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  Brazilian Bovarism is implicit in another characteristic that defines nationality: ‘familyism’ – the deep-rooted custom of transforming public issues into private ones. A good politician becomes a ‘member of the family’ who is always referred to by his Christian name: Getúlio, Juscelino, Jango, Lula, Dilma. It seems no coincidence that during the dictatorship the generals were referred to by their surnames: Castello Branco, Costa e Silva, Geisel, Médici and Figueiredo. As Buarque de Holanda argued, Brazil has always been characterized by the precedence of affection and emotion over the rigorous impersonality of principles that organize society in so many other countries. ‘We will give the world a cordial man’, as Buarque de Holanda said, not in a celebratory tone, rather regretting and criticizing Brazil’s tortuous entry into modernity. The word ‘cordial’ derives from the Latin ‘cor, cordis’, semantically linked to the Brazilian word for ‘heart’ (coração) and to the supposition that, in Brazil, intimacy is the norm (even the names of saints are used in the diminutive), revealing an extraordinary lack of commitment to the idea of the public good and a clear aversion to those in power. Worse still, Buarque de Holanda’s argument has been rejected in most circles, and his notion of ‘cordial’ widely misinterpreted. It was seen as a parody of Brazil’s cordiality, a harmonious, receptive people who reject violence. It was not understood in the critical sense, as a reference to the difficulty in being proactive in establishing effective institutions. Another example of Bovarism is how lasting Brazil’s self-image has been: a peace-loving country, one that rejects radicalism, despite the innumerable rebellions, revolts and protests that have punctuated Brazilian history since the outset. Brazil is and is not: an ambiguity far more productive than a handful of stilted official images.

  Sound ideologies, therefore, can be compared to tattoos or an idée fixe; they appear to have the power of imposing themselves on society and generating reality. Hearing them constantly, Brazilians end up believing in a country where hearsay is more important than reality. Brazilians have constructed a dreamt-up image of a different Brazil – based on their imagination, happiness and a particular way of confronting difficulties – and have ended up as its mirror image. All this is well and good. But the country continues to be the champion of social inequality and is still struggling to construct true republican values and true citizens.

  Once this internal dialectic has been recognized, the next step is to understand that it is not in fact exclusively internal. The country has always been defined by those looking on from outside. Since the sixteenth century, before Brazil was Brazil, when it still constituted an unknown Portuguese America, it was observed with considerable curiosity. The territory, the ‘other’ of the West, was either represented through what it did not possess – neither laws, rules nor hierarchy – or else by what it demonstrated in excess – lust, sex, laziness and partying. Seen from this angle the country would merely be at the margins of the civilized world, a gauche culture filled with uncouth people, who are nevertheless peace-loving and happy. In advertising, and according to foreigners, Brazil is still seen as hospitable, with exotic values, and home to a type of ‘universal native’, since the country is apparently inhabited by an amalgam of ‘foreign peoples’ from around the world.

  Although Brazil is undeniably blessed by a series of ‘miracles’, a temperate climate (sixteenth-century travellers called it ‘the land of eternal spring’), an absence of natural catastrophes – hurricanes, tsunamis or earthquakes – and of institutionalized and official antagonism towards certain groups, it is certainly neither the promised land nor ‘the land of the future’. There are those who have attempted to cast Brazil as representing an alternative solution to the impasses and contradictions of the West. Inspired by the idea of cannibalism, as witnessed by the first visitors, later developed by Montaigne, and even later reinterpreted in the twentieth century by Oswald de Andrade in his ‘Manifesto antropófago’ (1928), Brazilians have an obsession with reinventing themselves, with transforming failings into virtues and omens. Cannibalizing customs, defying conventions and upsetting premises is still a local characteristic, a ritual of insubordination for nonconformists that perhaps sets Brazilians apart, or at least keeps the flame of utopia alive.

  Ever since the arrival of Cabral and his fleet of caravels, Brazil has been a paradise for some, an endless hell for others, and for the rest, a kind of purgatory on earth. Despite these characteristics being identified with the past, they are still alive and well. Around 1630, Vicente do Salvador, a Franciscan friar, considered Brazil’s first historian, wrote in his short History of Brazil: ‘There is not a single man in this land who is republican, who cares for or administers the public wealth; instead, it is every man for himself.’

  Since the very beginning of the country’s short history, of five hundred years or so, from the establishment of the first plantations in the territories that were later to constitute Brazil, the difficulty in sharing power and engendering a sense of common good was evident. However, despite Frei Vicente’s comment, republican values do exist in Brazil. Inventing an imaginary construction of public life is a typically Brazilian way of avoiding the impasse generated in the interior of a society that has been a success in some aspects while a failure in others.

  Thus Brazil’s development was born of ambivalence and contrast. On the one hand it is a country with a high degree of social inequality and rates of illiteracy, whereas on the other its electoral system is one of the most sophisticated and reliable in the world. Brazil has rapidly modernized its industrial park, and it has the second highest number of Facebook users in the world. At the same time vast geographical regions lie abandoned, particularly in the north, where the chief means of transