 We deliberately emphasize that the decisive factor in urban growth was the decline of centers of agricultural production. The cities, which formerly had merely complemented the rural world, finally proclaimed their own existence and their superiority. We can consider two simultaneous and convergent movements throughout our entire history: one expanding the action of urban communities, and the other limiting the influence of rural centers. In the end, these rural centers were converted into simple supply centers, becoming the cities’ colonies. Special factors favored the first of these movements. However, the expansion of urban communities increased definitively only when agrarianism, which had previously been sovereign, lost its power of resistance, and when conditions encouraging a powerful rural aristocracy and economically autonomous, nonurban organizations grew weaker. Those traditional influences progressively disappeared, just as sugar cultivation became generally less important and was replaced by coffee in the second half of the last century. Precisely with respect to those two products in Brazil, H. Handelmann observed the existence of two kinds of colonial production: one that stratified society by forming aristocracies, and one that stimulated a greater leveling of society. Handelmann even said that, in comparison with cane and even cotton, the coffee plant was a “democratic plant.” Its cultivation, he stated, did not require as much land area nor as much capital expenditure; with its diffuse nature, it was much easier to parcel out property and reduce large holdings, and thus it contributed to the general welfare.3

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Written in the middle of the nineteenth century, this observation seems to reflect the conditions of a period when coffee cultivation was not yet overwhelmingly preponderant in our agrarian economy. Indeed, at least in the province of Rio de Janeiro and in the Paraíba Valley in general, coffee plantations for the most part faithfully followed the traditional forms of sugar cultivation, with each unit becoming as self-­sufficient as possible. Establishing and maintaining such properties necessarily required large amounts of capital, which were not easily accessible. Except when soils were too exhausted to be profitable, the parceling of land never occurred on a considerable scale.4 Particularly in the western province of São Paulo—the West of 1840, not 1940—coffee plantations acquired their own character and freed themselves from the forms of agrarian exploitation that, since colonial times, were stereotyped by the classic model of sugar cane cultivation and of the sugar “mill.” In this region of São Paulo, the old profile of the lord of the plantation lost some of its characteristics, becoming more detached from the land and from routine rural traditions. The cultivation of land then ceased to be its own little world and became just a livelihood, a source of income and wealth. The coffee plantations resisted urban influences with less energy, and many planters ended up living permanently in cities. Household industries decreased rapidly and, in many places, food supply plantations, which formerly guaranteed rural property a certain level of autonomy, diminished. A shortage of labor precipitated this phenomenon up to a certain point, since the effects of ending the slave traffic went hand in hand with greater coffee cultivation. In the Rio de Janeiro province around 1884, a slave was usually forced to manage about 7,000 coffee plants. Earlier, however, he was in charge of at most 4,500 or 5,000 plants, leaving him some time to work on road maintenance and also cultivate corn, beans, manioc, rice, and sweet potato crops. As is so often the case, coffee absorbed most of the available labor and became not only the principal but, increasingly, the only truly honorable source of wealth in the producing regions. This explains why farmers who dedicated themselves to planting and selling those



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food supplies were disdainfully called peddlers, despite owning very profitable businesses.5 From the beginning, the prospect of unheard-­of amounts of capital available for coffee cultivation was itself a decisive reason for planters to continue expanding their plantations. They ignored anything that might distract their work force from the principal object of their attention. This fact gave rise to José Manuel da Fonseca’s comments made in 1858 in São Paulo to other members of the Senate during the empire: The conversion of sugar plantations into coffee plantations has also had the effect of making food products more expensive in São Paulo. In this body, there are some noble senators who have sugar mills; I call for their testimony. When the cultivator plants cane, he also can and does plant beans, and even some corn at a distance so as not to harm the cane; and everything interacts successfully in preparing the land for the cane; and the cleanup makes use of everything. That is what happened in the municipality of Campinas, where the lands were very fertile when cane was grown, and in other municipalities that supplied the capital and other locations with food products. However, today all of Campinas and other municipalities are covered with coffee, which does not permit growing food products at the same time, except at the beginning when coffee is new; but once it has grown, nothing else can be planted, and even the soil becomes unproductive for food products, perhaps forever; except possibly after many years of lying fallow.6 Those circumstances, along with the improvements in communications and especially the railroads, which followed the coffee-­ producing areas, intensified and facilitated a dependent relationship between rural areas and cities. In turn, simplifying production increased the need for urban centers to serve as distribution points for supplies that formerly were produced in the rural areas themselves. As a result, landholdings gradually ceased being baronies and instead resembled, in many ways, centers of industrial exploitation. The

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resemblance was such that one can speak of coffee as a “democratic plant,” to use one of Handelmann’s expressions. The planter shaped by involvement with coffee growing became, in the end, a more urban rather than a rural individual, an individual for whom agricultural property was primarily a means of making a living and only occasionally a place of residence or recreation. The best practices for successful coffee production were not inherited through tradition and the relationships of successive generations who dealt with the soil; rather, they were sometimes learned in schools and in books. Understandably, abolition was not a disaster for regions where coffee planting had already prepared the foundations for a paid labor system. The movement toward urban centers quickly came to predominate, which in turn opened the way for a significant transformation. In northern states, where the drop in sugar prices on the world market had already brought about a situation confirmed by the abolition of slavery on May 13, 1888, nothing made up for the resulting agrarian catastrophe. Facing the breakup of their holdings, the sugar barons had no choice but to adapt to new living conditions. A northeastern novelist, José Lins do Rego, recorded significant episodes in this critical evolution, which also ruined old patriarchal habits that until then had been maintained by inertia. The environment no longer fostered those habits and inevitably led to their termination. The replacement of the old sugar complex by the modern mill, the loss of status of the old agrarian system, and the rise of new kinds of enterprises, conceived of as urban industrial establishments, quite clearly directed the evolution. Abolition, among other factors, dealt a heavy blow to the old, rural proprietors, rendering them powerless and leaving them no way to become involved in the new institutions. The republic, which created a plutocracy—if that term can be used—but not an aristocracy, ignored them completely. This class of individuals, which during the empire had directed and inspired the institutions that ensured a certain national harmony, one that was never again restored, was thus reduced to melancholy silence. Such effects resulted not nec­es­sarily from the monarchical regime but rather from the structures that

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supported the monarchy, which disappeared forever. The continuous, progressive, and overwhelming urbanization, a social phenomenon complemented externally by republican institutions, destroyed the rural support that was the foundation of the decayed regime, without succeeding in replacing it with anything new. The tragedy of this situation is precisely that the framework formed by the monarchy still retains its prestige, although it has lost its reason for being, and tries to maintain itself any way it can, but not without great artifice. The Brazilian state preserves some of the outer forms of that traditional system as respectable relics, even after the base supporting them has disappeared: it is a periphery without a center. Precocious maturity, the strange extravagance of our state machinery, is one of the consequences of that situation. Our state does not need to be, and should not be, despotic— despotism does not become our sweet nature—but at the same time it needs vigor and judgment, as well as greatness and solicitude, if it wishes to be strong and also to have the respectability our Iberian forefathers taught us to consider the supreme virtue of all. In this way, it can still attain a truly impressive power in all sectors of national life. However, the parts of the national machinery need to function with a certain harmony and elegance. The Brazilian empire achieved this to a great extent. The halo that our contemporaries still ascribe, despite everything, to the empire comes almost exclusively from the fact that, to a certain degree, it was an incarnation of an ideal. The image of our country, which lives within the projects and aspirations of our collective consciousness, continues to largely reflect the spirit of imperial Brazil; not only is this idealized concept of the state domestically valid, but also we find it impossible to conceive any different role on the international stage. Whether it is made manifest or not, we prefer our reputation abroad to be that of a giant full of elevated goodwill toward all nations of the world. The empire of Pedro II anticipated that idea to the greatest extent possible and consistently directed its policies toward countries of the River Plate along those lines. It wanted to prevail only through the greatness of its self-­made image, and it turned to war only to gain respect, not to

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conquer. If at times that regime had too much of the spirit of combat, yet it lacked military spirit. Oliveira Lima, who made this last observation, added that “foreign wars, like political methods, were always seen by the country as inopportune and even criminal, and, especially in this sense, the Paraguay War was that kind of war; in fact, the enlisted volunteers were hardly motivated by their own will.”7 We have no ambition for the prestige of a conquering country, and we notoriously detest violent solutions. We want to be the most gentle and well-­behaved people in the world. We fight constantly for principles universally held to be the most moderate and rational. We were one of the first nations to legislatively abolish the death penalty, even after abolishing it much earlier in practice. We model our conduct among nations to a standard that follows, or seems to follow, the most educated countries, and thus we are proud to be in excellent company. All of these are characteristic features of our political arrangements, which engage in disarming all the less harmonious expressions of our society and in rejecting any national spontaneity. The unique instability resulting from this anomaly is obvious and has not escaped observers. About twenty years ago, a well-­known publicist focused on the paradox of this situation: The separation in our country between politics and social life has reached the maximum. The power of the alienation of politics from reality has reached the heights of the absurd. At a time when all sectors of our new nation were planning to stimulate and develop society robustly and progressively, an artificial class emerged—truly an abnormal growth—naive and frankly detached from all self-­interest. Good faith, brilliant formulas, and colorful imagery were almost always no more than pretexts used in struggling for power and in maintaining positions.8 Given this situation, our reformers have been able to find only two solutions so far, both equally superficial and illusory. Experience has already amply shown that simply replacing those who hold public power is an uncertain remedy, especially if it is not preceded—and

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somewhat determined—by complex and truly structural social transformations. Another remedy, which is more plausible only in appearance, is to pretend to regulate events according to systems, laws, or rules of proven virtue, or to believe that a dead letter, if carried out energetically, can influence by itself a people’s destiny. Rigidity, im­per­me­ ability, and completely homogeneous legislation seem to us to be the only mandatory requirements leading to a good social order. We have no other recourse. We have not grasped the truth that laws written by specialists in jurisprudence cannot legitimately guarantee a people’s happiness and national stability. Rather, we habitually think that good laws and obedience to abstract principles represent the ideal flowering of a pure political education, of literacy, and of acquired civilized habits and other equally excellent conditions. We are different from the English, for instance, for although they lack a written constitution and rule themselves through a confused and outmoded legal system, they nevertheless show a capacity for spontaneous discipline that is unrivaled by any other people. The need for civic order and social stability clearly requires mandatory rules and effective sanctions. In earlier times, perhaps more fortunate than our own, obeying such rules was not at all like having to carry out prescribed duties. Everything was done freely and effortlessly. For the so-­called primitive man, overall security itself seemed to depend on events occurring in a regular pattern; disturbance of that pattern could seem ominous. That requirement for stability would later inspire us, with the valuable help of abstract reasoning, to create rules. Even then, important interests prevailed, since one must often make necessary exceptions; only absolute reason can try to remove all purely rational elements from life. Rationalism really went beyond its limits only when, in the process of establishing the supremacy of those rules, it rigidly separated them from real life and made them into a logical, homogenous, but unhistoric system. Politicians and demagogues led us into this error by often pointing to platforms, programs, and institutions as the only truly

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respectable realities. They sincerely believed that perfect peoples and governments came from wisdom and, above all, from the consistency of laws. This belief, partly inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, governed the entire history of the Iberian-­American nations after independence. Freeing themselves from the tutelage of European mother countries, they took care to adopt, as the basis for their political constitutions, the principles then on the agenda. The magic words of liberty, equality, and fraternity were interpreted in a way seemingly better adjusted to the old patriarchal and colonial patterns, and the changes that they inspired were more of appearance than of substance. Even so, misled by those outward appearances, we often tried to follow some of those principles to their radical extremes. It is not surprising, therefore, that the extreme expression of impersonal democracy found its terrain of choice in a South American country. While it existed, the Uruguay of José Batlle y Ordóñez tried, at least in theory, to achieve the logical result of the modern democratic ideal; that is, to have the state function automatically and to simultaneously prevent the abuses of bad governments from affecting this functioning any more than in a superficial manner. On the opposite pole from democratic depersonalization, caudillismo, or dictatorship, can often be found in the same circle of ideas to which the principles of liberalism belong. It can be the negative form of the liberal thesis, and its rise is understandable if we remember that history has never given us the example of a social movement that did not contain the germs of its own negation—a negation that necessarily falls within the same space. Thus, Rousseau, the father of the social contract, belongs to the family of Hobbes, the father of the Leviathan state; both come from the same nest. The negation of liberalism, which was unconscious in a Rosas, a Melgarejo, or a Porfirio Díaz, is affirmed today as a body of doctrine in European fascism, which is nothing more than a critique of liberalism in its parliamentary form erected on a positive political system. The victory

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of democratic doctrine will only really be possible when its antithesis, liberalism-­caudillismo, is overcome. This victory will never be consummated until the personalistic—and the apparent aristocratic—bases on which our society still rests are liquidated. If the revolutionary process that we are witnessing— the most important stages of which have been suggested in these pages—has a clear meaning, then it will be that of the slow but irrevocable dissolution of the surviving forms of archaism that have yet to be successfully eradicated since our establishment as an independent state. More precisely, it is only through such a process that we will finally revoke the old colonial and patriarchal order, with all the moral, social, and political consequences that it implied and con­ tinues to imply. That revolution may not take the visible form of catastrophic convulsions, which attempt to transform long-­established values with one mortal blow, along lines articulated in advance. Perhaps some of those final phases have already been bypassed without our being able to immediately assess their transcendental importance. We could be living between two worlds: one definitely dead and the other struggling to be born. Sixty years ago, an American naturalist pronounced, with truly prophetic intuition, an aspiration that was perhaps not far from re­ ality. Colored at times by that optimistic progressivism that was the supreme characteristic of his century and of his country, Herbert Smith’s words nevertheless represent more an invitation than a mere dream, and are thus worthy of reflection. “A revolution,” he said, “is perhaps what South America needs. Not a horizontal revolution, in the sense of a surface whirlpool of political strife, which would only serve to engulf some hapless hundreds or thousands. It should be a good, honest vertical revolution, one to bring stronger elements to the top, and forever destroy the old, diseased ones.” How should this revolution take place? Smith provides this answer:

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I hope that when the revolution does come, it may come peaceably, and results in the amalgamation, not the wiping out, of the upper class; a class that, with all its faults and mistakes, has many good and noble men in it. Remember that Brazilians are expiating the sins of their fathers as well as their own. Society here was wrongly constituted in the outset; it is not the fault, but the misfortune of the educated class that they are separated from the rest of the nation. I do not mean to say that the mechanics and shopkeepers are better, as a class, than the merchants and gentlemen. They are ignorant, dirty, and degraded; that is obvious enough to any stranger. But their work gives them brawn, and their poverty protects them, in a measure, from immorality; physically they are the superiors of the upper class; mentally, they might be, if they had a chance.9 Inevitably, the events of recent decades in several Latin American countries appear to be directed along those lines. Though more obvious in the countries where there was greater social stratification— in Mexico since 1917, despite hesitation and interruptions, and in Chile since 192510 —the movement, however, certainly does not seem purely circumstantial or local. On the contrary, it is developing with the coherence of a previously planned program.11 Partisans of a past on which distance already confers an idyllic hue will probably resist with increasing stubbornness such a movement’s complete realization. Depending on its degree of intensity, this resistance may be manifested in certain sentimental and mystical outpourings, limited more or less to the literary domain. However, its direct introduction into society may come about in ways that might limit or compromise hopes for any profound transformation. This kind of reaction would find strong support in certain sectors of Brazilian society because of the way special circumstances of our history have shaped their mentality, a mentality that the politicians of the second empire and the first republic, with their legalistic cast of mind, could not modify. At most, this mentality functioned at the fringes of events, paradoxically exacerbating the forces it wished to neutralize. Such a mentality, in or out of a liberal system, requires

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that individuals of flesh and blood exist behind the edifice of the state. Constitutions written for noncompliance and laws enacted for violation—all for the benefit of individuals and oligarchies—are a current phenomenon in the history of all of South America. Politicians vainly imagine that they are more interested in principles than in men, yet their own acts flagrantly reject that pretension. “Nothing is more like an arch‑conservative than an arch‑liberal in power.” Holanda Cavalcanti’s famous saying reflects the universally acknowledged truth about the fundamental similarity of the two great parties during the monarchy. Practically nothing distinguished them except their labels, which were only valuable as combat flags. It would not be surprising if something were to happen here comparable to what occurred in the River Plate, where Rosas, berating the salvajes unitarios [unitary savages] and seeking to subject the provinces to the discretionary authority of Buenos Aires and the interests of the port city’s customs house, was eminently antifederal in practice. He used the slogan “Federation,” which had enormous popular resonance in his time, the way others used the even more prestigious slogan “Liberty,” while trying to consolidate under its name an absolutely dictatorial and despotic power. Nobody expressed that attitude as frankly as that Venezuelan dictator who proclaimed before the Congress: “Supposing that all revolutions need a flag, and since the Valencia Convention did not want to baptize its Constitution as federal, we invoke the idea; because if, gentlemen, our opponents had said federation, we would have said centralism.”12 Such a distorted preference for private convenience over public interests reveals the power of emotion over reason. However much one may think otherwise, true solidarity can really be maintained only in a limited context. Whether we admit it or not, our preference for specific persons and interests is not substantially supported by the theoretical ideals or even by the economic interests upholding a large party. Thus, the absence of real parties among us is not, as some simply suppose, the cause of our inadaptability to a legitimately democratic regime, but rather a symptom of that inadaptability. The confusion is easy and frequent; the Simon report on the Indian constitution of

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1930 regarded the absence of regular parties in India as one of the obstacles to the country’s democratization. In the same sense that our apparent adherence to formalities reveals only an absence of spontaneity, our trust in excellent theoretical formulas simply shows that we are not a speculative people. We can organize campaigns, form factions, and attempt mutinies, if necessary, around a noble idea. Nobody fails to recognize, however, that the apparent triumph of a principle in Brazil—as in the rest of Latin America—is usually nothing more than a triumph of one personality over another. In our political life, personalism can undeniably be a positive force in many cases. Alongside it, the slogans of liberal democracy seem purely ornamental or conceptually lofty, lacking deep roots in reality. This may explain why, in Brazil and in Latin American countries in general, apparent political stability was ensured wherever personalism—or oligarchy, which is the extension of personalism in space and time—succeeded in abolishing liberal resistance. It could not happen any other way. Chileans still consider the three decades of the regime inaugurated by Diego Portales, who shielded the country from the danger of anarchy by means of strong oligarchic power, among the most fortunate in their history. Even Costa Rica’s greater stability, despite its size and place, among its disorderly sister countries of Central America is explained primarily in the same way. Such exceptional situations succeed in making us forget that arbitrary regimes in the hands of “providential” and irresponsible leaders are, at best, a gross disguise for, rather than an alternative to, anarchy. The peoples of Latin America find the idea of a nonmaterial and impersonal entity hovering over individuals and presiding over their destinies generally unintelligible. We often imagine that we prize democratic and liberal principles when we are really fighting in favor of one personalism or against another. An intricate political and electoral machinery is continually occupied with hiding that fact from us. But when the welcoming laws of personalism are supported by a respectable tradition or have not been placed in doubt, they appear without disguise. During our monarchy the newspapers and the people criticized the Chamber of

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Deputies, elected by the people, more harshly than the Senate, whose members were chosen by the emperor. Despite everything, it is not fair to state unreservedly that we find democratic ideals absolutely incompatible. It would not even be hard to stress aspects of confluence and agreement between these ideals and certain phenomena in our history. Three factors in particular that would militate in their favor can be cited, as follows: 1) The rejection by the peoples of America, descendants of colonizers and of an indigenous population, of all orderly hierarchies or of any social order that would become a serious obstacle to the autonomy of the individual. 2) The impossibility of effectively resisting certain new influences (for example, the supremacy of urban life, cosmopolitanism), which, at least until recently, were natural allies of democratic-­ liberal ideas. 3) The relative lack of consistency of racial prejudices. In addition, the ideas of the French Revolution are supported by an attitude akin to our national temperament. The idea of natural goodness uniquely matches our already noted “cordialism.” In fact, to accept the thesis of a naturally evil humanity and of a struggle of all against all would be, for us, extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable. This is where our “cordial man” would find it possible to connect his feelings with the dogmas of liberal democracy. If we do not stop with the external aspect of who we are as a nation, but still—and above all—try to penetrate to the bedrock, we need only confess that our identity is limited to juxtaposing the commonalities between the attitudes that we seek to reconcile. In reality, liberalism’s idea of the natural goodness of man is a simple argument; it would be an illusion to suppose that this conviction rests on some particular liking for the human race, considered generally or individually. It deals with a theory that is essentially neutral, stripped of emotion, and easily reduced to formulas.

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What is most significant is that the coincidence between the ideas proclaimed by liberalism and the social comportment defined as particular to our people is, in the end, more apparent than real. All liberal thought can be summed up in Bentham’s famous phrase: “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Clearly, this idea contrasts directly with any kind of human relation based on emotion. All affection between men is perforce based on preference. To love someone is to love him more than others. This one-­sided view is frankly adverse to the legal and neutral point of view on which liberalism is based. In this sense, democratic benevolence is comparable to politeness, the result of a well-­defined social behavior that tries to balance selfish tendencies. The humanitarian ideal preached by this benevolence is, at best, paradoxically impersonal; it is based on the idea that love in its highest degree is necessarily love for the greatest number of men, thus subordinating ideals of quality to quantity. Clearly, human love, which is subject to asphyxiation and death outside its limited circle, cannot serve as the foundation of any human organization conceived on a broader scale. Good principles are not created by simple cordiality. Some solid normative element, innate in the soul of the people or even implanted by tyranny, is needed for social consolidation. The view that tyranny does not bring about lasting solutions is just one of the many illusions of liberal mythology that history has yet to confirm. The presence of such illusions, it is true, does not by itself constitute an argument against liberalism, and remedies other than tyranny can consolidate and stabilize a nation. In any case, the domain of certain principles and political formulas needs to be kept to its proper limit. Those pioneers of our independence and of the republic, who in 1817 did not wish in any way to modify the situation of Negro slaves even though they recognized that the situation was not right, showed a sincerity that was never again repeated during the life of our nation. Afterwards, the most prudent politicians preferred not to mention the weak spot of a system that aspired to be perfectly consistent with itself, if only on paper. Not for a single moment did they doubt that healthy policy was the child of morality and reason. This was the way in which they preferred to forget the ugly and disconcerting reality. They took refuge

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in the idealized world to which they were lured by the doctrinaires of the period—they took flight in order to avoid seeing the detestable spectacle existing in the country. Often, those in politics who try to undertake a purely realistic or even an opportunistic task pretend to be acting according to moral criteria: some politicians would be truly shocked if they were told that a morally recommendable action could be ineffective or harmful in practice. There is no lack of examples of dictators who carry out perfectly arbitrary acts of authority, thinking that they are acting democratically. That attitude is not very different from the one adopted for other reasons by the “enlightened dictators” of modern Europe. Italian Fascism, despite its justification of violence, may succeed here. Partisans of fascism believe that they deserve great merit for making possible the establishment of spiritual reform that includes a true picture of moral values. From a certain standpoint, their efforts undoubtedly translate into an energetic attempt to change the direction of society, saving it from supposed revolutionary dissolution. Their system for maintaining a structure imposed by violence claims to consist of the vital elements of doctrines largely rejected by the regime; this is, for them, a great source of pride. That system gives them the apparent dignity of having won a positive victory over liberalism and also over the revolutionary pretensions of the left. Is there anyone who does not understand that their reform is essentially only a subtle counter-­reform? Is there anyone who doubts that one of their most direct motives is the intention, which indeed they sometimes admit, to provide a rationale and a basis for the material demands that really underlie their purpose? No great astuteness is needed to understand that much of their energy rests on that subterfuge. In effect, their philosophy—which supports their regime as a response to a national emergency—still expresses, above all, a disciplined contradiction. It would not be difficult to foresee what a fascist Brazil would look like. Right from the start, we sense that there is almost nothing aggressive in the incipient Brazilian “Mussolinism.” The indoctrination of our “integralists,” who took their ideas straight from the

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Italian Fascist manuals, lacks that coarse, exasperated, and almost apocalyptic truculence that lent so much color to their Italian and German models. In Brazil, the arrogant energy of Italian or German Fascism became the poor laments of lethargic intellectuals. This situation was somewhat similar to what happened with communism, which attracted from among us precisely those who seem least fit to carry out the principles of the Third International. Everything attractive that Marxism offers—that unshakeable tension toward an ideal and necessary future, a rebellion against bourgeois morality, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism—comes together here under the “anarchist mentality” of our communism, rather than the rigid discipline that Moscow demands of its supporters.13 In the case of fascism, the Brazilian variety contained the additional aggravation of being able to pass as a merely conservative theory, pledged to strengthen social, moral, and religious institutions of unquestionable prestige. To the powerful, it thus tended to become a harmless practice, if not their instrument. In effect, everything indicates that “integralism” will be an increasingly accommodating doctrine, one averse to gestures of opposition that do not leave considerable room for concession, and a systematic partisan of order, that is, of constituted power. On the theoretical plane, “integralism” is satisfied by its own insignificance, no matter how little it admits it. What it wants privately—and at times disconcertingly openly—is the seal of approval, or the nihil obstat 14 of civil authority. In this sense, it follows the great Brazilian tradition, which has never permitted the functioning of genuine opposition parties representing different interests or ideologies. If the principles of liberalism have been useless, onerous, and redundant at the political and social levels, yet experimenting with other ingenious formulas will not bring us, someday, face to face with re­ ality. We can try to organize our disorder by following wise plans of proven virtue, but a more intimate and essential world will continue to exist, always intact, irreducible, and disdainful of human invention. To wish to ignore that world is to renounce our own spontaneous rhythm, the law of ebb and flow, in favor of a mechanical beat and a

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false harmony. We have already seen that the state, a creature of the mind, is opposed to and transcends the natural order. But opposition must also be resolved through counterpoint if the social framework is to be internally consistent. There is only one possible order, superior to our calculations for making a perfect whole out of such antagonistic parts. The spirit is not a normative force, except where it serves and adapts to society. Higher forms of society must be hereditary complements to, and inseparable from, society: they continually emerge from its specific needs, never from capricious choices. However, a perfidious and pretentious demon is busy obscuring these simple truths from our eyes. It inspires men to see themselves as different from the way they are and to create new likes and dislikes; only rarely do they choose good ones.

Afterword Roots of Brazil and Afterwards

Roots of Brazil is the product of a special phase in the intellectual trajectory of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. This book is not just the first in a series of noteworthy works, nor does its interest stem merely from the sociological analysis of the development of Brazilian society, since this type of exercise was in vogue at the time of its publication—and I say in vogue without any pejorative intent, since it undeniably enriched our national culture. For me, the distinctiveness of Roots of Brazil within the overall production of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda is that it marked a rupture that would lead to the great works of the mature phase of his career, such as Caminhos e fronteiras, Visão do paraíso, and Do Império à República. Thanks to this rupture, demarcated by the period from 1936 to 1945 and ending with the publication of Monções, Buarque de Holanda distanced himself from the traditional sociological analysis in Brazil in favor of a more historical brand of analysis, in which he was able to avoid the pitfalls of academic or merely pedantic scholarship, which at times is unavoidable. At the core of this evolution from sociologist to historian there was, I suspect, a growing awareness of the antithesis between sociological and historical interpretation, which resulted in a deliberate choice of the latter. During his travels in Berlin, Buarque de Holanda, who was a voracious reader, became well-­versed in German sociology. When speaking of German sociology of this period, one also inevitably speaks of historical epistemology because, ever since Dilthey and Rickert, questions of historical knowledge were 157

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at the very center of the study of the sciences that today we consider humanistic, but at that time were still designated as sciences of the spirit, an expression closely linked to psychology and largely promoted by Dilthey. Dilthey believed at the outset of his intellectual pursuits that he would find in psychology a new knowledge base and historical reasoning, the critique of which—in the Kantian sense of the word—he aspired to elaborate in opposition to the pure reasoning of the natural sciences. Thus, the ability of German sociology to rethink questions of historical knowledge is expressed in Max Weber or Georg Simmel, who placed these questions at the forefront of their theoretical inquiries. It is significant that, on returning to Brazil in 1930, Buarque de Holanda brought with him the notes for what would become “Theory of America,” part of which would later be incorporated in Roots of Brazil. Although he did not complete this project, it would not be far-­fetched to assume that it was a Weberian reading of the processes of colonization in America by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the British. Back in Rio, when he carried out the research necessary for the publication of Roots, as would also happen later during the composition of the work, he realized the inherent limitations of applying sociological frameworks to the study of historical reality. Despite his lack of success in writing “Theory of America,” he developed a laudable propensity for comparative analysis, which flourishes in his studies of bandeirismo and, most of all, in Visão do paraíso, not to mention Roots of Brazil, which highlights the contrast between Portuguese and Spanish colonization, especially their respective approaches to urban development. The explanation for the long interval of nearly ten years between the publication of Roots and that of Monções cannot be reduced solely to Buarque de Holanda’s rigorous work as a literary and social critic for Rio and São Paulo newspapers. I believe that such a hiatus can also be attributed to his awareness, which arose from his constant interaction with sources of Brazilian history, of the shortcomings of sociological discourse for the analysis of historical reality, as illustrated by what can be termed the “sociology of Brazilian development.” The interests of historians have little to do with the interests of sociologists. One begins where the other ends, especially considering the

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difference between the concepts used in their respective fields. To use a popular example, one could say that there is a sociology of revolutions and that there is a history of the French Revolution, but that a sociology of the French Revolution would be a bland mélange des genres. On the other hand, a history of revolutions would be merely a compendium of narratives listing each one of these innumerable episodes. (Anatomy of Revolution, by Cane Brinton, is located somewhere in between the sociology of revolutions and the history of revo­lutions, by limiting itself to a comparative study of the American, French, and Russian Revolutions; and, in the end, it is neither soci­ ology nor history.) In the same vein, one could say that there is or could be, on the one hand, a sociology of colonizing processes (encompassing, for example, not just the processes of modern colonization but also those of classical antiquity and of other civilizations), and, on the other hand, a history of the Portuguese colonization of Brazil; but not a sociology of Brazilian development. Indeed, the various endeavors in this genre by Brazilians prior to 1930 have been largely forgotten, and not without reason. Either a sociology of the development, or regional developments, of Brazil would not surpass, even in the best of cases—as with Evolução política do Brasil by Caio Prado Júnior—a skillful application of sociological theory to Brazilian reality, which would explain certain aspects relevant to our past but would ignore or be incapable of comprehending others; or, it would be an entertaining reading of sociologic impressionism, such as Voz de Minas by Alceu Amoroso Lima, or Nordeste by Gilberto Freyre; or, in the worst of cases, it would be a commonplace or banal work of ideological rhetoric. In reality, a “sociology of Brazilian development” was more closely related to essayism than to sociology because it represented collective introspection more than scientific analysis, similar to what we saw in Spain with the Generation of 1898. As a matter of fact, the morbid or narcissistic habit of settling a score with our national past is an intellectual fad that we inherited throughout Latin America from the Iberian Peninsula. Symptomatically, the genre of the essay did not flourish in Europe or in the United States, and it was as if, through a chain of complex negotiations, it crystallized the historical

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marginalization to which Spain and Portugal had been relegated, and, along with them, their former colonies in the Americas. Initially, the generation of the 1930s—that of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre, or Caio Prado Júnior—chose to engage in dialogue with the previous generation using their increasingly outdated language, that is, in terms of a “sociology of Brazilian development,” even more so than their founding fathers (Manuel Bonfim or Oliveira Viana, to cite just two names), who had used sociological theories already obsolete in the centers of Western scientific inquiry. However, if the works of Buarque de Holanda, Freyre, or Prado Júnior have survived, it is because they were also imprinted with the trademark of great historians, in other words, a commitment to dealing with concrete matters. Casa-­grande e senzala and Sobrados e mucambas were labeled as works of sociology, but the truth is that their originality and strength stem from the fact that they are based not on sociological theory but instead on social history; in the case of Freyre, it is a social history inspired by the anthropology of the great Brazilian family, of its private and sexual life, which provoked irony, if not disdain, from more than a few Catholic intellectuals. At a time when history and anthropology still ignored one another, Gilberto Freyre discovered (thirty or forty years before the third generation of historians from the École des Annales) that he could borrow from anthropological methods (that is, synchronic methods developed to study primitive societies) to describe societies in their historical dimension; until then, analysis had been limited to the conventional diachronic methodology of history or sociology. In summary, the composition of Roots of Brazil took shape as a result of a change in the intellectual approach of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. If this change is not so evident today, it is because the text that the reader has in hand is not the first edition of Roots but rather, basically, the text of the second edition, published in 1947, which was substantially modified by its author in the wake of the changes in Brazil over the previous ten years. To appreciate the scope of this change, it would be necessary to compare the text of 1936 to that of 1947, which is not possible here; the alternative would be to move from the 1936 text to Monções or Caminhos e fronteiras, leaving

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aside for the moment the second edition. One can observe how the sociological discourse (in the good sense of the term) gave way to a concrete historiographic discourse and also how, in place of trying to identify the sources of the wounds of our social formation, a rigorous analysis of clearly defined topics in their conceptual context becomes increasingly evident. The author’s rigor is not limited to just those themes, among them the material life of the first centuries in the Paulista plateau, that lend themselves to a certain historiographic apprehension as a consequence of their materiality; it also extends to other, more elusive themes, such as the mythological foundation of Brazilian colonization, with Visão do Paraíso representing the first historical study of our attitudes and beliefs written in Brazil, even though in the 1950s it had not been designated as such. In Do Império à República, the generalist, more than the political or sociological, nature of his study of the pros and cons of imperial institutions is replaced by a detailed analysis of the mechanics of the monarchical system. A closely related phenomenon is finally observed in Caio Prado Júnior. The enduring legacy of his work was not so much Evolução política do Brasil, but rather Formação do Brasil contemporâneo. In Caio Prado Júnior’s work, as in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s or Gilberto Freyre’s, it is the historical contribution, and not the sociological, that guarantees a permanent interest. Evaldo Cabral de Mello

Notes

Chapter 1. European Frontiers 1.  On this parallelism of ranks, see the theological discourse of João de São Tomás, the Portuguese philosopher considered by many modern Thomists as the most perfect interpreter of the Angelic Doctor: Jean de Saint Thomas, trans. Benoit Lavaud, O.P. (Paris, 1928), 91ff. 2.  Editor’s note: Dante, Paradiso 1.103–5, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (Berkeley, CA, 1982). 3.  Editor’s note: Augustine, The City of God, bk. 19, ch. 17, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1871), 326. 4.  Editor’s note: A famous maxim of Thomas Aquinas, e.g., Summa theologiae I, q. 1, art. 8, ad 2. 5.  Gil Vicente, Obras Completas, facsimile reprint of the 1562 edition (Lisbon, 1928), fol. 231. 6. Alberto Sampaio, Estudos Históricos e Económicos, vol. 1 (Oporto, 1923), 248. 7.  Editor’s note: King Afonso Henriques, of the Portuguese House of Aviz (1438–1481). Chapter 2. Work and Adventure 1.  André Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique (Paris, 1879), 408ff. Quotation in French in the original. 2. A contrast would exist only if they belonged to the same moral family. In this sense, the opposite of the worker would perhaps be the small rentier. In the same sense, the adventurer’s opposite can be represented mainly by the anti-­social vagabond, the outlaw [in English in the original] or the simple idle person. The distinction suggested here thus seems similar 163

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to that of Vilfredo Pareto, between the rentiers and the speculators. Analyzed in the light of the famous theory of the “four fundamental desires” formulated by W. I. Thomas, and so fruitfully applied in various branches of social science, the adventurer type corresponds primarily to the “desire for new experience” or “desire for recognition.” The “desire for security” or “desire for response” would be represented especially by the worker type. See Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, 1924), 488ff.; William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vol. 1 (New York, 1927), 72ff. 3.  Editor’s Note: In English in the original. 4.  “England’s treasure by forraign trade, or the ballance of our forraign trade is the rule of our treasure. By Thomas Mun 1664,” Early English Tracts on Commerce, ed. J. R. McCulloch (Cambridge, 1954), 191ff. 5.  William R. Inge, England (London, 1933), 160. 6. James Murphy, Travels in Portugal, through the provinces of Entre‑Douro e Minho, Beira and Alem‑Tejo in the years 1789 and 1790 (London, 1795), 208. 7.  Editor’s note: Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, a German mining engineer who surveyed Brazil’s mineral resources in the early nineteenth century. 8.  Or the indigenous people adapted to those “civilized” norms only on the outside, not really accepting them, more or less the way an actor plays the part given him, or a child recites a lesson learned by heart. That, to some extent, is what happened in the old Jesuit missions, where, in most cases, the Indians returned to their original condition after the priests were expelled. 9.  Jean B. Du Tertre, Histoire Générale des Antilles, vol. 2 (Paris, 1667), 490. In French in the original. 10.  M. Gonçalves Cerejeira, O Humanismo em Portugal: Clenardo (Coimbra, 1926), 271. 11. Ibid. 12.  “Officio do Governador D. Fernando José de Portugal para D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, referring to the use of oxen and the plow in cultivating the land, and the milled sugar cane being used as fuel for the ovens and the mills. Bahia, March 28, 1798,” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 36 (Rio de Janeiro, 1916), 16. 13.  Inventários e Testamentos, vol. 10 (São Paulo, 1921), 464. 14.  Documentos Interessantes para a História e Costumes de São Paulo, vol. 23 (São Paulo, 1896), 3ff. 15. Dr. Ernest Wagemann, Die deutsche Kolonisten in brasilianischen Staate Espírito Santo (Munich and Leipzig, 1915), 72ff.; Otto Maull, Vom

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 2 – 2 8   165

Itatiaya zum Paraguay (Leipzig, 1930), 98ff.; Hans Porzelt, Der deutsche Bauer in Rio Grande do Sul (Ochsenfurt am Main, 1937), 24ff. 16.  See the appendix at end of this chapter. 17. Rev. Ballard S. Dunn, Brazil, the Home for the Southerners (New York, 1866), 138. 18. Friar Vicente do Salvador, História do Brasil, 3rd ed. (São Paulo, n.d.), 16. 19.  Hans Gunther, Rassekunde Europas (Munich, 1926), 82. 20.  Costa Lobo, História da Sociedade em Portugal no Século XV (Lisbon, 1904), 49ff. 21.  Garcia de Resende, “Miscellanea,” Chrónica dos salerosos, e insignes feitos del rey dom Ivoam II de gloriosa memória (Coimbra, 1798), 363. 22.  M. Gonçalves Cerejeira, O Humanismo em Portugal, 179, 273ff. 23.  J. Lúcio de Azevedo, Novas Epanáforas (Lisbon, 1932), 102ff. 24.  Filippo Sassetti, Lettere (Milan, n.d.), 126. 25. Editor’s Note: No sources are given by Buarque de Holanda for these statements. 26.  Jose Pedro Xavier da Veiga, Efemérides Mineiras, vol. 1 (place unknown, 1926), 95. 27. Thus, likewise, the Chamber of São Vicente nearly two centuries earlier ordered Christians not to speak badly of others or of their merchandise in front of non-­Christians. The order stated that the oath of any Christian who heard such disparagement would be enough to prove a transgression. In that case—as it is easy to see—the economic greed of the conqueror, not the feeling of racial distance, prevailed. Friar Gaspar mentioned it, in effect, among other facts that demonstrated “Portuguese bad faith in their contracts with the natives of the land,” facts that would later merit the disapproval of the first governor general of Brazil. Friar Gaspar da Madre de Deus, Memórias para a História da Capitania de S. Vicente (Lisbon, 1797), 67. 28.  “Sobre dar posse ao doutor Antonio Ferreira Castro do offício de procurador da Coroa, pelo mulatismo lhe nam servir de impedimento,” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 28 (Rio de Janeiro, 1908), 352. 29.  Editor’s note: In Latin in the original, “de genere.” 30.  Editor’s note: In English in the original. 31.  João Francisco Lisboa, Obras, vol. 3 (São Luis de Maranhão, 1866), 383ff. 32.  J. de la Riva‑Aguero, “Lima Española,” El Comércio (Lima, January 18, 1935), section 1, 4.

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33.  Afonso d’E. Taunay, História seiscentista da vila de São Paulo, vol. 4 (São Paulo, 1929), 325. 34.  Martim Francisco Ribeiro d’Andrada Machado e Silva, “Jornaes das viagens pela capitania de S. Paulo (1803–4),” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, vol. 45, part 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 1882): 18. 35.  João Francisco Lisboa, Obras, vol. 3, 382. 36.  Gustavo Beyer, “Notas de viagens no Brasil, em 1813,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo, vol. 12 (São Paulo, 1908): 287. 37.  An exception to this rule were those who, by virtue of their craft, especially in the main urban centers, needed aptitudes and artistic knowledge that cannot be improvised. A Spanish traveler in Rio de Janeiro in 1782 was surprised at the progress attained by our diamond-­cutters, silver-­workers, and carpenters. He observed that their work was already much in demand in the River Plate and could, over time, amount to a considerable source of wealth. Spix and Martius, some decades later, observed that the works of these craftsmen showed taste and durability. “Diário de Juan Francisco de Aguirre,” Anales de la Biblioteca, vol. 4 (Buenos Aires, 1905), 101; J. B. von Spix and C. F. Ph. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien, vol. 1 (Munich, 1823), 133. 38.  Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, vol. 1, 132. 39.  Ernesto Guilherme Young, “Esboço histórico da fundação da cidade de Iguape,” Revista do Instituto e Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo, vol. 2 (São Paulo, 1898): 80. 40.  “Documentos Inéditos,” A Esperança, Itu, March 27, 1867. 41.  Documentos Interessantes, vol. 44 (São Paulo, 1915), 196. 42.  Editor’s note: In English in the original. 43.  Margaret Mead, Cooperation and Competition among Primitive People (New York, 1937), 16. 44.  Viola de Loreno, Coleção das suas Cantigas, Oferecidas aos seus Amigos, vol. 2 (Lisbon, 1826), no. 2, 5ff. 45.  Herbert J. Priestley, The Coming of the White Man (New York, 1930), 297. It is interesting to contrast this point of view with the suggestions of a Portuguese essayist, Antônio Sérgio, regarding the colonizing tendency of his compatriots in his preface to Gilberto Freyre’s O Mundo que o Português Criou (Rio de Janeiro, 1940). Antônio Sérgio believed that poor conditions in Portugal for basic industries obliged it, from early days, to seek on the seas, as well as overseas, the economic balance that the land withheld. In Brazil, the Portuguese may have found for the first time an environment clearly propitious for the kind of agrarian culture that is fundamental for sustaining human life. That environment produced wheat, for example, in all periods and, in particular, sugar, in our seventeenth century.

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46.  Editor’s note: In Latin in the original, “germanorum profugi.” 47.  Hermann Wätjen, Das holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien (Gotha, 1921), 240. 48. “Socinian” refers to the rationalistic doctrines of Socinus, a seventeenth-­century religious leader who, among other things, denied the tenets of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. 49.  At least in this respect, the colonists of New Holland were seemingly not of a very different temper from that of the settlers of Portuguese Brazil. From old chroniclers, Jesuit letters, and other documents, including and especially those of the First Visitation of the Holy Office, which are already published in part, we know the degree of licentiousness of customs in the Brazilian population during the first centuries of colonization. The picture that Paulo Prado offered us in his Retrato do Brasil is eloquent in this respect. Seventeenth-­century Europe believed that below the equator there was no sin: Ultra aequinoxialem non peccari. Barlaeus, who mentions this saying, comments: “As if the line that divides the world into two hemispheres also separated virtue from vice.” 50.  Hermann Wätjen, Das holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien, 240. 51.  Eugen Fischer, Rasse und Rassenentstehung beim Menschen (Berlin, 1927), 32. See also A. Grenfell Price, White Settlers in the Tropics (New York, 1939), 177. 52.  Spix and Martius, Reise in Brasilien, vol. 1, 387. 53.  Hermann Wätjen, Das holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien, 224. 54. The thesis of the specifically Protestant origins of modern racial prejudice and, in the final analysis, of racist theories is currently and emphatically defended by the English historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Even without accepting the author’s viewpoints and conclusions totally, it can be granted that the fact that such racial prejudice is today more accentuated among Protestant peoples is in no way fortuitous or independent of factors that led these peoples, at a certain period of their history, to embrace the Reformation. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 1 (London, 1935), 211–27. 55.  Jean B. Du Tertre, Histoire Générale des Antilles, vol. 2, 489. 56.  Crónicas Lajianas, or a Record of facts and observations on manners and customs in South Brazil, extracted from notes taken on the spot, during a period of more than twenty years, by R. Cleary, A. M. [. . .] M. D., Lajes, 1886 MS. of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., fol. 5ff.; Hans Porzelt, Der deutsche Bauer in Rio Grande do Sul, 23. 57. Herbert Wilhelmy, “Probleme der Urwaldkolonisation in Süd­ amerika,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, nos. 7 and 8

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(Berlin, October 1940): 303–14; see also Karl Sapper, Die Ernährungswirt­ schaft der Erde und ihre Zukunftsaussichten für die Menschheit (Stuttgart, 1939), 85. 58.  To Wilhelmy’s observations, we should add those of an illustrious Americanist, Karl Sapper, for whom the intensive use of the plow in warm humid lands can contribute to the spread of malaria. In several cases “that I witnessed,” he said, “that resulted in the plow once again being put aside, with good results for the health of workers and their families.” See Herbert Wilhelmy, “Probleme der Urwaldkolonisation in Südamerika,” 313. 59.  The same author claims to have seen in use in 1927 around Cuzco a taclla that went down twenty to twenty-­five centimeters into the soil. Karl Sapper, Die Ernährungswirtschaft der Erde, 84; Karl Sapper, Geographie und Geschichte der Indianischen Landwirtschaft (Hamburg, 1936), 47–48. 60.  Florian Paucke, S.J., Hacia Allá e para Acá (Una Estada Entre los Indios Mocobies, 1749–1767), vol. 3, part 2 (Tucuman–Buenos Aires, 1944), 173. 61.  Documentos Interessantes para a História e Costumes de S. Paulo, vol. 23 (São Paulo, 1896), 4ff. Chapter 3. The Rural Heritage 1.  Editor’s note: caramurus is a term for reactionaries in the 1820s and 1830s. 2.  Pandiá Calógeras, A Política Exterior do Império, vol. 3, Da Regência à Queda de Rosas (São Paulo, 1933), 362. 3.  Visconde de Mauá, Autobiografia (Rio de Janeiro, 1942), 123. 4. Ferreira Soares, pointing out the gigantic proportions that commerce in Rio de Janeiro had assumed after the abolishment of slave trafficking, notes that in the periods 1850–51 and 1851–52, total imports exceeded that of the periods 1848–49 and 1849–50 by 59,043 contos. The same trend, albeit on a smaller scale, occurred with exports, which grew a total of 11,498 contos. Sebastião Ferreira Soares, Elementos de estatística, I (Rio de Janeiro, 1865), 171–72. 5.  Anais da Assembléia Legislativa Provincial de São Paulo, 1854 (São Paulo, 1927), 225. 6.  Joaquim Nabuco, Um Estadista do Império, vol. 1 (São Paulo, 1936), 188. 7.  Herbert Smith, From Rio de Janeiro to Cuiabá (São Paulo, 1922), 182. 8.  The difference between farmers who were “free” and those who were “under commitment” lay in the fact that the plantations of the former were

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on their own or others’ lands and they had no commitment to grind their cane at a certain specific mill, whereas the latter planted on lands owned by the mills and were expressly required to grind only at those mills. “Discurso Preliminar, Histórico, Introdutivo, com Natureza de Descrição Económica da Cidade de Bahia,” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional, vol. 27 (Rio de Janeiro, 1906), 290. 9.  Editor’s note: Louis-­François de Tollenare (1780–1853). 10.  Gilberto Freyre, “A Cultura da Cana no Nordeste: Aspectos de seu desenvolvimento histórico,” Livro do Nordeste, comemorativo do 1.o centenário do Diário de Pernambuco (Recife, 1925), 158. 11. Friar Vicente do Salvador, História do Brasil, 3rd ed. (São Paulo, n.d.), 16. 12. Melo Morais, Corografia histórica, Cronográfica,Genealógica, Nobi­ liária e Política do Império do Brasil, vol. 2 (Rio de Janeiro, 1858), 164. 13.  The very word intelligence, it seems, replaces the words skill, dexterity, and judgment in the original English; none of which, separately or together, could have that meaning. 14.  José da Silva Lisboa, Estudos do Bem Comum, vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 1819), xii. 15. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York, 1917), 310. See Also G. Tarde, Psychologie Économique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1902), 124. 16.  Alceu Amoroso Lima defends a contrary view in a lecture about Cairu, published November 1, 1944, in the Jornal do Comércio of Rio de Janeiro. Referring to Estudos do Bem Comum, the illustrious thinker states: “Since it is impossible to adequately analyze that great work, let me merely recall, in order to prove the current applicability of Cairu’s economic ideas as well as his autonomy with respect to the master Adam Smith, an essential element of his theory of economic production. The physiocrats included land as a capital element of production. Adam Smith emphasized the element of labor. And with Manchesterianism, capital became considered the basic element of production. The great Cairu, although mentioning the role of each of these elements in his 1819 treatise, held preeminent another factor that was only recently emphasized after the struggle between socialism and liberalism of the entire nineteenth century: Intelligence.” And he adds, some lines further on: “Cairu is the precursor of Ford, of Taylor, and of Stakhanoff, a century away.” 17.  Princípios de Economia Política, which serve as an “Introduction to an Economic Essay by the Author on the Principles of Mercantile Law” (Lisbon, 1804), 39, 42.

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18.  José da Silva Lisboa, Observações sobre a Prosperidade do Estado pelas Liberais Princípios da Nova Legislação do Brasil (Bahia, 1811), 68. 19.  See Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1944), 152–88. 20.  “Paralelo da Constituição Portuguesa com a Inglesa,” Correio Brasi­ liense, vol. 3 (London, 1809), 307ff. Regarding the court of Lamego, the minutes of which were published in Portugal for the first time in 1632, during the reign of Philip III (Philip IV of Spain), by Friar Antônio Brandão, in Monarquia Lusitana, see A. Herculano, História de Portugal, 7th ed., vol. 2 (Paris‑Lisbon, 1914), 286. Regarding the political influence of that docu­ ment, see A. Martins Afonso, “Valor e significação das atas das cortes de Lamego no movimento da Restauração,” Congresso do Mundo Português, Publicações, vol. 7 (Lisbon, 1940), 475ff.; and Henrique da Gama Barros, História da Administração Pública em Portugal, 2nd ed., vol. 3 (Lisbon, n.d.), 301–3 and 410–11. 21.  Francisco Muniz Tavares, História da Revolução de Pernambuco em 1817, 3rd ed. (Recife, 1917), 115. 22.  Joaquim Nabuco, Um Estadista do Império, vol. 1, 63ff. 23.  John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Parts of Brazil, taken during a ten‑year stay in that country, from 1808 to 1818 (São Paulo, n.d.), 73. 24.  After a careful study of the matter, the American geographer Preston James concluded that in all of Latin America, there were only four well-­ defined areas where truly expansive settlement took place, that is, where the occupation of new areas of territory was not followed by the decline of the population of the original center. They are (1) the Costa Rican plateau; (2) the Antióquia plateau, in Colombia; (3) central Chile; and (4) the three southern states of Brazil. Preston James, Latin America (New York‑Boston, n.d.), 828ff. 25.  See Leopold von Wiese, “Ländliche Siedlungen,” Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart, 1931), 522ff. 26.  The position taken by enthusiasts for urban progress, on the other hand, is largely unjustified: namely, that during the height of its development, between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the city favored the inhabitants of the countryside, “freeing them” from servitude, slavery, and other forms of oppression. “The free air of cities often meant prison air for those in the countryside,” according to what Sorokin and Zimmerman noted. See Pitirim Sorokin and Carle C. Zimmerman, Principles of Rural‑Urban Sociology (New York, 1928), 88.

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27. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. 2 (Tübingen, 1925), 520ff. 28.  Editor’s note: In Spanish in the original. 29.  Primeira Visitação do Santo Ofício as Partes do Brasil: Denunciações da Bahia (São Paulo, 1928), 11ff. 30.  Friar Vicente do Salvador, História do Brasil, xi. 31.  André João Antonil, Cultura e Opulência do Brasil, text of the 1711 edition (São Paulo, 1967), 11ff. 32.  Hermann Wätjen, Das holländische Kolonialreich in Brasilien, 244. Chapter 4. Sowers and Builders 1. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. 2, 713. 2.  Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de Indias, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1756), fols. 90–92. 3.  Editor’s note: These terms are in Latin in the original. 4.  This does not exclude the possibility of direct Greco-­Roman influence on the design of Spanish American cities. Recent studies have even shown the close connection between instructions of the Philippine era for founding cities and Vetruvius’s classic study. Dan Stanislawski, “Early Town Planning in the New World,” Geographical Review (New York, January 1947): 10ff. 5. Cf. A. Bastian, Die Culturländer des Alten America, II Beiträge zu Geshichtlichen Vorarbeiten (Berlin, 1878), 838. In Latin in the original. 6.  See Appendix 1 of this chapter. 7.  Bernard Brandt, Südamerika (Breslau, 1923), 69. 8.  “Regimento de Tome de Sousa,” História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil, vol. 3 (Oporto, 1924), 347. 9.  Ibid., 310. 10.  Friar Gaspar da Madre de Deus, Memórias para a História da Capitania de S. Vicente (Lisbon, 1797), 32; Marcelino Pereira Cleto, “Dissertação a respeito da Capitania de S. Paulo, sua decadência e modo de restabelece‑la (1782),” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 21 (Rio de Janeiro, 1900), 201ff. 11.  See Appendix 2 of this chapter. 12.  Editor’s note: In English in the original. 13.  João Antônio Andreoni (André João Antonil), Cultura e Opulência do Brasil, text of the 1711 edition (São Paulo, 1967), 261.

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14.  B. von Spix and C. F. Ph. von Martius, Reise in Brasilien, vol. 1 (Munich, 1823), 436. 15.  Joaquim Felício dos Santos, Memória do Distrito Diamantino da Comarca de Serro Frio (Rio de Janeiro, 1924), 107. 16. Editor’s note: Tahuantinsuyu was the local name for the Inca Empire. 17.  Italics in the original. It is no accident that the principal centers of Spanish colonization on the American continent—in Mexico and Guatemala, and the cities of Bogota, Quito, and so forth—are located at high altitudes. Lima, located 140 meters above sea level and not far from the coast, is the only exception. As a reason for the site of the present Peruvian capital, that exception is less related to ease of trade with the mother country than to certain historical accidents of the conquest. The first location chosen in Peru for the Spanish seat of government was Jauja, at an altitude of 3,300 meters [approximately 10,800 feet]. The preference later given to Lima resulted, as a modern researcher emphasizes, from the fact that the horses brought by the conquerors at first did not acclimate well to that altitude. Since the success of Spanish arms depended largely on the moral effect on the Indians of the simple presence of the horse, the choice of a location where they could be bred more easily would appear to be of decisive importance. Cf. Karl Sapper, “Uber das Problem der Tropenakklimatization von Europäern,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, Hft. 9/10 (Berlin, December 1939): 372. 18.  Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History vol. 2 (London, 1935), 35ff. 19.  A. Metraux, Migrations historiques des Tupi‑Guarani (Paris, 1927), 3. 20.  This similarity is extraordinary, to the point where today we know the capacity of the Tupi‑Guarani peoples to assimilate traits of different cultures to their own and to “tupinize” peoples foreign to their race. Father W. Schmidt, in his study of circles of culture and appearances of culture on the South American continent, observes that because of that fact, it seems almost impossible to “determine what properly and by itself constitutes the specific culture of the Tupi‑Guarani.” P. Wilhelm Schmidt, “Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Südamerika,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Berlin, 1913): 1108. 21.  Manuel da Nóbrega, Cartas do Brasil, 1549–1560 (Rio de Janeiro, 1931), 131, 134. 22. Friar Vicente do Salvador, História do Brasil, 3rd ed. (São Paulo, n.d.), 16. 23.  L. G. de la Barbinais, Nouveau Voyage au tour du Monde, vol. 3 (Paris, 1729), 181.

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24.  The letter sent by Tomé de Sousa to the king, dated June 1, 1553, stated: “These two towns of São Vicente and Santos are not walled in and the houses are so spread out that they cannot be walled in without a lot of work and loss to the residents, since they have houses of whitewashed stone and large yards, all in disorder. Consequently, since each house is its castle, I do not see a better choice than to build each of the towns in the best possible place for its defense. Depending on the quality of the soil, that will do the job. But to do it right, everything will have to be promptly supplied. Otherwise, it will not work.” 25. Luis dos Santos Vilhena, Recopilação das Notícias Soteropolitanas Brasílicas, vol. 1 (Bahia, 1921), 109. 26.  Aubrey Bell, Portugal of the Portuguese (London, 1915), 11. 27.  In contrast to the exaggerations of Oliveira Martins about the taking of Ceuta, one should read “Essay on a Non‑Romantic Interpretation of the Text of Azurara,” by António Sérgio, in Ensaios, vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro, n.d. [1920]), 281ff., where he tries to show that the enterprise was born less from the spirit of knighthood than from the demands of a bourgeoisie of a cosmopolitan stamp. 28.  See Appendix 3 of this chapter. 29.  Diogo do Couto, O Soldado Prático (Lisbon, 1937), 144ff. 30.  Ibid., 219. 31.  João I, Livro da Montaria (Coimbra, 1918), 8. 32.  Diogo do Couto, O Soldado Prático, 157. 33.  D. Eduarte, Leal Conselheiro (Lisbon, 1942), 15. 34.  Ibid., 27. 35.  Bernardim Ribeiro and Cristóvao Falcão, Obras, vol. 2 (Coimbra, 1931), 364. In Spanish in the original. 36.  See Appendix 4 of this chapter. 37.  Henri Hauser, La Préponderance Espagnole (Paris, 1940), 328. 38.  “Carta do Bispo do Salvador (1552),” História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil, vol. 3, 364. 39.  John Tate Lane, “The Transplantation of the Scholastic University,” University of Miami Hispanic American Studies 1 (Coral Gables, Florida, November 1939): 29. 40.  “Estudantes Brasileiros na Universidade de Coimbra,” Anais da Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 62 (Rio de Janeiro, 1942), 141ff. 41.  As far as we know, this was the first printing shop installed in Brazil. In recently examining unedited documents of the Company of Jesus, Serafim Leite found out, however, that among the books of the library of the College of the Jesuits in Rio de Janeiro were “some printed in that same

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location around 1724.” This would establish the chronological primacy of the Jesuits in the establishment of the graphic arts in Portuguese America. We should not attribute extraordinary importance to this primacy, if, as the noted historian himself commented, those books were composed “for the private use of the college and its priests.” Serafim Leite, História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, vol. 6 (Rio de Janeiro, 1945), 26. 42.  Editor’s note: Buarque de Holanda’s original text has “eighteenth century,” an error corrected here. 43.  Both works by José Torres Rovello were published in Buenos Aires, 1940. 44. The text of the order issued to the governor of Grão-­Pará can be read in a note from R. Garcia in the third edition of the História Geral do Brasil of the Viscount of Porto Seguro, vol. 5 (São Paulo, n.d.), 93–95, as well as the notice about Humboldt’s trip published in the Gaceta de Lisboa of May 13, 1800, which was the basis for the prohibition. 45.  The Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of the Rose was awarded on March 31, 1855, to Baron von Humboldt, who had just presented the government a report on the northern boundaries of the empire. Barão do Rio Branco, Efemérides Brasileiras (Rio de Janeiro, 1946), 184. 46.  Julius Löwenberg, “Alexander von Humboldt: Sein Reiseleben in Amerika und Asien,” Alexander von Humboldt: Eine Wissenschaftliche Bio­ gra­phie, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Karl Bruhns, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1872), 463. 47.  Antônio Vieira, Obras Várias, vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1856), 249. 48.  “Ordens régias,” Revista do Arquivo Municipal, vol. 21 (São Paulo, 1936): 114ff. 49.  “Cartas de Artur de Sá e Meneses a el‑Rei . . .,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo, vol. 18 (São Paulo, 1913): 354. 50. “Relatorio do governador Antônio Pais do Sande . . .,” Anais da Biblio­teca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 39 (Rio de Janeiro, 1921), 199. 51. Felix de Azara, Viajes por la America del Sur (Montevideo, 1850), 210. In Spanish in the original. 52. Jean de Laet, Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou Description des Indes Occidentales (Leyden, 1640), 478. In French in the original. 53.  Inventários e Testamentos, vol. 10 (São Paulo, 1921), 328. 54.  “Carta do Bispo de Pernambuco,” in Ernesto Ennes, As Guerras dos Palmares, vol. 1 (São Paulo, n.d.), 353. 55. “Sumário dos senhores generais que tem governado a Capitania,” MS Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro, I‑7, 4, 10.

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56.  Manuel da Fonseca, Vida do Veneravel Padre Belchior de Pontes (São Paulo, n.d.), 22. 57. Hercules Florence, “Expedição Langsdorff,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico, vol. 38, part 2 (Rio de Janeiro, 1878): 284. 58.  Ricardo Gumbleton Daunt, “Reminiscência do Distrito de Campinas,” Almanaque Literário de S. Paulo para 1879 (São Paulo, 1878), 189. 59.  Francisco de Assis Vieira Bueno, Autobiografia (Campinas, 1899), 16; José Jacinto Ribeiro, Cronologia Paulista, vol. 2, part 2 (São Paulo, 1904), 755ff. 60.  R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1936), 72. 61.  Editor’s note: This is a direct translation of the phrase pretos selvagens, since we are trying to be faithful to Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s rendering of Livingstone’s original text. 62. Georg Friederici, Der Charakter der Entdeckung und Eroberung Amerikas durch die Europäer, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 1936), 220. 63. See Julio de Mesquita Filho, Ensaios Sul‑Americanos (São Paulo, 1946), 139ff. 64.  Alfred Ruhl, “Die Wirtschaftpsychologie des Spaniers,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde (Berlin, 1922): 95. 65. Ibid. 66. Enrique See, Nota Sobre el Comércio Franco‑Português en el Siglo XVIII (Madrid, 1930), 5. In French in the original. 67.  See ibid., 4. 68.  Editor’s note: In Spanish in the original. 69.  Benedetto Croce, La Spagna nella Vita Italiana Durante la Rinas­ cenza (Bari, 1941), 27. 70. Mateo Aleman, “Guzman de Alfarache,” La Novela Picaresca Es­ pañola (Madrid, 1943), 168ff. 71.  Editor’s note: A prominent family of bankers. 72.  Richard Ehrenberg, Das Zeitalter der Fuggers ( Jena, 1896), vol.  1, 359–60. R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 80, also described the Spanish merchants as “a class not morbidly prone to conscientious scruples” [in English in the original], although their deference to ecclesiastical authority led them to send confessors to Paris to consult the university theologians about the compatibility between certain speculations and canon law. Usurious practices were already normal in the old Spanish markets, although they increased considerably in the time of Charles V and his successors and assumed features that “they would hardly assume in other countries,” noted a historian of our time. Franz Linder, “Das Spanische

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Marktkunde und Börsenwesen,” Ibero‑Amerikanisches Archiv, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1929): 18. 73.  Diogo de Couto, O Soldado Prático, 105, 192, 212. 74.  Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, Corte na Aldeia (1st ed. 1619) (Lisbon, 1945), 136ff. 75.  Editor’s note: In Catholic liturgy, this sermon is delivered approximately sixty days before Easter. 76.  Antonio Vieira, Sermoens, part 1 (Lisbon, 1679), fol. 41. 77. Baltazar Gracian, “El Criticón,” Obras Completas (Madrid, 1944), 435. In Spanish in the original. Chapter 5. The Cordial Man 1.  Editor’s note: Since the first edition of Roots of Brazil, the fact that Sérgio Buarque de Holanda was mistaken in referring to Creon as Antigone’s brother, rather than as her uncle and potential father-­in-­law, has gone virtually unnoticed and uncorrected. The sole exception is Marlyse Meyer’s French translation, Racines du Brésil (Paris, 1998), where she changed “brother” [irmão] to “uncle” [oncle]. She did not, however, provide a note to explain the change. 2.  F. Stuart Chapin, Cultural Change (New York, 1928), 261. 3.  Knight Dunlap, Civilized Life: The Principles and Applications of Social Psychology (Baltimore, 1935), 189. 4. Margaret Mead, Ruth Shoule Cavan, John Dollard, and Eleanor Wembridge, “The Adolescent World: Culture and Personality,” American Journal of Sociology ( July 1936): 84ff. 5.  “The loss of one’s mother in infancy,” Nabuco also said, “is a fundamental event in life, one that transforms a man even when he is not aware of the shock. Since that day, it was decided that Nabuco would belong to a strong family of those who strictly fend for themselves, of those who are anxious to leave the narrow comfort of home and seek shelter in the vast desert of the world, as do those who acquire a predominant domestic instinct in maternal intimacy. Hercules was not worried about leaving his children orphans, Epictetus tells us, because he knew that there are no orphans in the world.” Joaquim Nabuco, Um Estadista do Império, vol. 1 (São Paulo, 1936), 5. 6. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. 2, 795ff. 7.  The expression is from the writer Ribeiro Couto in a letter sent to Alfonso Reyes and inserted by the latter in his publication Monterey. The

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word “cordial” in this case should be taken in its exact and strictly etymological sense, although it was interpreted in the opposite sense in a recent work of Cassiano Ricardo, who spoke of the cordial man of cocktail parties and of “cordial greetings,” “which are the conclusions of amiable as well as aggressive letters,” and which stands in contrast to cordiality understood as the “essential sentiment” of Brazilians, which is goodness and even a certain “technique of goodness,” “a more seductive, a more politic, and a more assimilating goodness.” Brazilians, in order to emphasize the basic difference between Cassiano Ricardo’s approach to the expression “cordiality” and the one suggested in this work and clarified above, deliberately eliminate the ethical judgments and apologetic intentions to which Cassiano Ricardo appears inclined when he speaks of “goodness” or of “the good man.” Brazilian cordiality, on the one hand, is foreign to all formalism and social convention, but, on the other hand, it does not only or necessarily encompass positive and harmonizing sentiments. Enmity can be just as cordial as friendship, in the sense that both come from the heart and thus proceed from the sphere of the intimate, the familiar, or the private. These sentiments belong—to recur to the term sanctioned by modern sociology—to the domain of “primary groups,” the unity of which, in the words of the concept’s elaborator, “is not only of harmony and love.” Friendship, once it leaves the circle circumscribed by private or intimate sentiments, becomes at most benevolence, since the imprecision of the word permits a greater extension of the concept. Thus, enmity, if it is public or political and not cordial, is more precisely called hostility. Carl Schmitt clearly formulated the distinction between enmity and hostility, calling on the Latin lexicon: “Hostis is someone with whom we wage war publicly . . . which differs from inimicus, who is someone we hate privately.” Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (Hamburg, 1933), 11. Editor’s note: full quotation of Schmitt in Latin in the original. 8.  Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, vol. 4 (Leipzig: Alfred Kröner, n.d.), 65. 9.  The same attachment to diminutives was noted by folklorists, grammarians, and dialectologists in Spanish-­speaking countries, especially in the Americas, and even in several regions of Spain (for example, Andalusía, Salamanca, Aragón). Amado Alonso correctly observed that the abundance of similar statements relating to the very different regions undercuts the attempt to interpret the abuse of diminutives as a particularity of each. It must still be admitted, however, that this abuse is a characteristic of the regional, of regional languages as opposed to the general language. And since this opposition is greater in the country than in the city, the diminutive above all would represent a characteristic of rural speech. “The profusion of

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these forms,” says Alonso, “reveals a cultural character, a socially formed type of behavior in speech relationships, which repeatedly manifests a friendly tone for those who speak and request reciprocity. Rural and dialect environments created and maintained by these social manners are usually averse to the more disciplined kinds of interpersonal relations in cities or among the educated classes, which are judged more conventional and more insincere and inexpressive.” Cf. Amado Alonso, “Noción, Emoción, Acción y Fantasía en los Diminutivos,” Volkstum und Kultur der Romanen, vol. 8, no. 1 (Hamburg, 1935): 117–18. In Brazil, where this characteristic persists even in settings that are strongly affected by progressive urbanization, their presence can denote a recollection and a survival [in English in the original], among many others, of the styles of human relationships formed by the rural and patriarchal environment, which the cosmopolitanism of our times has still not been able to erase. This is a clear characteristic of the “cordial” attitude, which is indifferent to, or somehow opposed, and not accidentally, to so‑called rules of civility and urbanity. An attempt to study the influence exercised by similar psychological motives on our syntactic forms can be found in João Ribeiro, Lingua Nacional (São Paulo, 1933), 11. 10.  Or, put another way, the categories of kinship, neighborhood, and friendship. 11.  André Siegfried, Amerique Latine (Paris, 1934), 148. 12. Alfred Von Martin, “Kultursoziologie des Mittelalters,” Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart, 1931), 383. 13.  Editor’s note: In English in the original. 14.  Fernão Cardim, Tratados da Terra e Gente do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1925), 334. 15. Auguste de Saint‑Hilaire, Voyage au Rio Grande do Sul (Orleans, 1887), 587. 16. Rev. Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil, vol. 1 (London, 1845), 157. 17.  Thomas Ewbank, Life in Brazil or a Journal of a Visit to the Land of the Cocoa and the Palm (New York, 1856), 239. Chapter 6. A New Era 1.  The idea of a Beruf or calling [in English in the original] was keenly analyzed by Max Weber in his well-­known The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. One should accept with reservations certain tendencies to which Weber was not immune, such as those that overemphasize

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the significance of purely moral or intellectual influences to the detriment of other, perhaps more decisive, factors. A particular example of such a tendency was the influence of the “Protestant spirit,” rather than economic movements, in forming the capitalist mentality, the effect of which was felt especially in northern countries where Protestant, principally Calvinist, preaching prevailed. Historians such as Brentano and Tawney criticized some of the limitations of Weber’s central thesis in The Protestant Ethic. Those limitations, however, did not invalidate the thesis that the Protestant peoples became bearers of a work ethic that contrasted sharply with that of predominantly Catholic nations. Among the latter, as Weber noted, words indicating professional activity lack the distinctly religious stamp that they unexceptionally have in Germanic languages. Thus, Portuguese translations of the Bible use the ethically colorless concept of “work” where Protestant versions use calling or Beruf. However, for example, in 1 Corinthians 7:20, the intention is expressly to designate the idea of being called to eternal salvation. There, the Portuguese versions use the term “vocation,” the semantic equivalent of Beruf and calling in the original meaning. The Protestant case reflects well the Puritan morality admirably exposed by Tawney, in which work is not simply an imposition of nature or a divine punishment, but rather a kind of ascetic discipline. That discipline is, as Tawney put it, “more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties.” “It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it ceases to be a material necessity.” The true Christian has to confine himself to the circle of his own affairs and shun all idle leisure, because those that are prodigal with their time despise their own souls. He should prefer action to contemplation, which is a kind of self-­indulgence. The rich are no more excused from work than the poor, though they may rightly use their riches to select some occupation especially serviceable to others. Covetousness is a danger to the soul; but it is not so grave a danger as sloth. Luxury, unrestrained pleasure, and personal extravagance can have no place in a Christian’s conduct. Even excessive devotion to friends and relations is to be avoided because it often takes up men’s minds so as to hinder their love to God. “The Christian life, in short, must be systematic and organized; the work of an iron will and a cool intelligence.” See Max Weber, Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (Tübingen, 1934), 63ff.; Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, 242ff. 2.  Editor’s note: Buarque de Holanda did not provide a reference here.

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3.  Editor’s note: In English in the original. 4. Weber’s statement to the effect that few countries had as many graduates as New England in the first years of its existence may be exaggerated—at least if he intends to include graduates headed toward professions other than ecclesiastical ones. With respect to the law and even the judiciary, in New England, as in all the British colonies in North America, laymen could exercise these professions at the beginning of the eighteenth century and almost up to mid-­century. See James Truslow Adams, Provincial Society (New York, 1943), 14. The political prestige of lawyers began to grow, despite strong party resistance in more conservative circles, only from about 1754 and reached its highest point in the period immediately before the Revolution. See in this respect Adams, Provincial Society, 313, and especially Evarts Houtell Greene, The Revolutionary Generation (New York, 1943), 80ff. 5.  Charles A. Beard, who emphasizes that fact in his now classic work on the economic interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, also observes that none of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention represented small farmers or workers in their personal or economic interests. Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1944), 189. 6.  Zechariah Chafee, Jr., “The Law,” Civilization in the United States, An Inquiry by Thirty Americans (New York, 1922), 53. 7.  Editor’s note: This work is a pamphlet frequently attributed to the Jesuit priest Manuel da Costa (1601–1667). 8.  Editor’s note: Auguste Comte, a French philosopher (1798–1857), referred to by his followers as “The Master.” 9.  Miguel Lemos and R. Teixeira Mendes, Bases de uma Constituição Política Ditatorial Federativa para a República Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1934). 10.  R. Teixeira Mendes, Benjamim [sic] Constant, Esboço de uma Apreciação Sintética da Vida e da Obra do Fundador da República Brasileira, vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 1913), 88. 11.  Ibid., 87ff. 12. Saint‑Hilaire, Voyage au Rio Grande do Sul, 581. 13. “Contribuções para a Biografia de Pedro II,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Special Volume (Rio de Janeiro, 1925): 119. 14.  Gilberto Freyre, “A Propósito de Dom Pedro II,” Perfil de Euclides e outros Perfis (Rio de Janeiro, 1944), 132. 15.  Mário Pinto Serva, O Enigma Brasileiro (São Paulo, n.d.), 12, 57. 16.  A. J. Todd, Theories of Social Progress (New York, 1934), 522ff.

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Chapter 7. Our Revolution 1.  On the other hand, a keen observer warns against the use—in his view, abuse—of the word “revolution” when a South American general, at the head of his troops, unseats the president and names himself—for how long?—the successor. These movements, he explains, often amount to insistently repeated details of a general, truly revolutionary process, one that transforms colonial territories into modern educated societies. W. Mann, Volk und Kultur Lateinamerikas (Hamburg, 1927), 123. 2.  D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (London, 1924), 88. 3.  H. Handelmann, História do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1931), 361. 4.  Caio Prado Júnior, “Distribuição da propriedade fundiária no estado do São Paulo,” Geografia, vol. 1 (São Paulo, 1935): 65. 5.  C. F. van Delden Laerne, Rapport sur la culture du café en Amerique, Asie et Afrique (The Hague, 1885), 254ff. 6.  Anais do Senado, vol. 4 (Rio de Janeiro, 1858, Session of August 26), 253. 7.  Oliveira Lima, Aspectos da História e da Cultura do Brasil (Lisbon, 1923), 78. 8.  Alberto Torres, O Problema Nacional Brasileiro: Introdução a um Programa da Organização Nacional (Rio de Janeiro, 1914), 88. 9.  Editor’s note: Buarque de Holanda did not provide a reference here; however, he cites Herbert Smith’s From Rio de Janeiro to Cuiabá (São Paulo, 1922) in note 7 of chapter 3. 10.  In Chile, the current agreement between conservatives and radicals may be no more than an emergency solution. Significantly, however, the 1925 reforms have brought two concrete results: the abolition of the exclusive power of both the landowners and the governing oligarchy. George McCutchen McBride, Chile: Land and Society (New York, 1936), 214–31. 11.  The recent electoral victories of masses of workers in Brazil and Argentina undoubtedly demonstrate the same tendency, although retrograde forces representing old Río de la Plata dictatorships may have benefited from and largely encouraged their unity. These forces, in turn, may have been able to come forward because of the stimulus and the potential provided by European totalitarian models. 12.  Lisandro Alvarado, “Los Delitos Políticos en la História de Vene­ zuela,” Revista Nacional de Cultura 18 (Caracas, May 1940): 4. In Spanish in the original.

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13.  Written and published for the first time in 1935, these words no longer correspond to current reality. It remains to be seen if the cause of that change is the largely sentimental zeal of a great deal of our communists today, following a leader “who never makes mistakes,” rather than the conscious and reflective choice of Marxist principles. 14.  Editor’s note: “Nothing stands in the way”; this was a familiar phrase used by censors of the Catholic Church to certify that a work contained nothing damaging to faith and morals.

Index

Aberdeen Bill, 46 abolition of slavery, 49, 137, 142 Abreu, Capistrano de, 61, 115 adventurer type, 14–15, 16–17, 20, 73, 164n2 Afonso, Henriques (king), 7, 163n7 Afonso, Martim, 72 agrarianism, 63, 138, 139 agriculture colonist views of, 20, 35 organization of, 18–19 predatory methods in, 21–22, 23, 37–41 use of plow in, 21–22, 38, 40–41, 168nn58–59 view of in Portugal, 20 Alencar, José de, 27 Almeida, Francisco José de Lacerda e, 104 Alonso, Amado, 177n9 Alves, Manuel, 29 Amadis de Gaula, 86–87 anarchy, 3, 4 Andrada e Silva, Antônio Carlos de, 57 Antigone and Creon, 112, 176n1 Antonil, André João, 62 Antônio Vaz island, 34 Arciszewski, Christopher, 34 Argentina, 101–2, 149, 181n11

art and literature, 32–33, 131, 133 Arte de Furtar, 125–26, 180n7 Assis, Machado de, 131 Augustine, Saint, 5 Azara, Félix de, 96, 101 Bahia, 21, 61–62, 80 Bank of Brazil, 44–45, 47 Barbosa, Saldas, 32–33 Barlaeus, Caspar, 33–34, 167n49 Barros, João de, 82 Batlle y Ordóñez, José, 146 Beard, Charles A., 180n5 Bell, Aubrey, 81 Bentham, Jeremy, 152 Berredo, Bernardo Pereira, 29 blacks, 19, 32–33, 36 racial exclusivity and, 26–27 racial mixing and, 24, 26, 27, 37, 98 See also slavery Bolivia, 68 books, 92, 132–33, 173n41 bourgeoisie, 7, 58, 83–85, 173n27 Brentano, Lujo, 179n1 Bueno, Amador, 72 Bueno, Francisco de Assis Vieira, 102 bureaucracy, 116 Burmeister, Hermann Karl, 124–25 183

184  I n d e x

Cairu, Viscount of. See Lisboa, José da Silva Calderón, Bernardo, 92 Calógeras, Pandiá, 45, 46 Calvinism, 8, 36 Camões, Luis de, 82, 85 Campos, Juana Furquim de, 102 capitalist mentality, 105–9 Cardim, Fernão, 77, 121 Cariris, 77 Carvalho, Antônio de Albuquerque Coelho de, 101 Castro, Antônio Ferreira, 26 cathedrals, 30–31 Catholic Church, 119–20, 122, 182n14 holidays of, 61–62 indigenous peoples and, 36, 37, 98 Portuguese colonialism and, 89–90 caudillismo, 146–47 Cavalcanti, Holanda, 149 Ceuta, 82, 173n27 Chateaubriand, François-René de, 131 Chile, 148, 150, 170n24, 181n10 China, 66 cities and urban centers, 53, 66, 139 countryside and, 44, 59, 60, 62, 170n26 layout and construction of, 66–67, 68, 80–81, 171n4 location of under Portuguese colonialism, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77–78, 103–4 location of under Spanish colonialism, 67–68, 70, 75, 172n17 occupations in, 29–30 population in, 62

shift of center of gravity toward, 138 Claude d’Abbeville, 76 Cleary, Reuben, 37–38 Clenardo, 20, 24–25 Cleto, Marcelino Pereira, 71 Coelho, Duarte, 20 coffee, 139–42 Colombia, 170n24 Columbus, 70, 81 communications, 75, 77–78, 141 communism, 154, 182n13 Company of Jesus. See Jesuits Comte, Auguste, 127, 128, 180n8 Cooper, James Fenimore, 131 cooperation, 31–32, 126 cordiality, 117–18, 122, 151, 176n7, 178n9 corporations, 44, 112 Corte da Aldeia, 108 Cortés, Hernán, 75 cosmopolitanism, 130–31, 151, 178n9 Costa, Hipólito da, 57 Costa, Manuel da, 180n7 Costa Rica, 150, 170n24 Coutinho, Vasco Fernandes, 17, 77 Couto, Diogo do, 82, 84, 108 Couto, Ribeiro, 176n1 craftsmen, 30, 166n37 El Criticón (Gracián), 109–10 cultural traits and values, 2–3, 8–9, 126 toward anarchy, 3–4 aversion to hierarchy, 3–4, 5–6, 129 aversion to order, 80 aversion to ritual, 118, 120 belief in ideas’ magical power, 129 disdain for distance, 120

Index 

glorification of personality, 2–3, 8, 10, 87, 123, 147, 150 on heroism and greatness, 82, 85 idleness and laziness, 9, 20 lack of work ethic, 8–9 natural conservatism of, 89 obedience, 10 prudence, 82, 86–87 rationalization, 105 romanticism, 131 search for quick riches, 16–17, 29–30, 40, 48, 78 sweetness, 32–33, 143 Cunha, Count of, 62 Dante Alighieri, 4 Daunt, Ricardo Gumbleton, 102 death penalty, 144 democracy, 129, 145–46, 150, 151 Diamond Demarcation, 74 Diana (Montemor), 87 Dias, Gonçalves, 27 Díaz, Porfirio, 128, 146 diet, 17, 51 diminutives, 118–19, 177n9 Discourse on the Positive Spirit (Comte), 128 distance, 120, 148 Duarte, King, 86 Dutch colonialism, 14, 33–37, 63, 167n49 educational system, 114, 115, 134–35 empire, Brazilian, 114–15, 120, 136, 138, 142–43 criticism during, 150–51 Eschwege, Wilhelm Ludwig von, 17, 164n7 Espírito Santo, 22, 47, 77 Esposito, Fernández, 108

185

Estado de S. Paulo, 94 Esteves, Luzia, 97 Estudos do Bem Comum (Lisboa), 54, 169n16 European migration, 73 Eusébio de Queirós law, 45, 46–47 family, 111, 113–14, 115–16 patriarchal, 52–53, 56, 114, 116 supremacy of, 117 Faria, Manuel Severim de, 25 farmers, 51, 52, 168n8 Farsa dos Almocreves (Vicente), 7 fascism, 146–47, 153–54 Ferraz Law, 49 Ferreira, Antônio, 85 feudalism, 3, 7 Filho, Júlio Mesquita, 104 Florence, Hercules, 101 Florence, Italy, 62 Fonseca, Antônio Isidoro da, 91 Fonseca, José Manuel da, 141 Fonseca, Manuel da, 101 Ford, Henry, 55 foreigners exclusion of, 73–74, 79 tolerance of, 93 foreign trade, 47, 106, 168n4 Francisco, Martim, 29 free will, 8 Freiderici, Georg, 104 Freire, Janqueira, 132 French Revolution, 146, 151 Freyre, Gilberto, 51, 166n45 Gaceta, 92 Gama, Vasco da, 81 Gandavo, Pero de Magalhães, 76 Gaspar, Manuel, 29 Giovio, Paolo, 89 Goianás, 77

186  I n d e x

Gois, Damião de, 20, 25, 82, 89 gold, 73 government citizenship and, 111–12 Madison on, 56–57 paternal character of, 56, 116 republican, 90, 135–36, 142 as unifying factor, 8 Gracián, Baltasar, 109–10 Great Britain, 15–16, 18, 145 Guaira, 61 guilds, 28 Guzmán de Alfarache (Alemán), 107 Handelmann, H., 77, 139, 142 Harding, Warren, 125 hereditary privilege, 3 hierarchy, 3, 4–6, 112, 129 História do Brasil (Handelmann), 77 Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (Piso and Markgraf ), 34 Hobbes, Thomas, 146 Hoover, Herbert, 125 household industry, 28–29 houses, 17–18, 80, 173n24 Hugo, Victor, 131 humanitarian ideal, 152 Humboldt, Baron von, 93, 174n45 Iberia, 6–7 Brazil association with, 11, 17, 139 cultural traits, 2–3, 8–9, 10, 105 Iberianism and, 138 idleness and indolence, 3, 9, 16, 179n1 independence proclamation, 130 India, 149–50 indigenous peoples adaptation and assimilation by, 164n8, 172n20



civil liberties of, 26–27 forced labor by, 19, 99, 102 and lingua franca, 36, 102 Portuguese colonialism and, 17, 23, 76–77, 103 Inge, William Ralph, 16 insurance, 107 integralism, 153, 154 intelligence, 53–55, 126–27, 169n13 interracial marriage, 26, 27, 37 Italy, 107 James, Preston, 170n24 Jesuits, 8, 99, 173n41 discipline of, 10 missions of, 41, 68, 164n8 under Portuguese colonialism, 69 Jesus Christ, 119 João I, 85 João II, 83 João III, 72 João V, 26 Johnson, Dr., 116 Julius III (pope), 89 Kidder, Daniel P., 121–22 knowledge, 54, 115, 133–34 Koster, Henry, 69 labor system, 27–29, 112–13 Laet, Jean de, 97 landowners, 50–51, 53, 60–61, 168n8 landownership, 18–19, 141–42 language lingua franca, 36, 77, 94–97, 101–3 Portuguese and Dutch, 36, 101, 102 Tupi, 94, 97, 100–101, 102

Index 

Latin America agrarian relations in, 38, 59 caudillismo and personalism in, 146–47, 150 constitutional movements in, 146, 148, 149 expansive settlement in, 170n24 “revolution” in, 181n1 Law of the Indies, 67 Leal Conselheiro, 86 Leite, Serafim, 173n41 Leme, Bras Esteves, 97 Leme, Salvador de Oliveira, 100 liberalism, 130, 146–47, 150, 152, 154 liberality, 79, 108 liberal professions, 53, 124–26 Lima, 92, 172n17 Lima, Alceu Amoroso, 169n16 Lima, Oliveira, 144 Linder, Franz, 175n72 lingua franca, 77, 94–97, 101–3 Lisboa, José da Silva, 54–56, 169n16 literacy, 135 literature. See art and literature Livingstone, David, 104 Lobo, Aristides, 130 Lobo, Francisco Rodrigues, 9 Luccock, John, 59 Lusíadas, 82, 85 Madison, James, 56 Madre de Deus, Friar Gaspar da, 71, 72, 165n27 Magalhães, Benjamin Constant Botelho de, 128, 136 main square, 68 manual labor, 6, 9, 29, 54 Maranhão, 52, 76, 101 Maria, Giulio, 89

187

Markgraf, Georg, 34 Marlière, Guido Tomás, 77 Martins, Silveira, 50 Martius, C. F. Ph. von, 30, 36, 74, 166n37 Marxism, 154, 182n13 Master of Aviz, 7, 163n7 Mauá, Viscount, 47, 49 Mauritsstad, 34 Medina, Jose Toríbio, 92 Melgarejo, Manuel, 146 Melo, Bernardo Vieira de, 52 Meneses, Artur de Sá e, 95, 96, 101 Menina e Moça, 87 mercantilism, 78–79 merchants, 7, 49, 60, 79, 108, 175n72 mestizos, 26, 27, 28 Metraux, A., 76 Metternich, Klemens von, 121 Mexican Art and Life, 92 Mexico, 69, 91, 92, 148 Middle Ages, 4–5 Minas Gerais, 26, 73, 100 mining, 19, 74 Miranda, Sá de, 86 Molinism, 8 monoculture, 18, 22 Monteiro, Inés, 96 Montemor, Jorge de, 87 mulattoes, 25, 26–27, 28, 62 Mun, Thomas, 16 Munster, Sebastian, 20 Nabuco, Joaquim, 48, 58, 115, 176n5 names family, 119 nicknames, 99–100 nature, 109–10 Neto, Álvaro, 97

188  I n d e x

Newman, John Henry, 120 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 118 nobility, 5–6, 7–8, 29, 57, 108 Nóbrega, Manuel da, 78 North American colonies, 18 Nueva Germania, 40 obedience, 10, 56, 114 Olivares, 88 Oliveira, Bishop Vital de, 120 Oliveira, Cristovão Rodrigues de, 25 Ordenanzas de duscubrimiento y nueva población, 66 Orozco, Federico Gómez de, 92 orphans, 115, 176n5 outlaw, 163n2 Pais, Sebastião de Sousa, 102 Paraguay, 40, 41, 96, 101 Paraguay War, 144 Paraíba Valley, 140 Pardo, Paulo, 167n49 Pareto, Vilfredo, 164n2 patriarchalism and paternalism, 49–50 in family, 52–53, 56, 114, 116 Paucke, Florian, 41 peasants, 7, 35, 59 Pedro II, 132–33, 143 Pelagianism, 8 Pereira, Jerónimo, 100 Pernambuco, 34, 63, 79 Pernambuco revolution (1817), 57–58, 152–53 personalism, 49, 147, 150 personality, 87, 123, 126 cult of, 2–3 extreme glorification of, 10 merit and, 8 Peru, 28, 91, 92

Spanish colonialism and, 69, 75, 172n17 Philip II, 79 Philip IV, 88 Pimentel, Ana, 71 Pimentel, Antônio da Silva Caldeira, 100 Pinto, Andrade, 128 Piratininga, 61, 71, 73, 77 Piso, Willem, 34 Pizarro, Francisco, 69, 75 Plotinus of Alexandria, 132 poetry, 87 politeness, 117–18 politics landowners’ running of, 44, 60–61 party, 50–51, 136 social life and, 144 Pontes, Belchior de, 101 Portales, Diego, 150 Portugal and administration of colonies, 74, 78–79 adventurer type in, 15 agriculture in, 20 artisans and merchants in, 7 bourgeoisie’s rise in, 83–85 Brazil cultural association with, 11, 17, 139 capitalist mentality in, 106, 108–9 and colonial expansion, 82–83, 87–88, 166n45 cultural traits in, 8–9, 20, 80, 82, 85, 86–87, 89 foreign trade of, 106–7 as frontier and transition zone, 2 lack of organized hierarchy in, 3 nobility of, 5–6, 7–8 as politically unified, 88

Index 

racial and ethnic characteristics, 23–24, 88 slaves in, 24–25 Portuguese colonialism adaptability of, 17–18, 23–24, 30, 76–77, 104 and adventurer types, 20, 73 agricultural system of, 18–19, 21–22, 23, 37–41, 166n45 and Brazilian interior, 70–71, 104 Catholic Church and, 89–90 city construction under, 80–81 collective undertakings by, 30–31 exploration by, 13–14, 69 and indigenous peoples, 17, 23, 76–77, 103 liberality of, 79 Lisbon intervention in, 74, 78–79 location of settlements under, 70, 71, 72, 75, 77–78, 103–4 mercantile character of, 78–79 race relations under, 26, 36, 37 realism of, 81–82, 86, 88–89 rural roots of, 43–44 search for quick riches by, 16–17, 20, 29–30, 48, 78 and slavery, 25–26, 28–29, 45–47, 49 Spanish colonialism’s differences with, 23, 66, 69, 79, 80, 88, 91 Portuguese language, 36, 101, 102 use of diminutives in, 118–19, 177n9 positivism and positivists, 127, 128, 129, 133 Post, Franz, 34 Prado, Paulo, 167n49 Priestley, H. J., 33 printing press, 91–92, 173n41 property assets and, 48

189

rural, 6, 139, 140 See also landownership Protestantism, 8–9, 36–37, 179n1 Puritans and Puritanism, 36, 125, 179n1 Quebedo, Francisco Rendon de, 97 Quito, 70, 172n17 racial exclusivity, 26–27 racial mixing, 23–24, 37, 98 interracial marriage and, 26, 27, 37 racial prejudice lack of, 37 Protestant origins of, 167n54 railroads, 44, 141 Ramalho, João, 77 rationalization, rejection of, 105 realism, 81–82, 86, 88–89 Recife, 34–35, 37, 63 Recôncavo, 21 reformism, 129–30 Rego, José Lins do, 142 religion, 36–37, 119–20, 121–22 See also Catholic Church; Protestantism Reminiscências (Daunt), 102 rentier, 163n2 republic, Brazilian, 90, 135–36, 142 Resende, Garcia de, 24 revolution, Brazilian of 1817, 57–58, 152–53 abolition of slavery and, 44, 137–38 future, 147–48 Ricardo, Cassiano, 177n7 Rio Branco, Viscount of, 50 Rio de Janeiro, 44, 62, 80, 130, 166n37 Rio de Janeiro province, 52, 140

190  I n d e x

Rio Grande do Sul, 22 ritual, 120, 122 Roman Empire, 66 romanticism, 27, 131 Rosas, Juan Manuel, 146, 149 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 146 Rovello, José Torres, 92 Ruhl, Alfred, 105 Rural and Mortgage Bank, 44 rural self-sufficiency, 51–52 Russia, 2 Saint-Hilaire, Auguste de, 121, 130 Salvador, 31, 62, 81 Salvador, Vicente do, 51–52, 78 Sampaio, Alberto, 6 Sampaio, Teodoro, 94 Sande, Antônio Pais de, 96, 100 Santerna (Pedro de Santarém), 107 Santo André da Borda do Campo, 71 Santos, 80, 173n24 São Paulo, 48, 99–100, 121 founding of, 70–71 lingua franca in, 94–97, 101–3 São Paulo province, 22, 44, 103, 140 São Pedro do Rio Grande, 78 São Vicente, 71, 80, 165n27, 173n24 Sapper, Karl, 41, 168nn58–59 Sassetti, Filippo, 25 Schkopp, Sigmund von, 34 Schmidt, P. Wilhelm, 76 scholasticism, 4 Sée, Henri, 106 Sérgio, Antonio, 166n45, 173n27 Siegfried, André, 105, 119 slavery abolition of, 49, 137, 142 coffee cultivation and, 140

large-scale farming and, 19 master-slave relations, 25–26 in Portugal, 24–25 slave trade, 45–47, 103, 140 Smith, Adam, 54, 169n16 Smith, Herbert, 50, 147–48 Soares, Gabriel, 17, 61, 76 Soares, Sebastião Ferreira, 168n4 sobranceria, 3 socialism, 48, 169n16 social life, 53 for cordial man, 118 politics and, 144 social solidarity, 10 Socinianism, 34, 167n48 soil quality, 21–22 O Soldado Prático (Couto), 82, 84 Sophocles, 112 Sorokin, Pitrim, 170n26 Sousa, Luis Antônio de, 41 Sousa, Tomé de, 31, 70–71, 173n24 Spain bankers and merchants from, 107–8, 175n72 capitalist mentality in, 105–6, 108–9 expulsion of Moors from, 70 as frontier and transition zone, 2 values in, 8–9, 15 Spanish colonialism, 41, 69–70, 88 city construction under, 66–67, 68, 171n4 creative will in, 69 exclusivity of, 79 location of settlements under, 67–68, 70, 75, 172n17 Portuguese colonialism’s differences with, 23, 66, 69, 79, 80, 88, 91 speculation, 45, 48 Spix, J. B. von, 30, 166n37

Index 

Stein, H. von, 109 stoicism, 3 sugar plantations and mills, 19, 35 conversion to coffee production of, 139, 141 impact of slavery’s abolition on, 142 self-sufficiency of, 51 Surck, Justo Mansilla van, 61 Tahuantinsuyu empire, 75 talent, 53, 55–56, 133 Tapuia Indians, 36 Taques, Pedro, 96, 99 Taunay, Afonso de, 101 Tawney, R. H., 103–4, 179n1 Taylorism, 55 Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint, 119 Thevet, André, 14 Thomas, W. I., 164n2 Thomism, 4 tobacco, 17, 18 Toledo, Francisco de, 28 Tollenare, Louis-François, 51, 169n9 Tönnies, Alfred, 119 Tordesillas treaty (1494), 72 Torre, Curiel de la, 108 Toynbee, Arnold J., 167n54 tradition, 1, 3–4, 7, 57 modification of, 30 replaced as guiding principle, 84 transportation, 44, 45, 103 tropics, 13–14, 20–21 Tupi-Guarani peoples, 76–77, 102, 172n20

191

Tupi language, 94, 97, 100–101, 102 United States, 22, 125, 180nn4–5 educational system, 134–35 political system, 56, 138 universities, 69, 91, 115, 125 urbanization, 66, 116, 143, 178n9 See also cities and urban centers Uruguay, 146 usury, 107, 108, 175n72 Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August, 93 Velho, Domingos Jorge, 97–99, 100 Venezuela, 93, 149 Viana, Oliveira, 138 Vicente, Gil, 5–6, 7 Vieira, Antônio, 87, 94, 95, 96, 100, 109 Vilhena, Luís dos Santos, 81 Villani, Giovanni, 62 Weber, Max, 61, 66, 116, 178n1, 180n4 West Indies Company, 63 wet nursing, 6 Wilhemy, Herbert, 39–40, 41 Wittich, Ernest, 92 women, 95–96, 121 work, 124, 179n1 See also labor system worker type, 14–15 work ethic, 8–10, 15, 179n1 Zimmerman, Carle C., 170n26

Author Biography Sérgio Buarque de Holanda was the most important Brazilian historian during the twentieth century, as well as a noted literary critic. Born in São Paulo in 1902, he moved to Rio de Janeiro as a young man, where he was one of the most active figures of the “modernist” movement, which profoundly impacted Brazilian art and literature in the 1920s. His experience in Germany from 1929 to 1930 as a correspondent for the Brazilian Diários Associados was decisive in the composition of his first book, Roots of Brazil (1936). While working both as a historian and literary critic for Brazilian newspapers during the following decade, he published Cobra de vidro (1944) and Monções (1945). After returning to São Paulo in 1946, he served as director of the Paulista Museum for ten years. From 1953 to 1955 he lived in Italy and taught at the University of Rome. He published Caminhos e fronteiras in 1957, which completed his cycle of work on the settlement of the Brazilian interior during the colonial period. In 1958, Buarque de Holanda was awarded the chair of Professor of Brazilian History at the University of São Paulo with the thesis Visão do paraíso, his masterpiece on the influence of Edenic motifs in the colonization of the Americas. In 1962 he founded the Institute for Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo and edited the series História geral da civilização brasileira. For this series, he also wrote the volume on the Brazilian monarchy, Do Império à República (1972). In 1969 he retired from the University of São Paulo to protest the forced retirements of several leftist professors who were threatened by the military dictatorship of 1964–85. In 1979 he published Tentativas de mitologia, and in 1980, within the context of the slow political liberalization in Brazil, Buarque de Holanda was one of the founding members of the Workers’ Party (PT). After his death in 1982, an important part of his scholarly production was published posthumously: O extremo oeste (1986), Capítulos de literatura colonial (1991), O espírito e a letra (1996, 2 vols.), Capítulos de história do Império (2010), and Escritos coligidos (2011, 2 vols.). In the United States, in addition to some short trips for academic purposes, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda taught as a visiting professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, and at Stony Brook University from 1966 to 1967. 192

FRO M THE HELEN KELLOGG INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES “This translation is a major event. This is an essential work for the understanding of Brazil and, even more so, the comprehension of Brazilian society and values by a generation of Brazilians. It tells much of the relationships between Brazil and Portugal, and it is basic to grasping the position of Brazil within the so-called Latin American countries and societies.” —Roberto DaMatta, professor of anthropology, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and professor emeritus, University of Notre Dame “On the one hand, Roots of Brazil, first published in 1936 and substantially revised in subsequent editions, is one of those works that shapes its readers’ imagination, a book that in a certain sense ‘invents’ its country, serving as a mirror in which, while seeking their own image, Brazilian readers have also found their own attitudes and inclinations. On the other hand, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s book functions not only as a fixed portrait that preserves a scene from the past but also as a bright surface that can reflect each new historical moment.” —from the foreword by Pedro Meira Monteiro, Princeton University Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s Roots of Brazil is an iconic book on Brazilian history, society, and culture. It appears here for the first time in an English language translation with a foreword, “Why Read Roots of Brazil Today?” by Pedro Meira Monteiro, one of the world’s leading experts on Buarque de Holanda. Along with other early twentieth-century works, such as The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil by Caio Prado Júnior, Roots of Brazil set the parameters of Brazilian historiography for a generation and continues to offer keys to understanding the complex history of Brazil.

SÉR GIO BUARQUE DE HOL ANDA (1902–19 82) WAS ONE OF THE MOST RENOWNED BRAZILIAN HISTORIANS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, AS WELL AS A NOTED LITERARY CRITIC. HE TAUGHT IN ITALY, THE UNITED STATES, CHILE, AND BRAZIL.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS NOT R E DAME, INDIANA 46556 U NDPRESS.ND.EDU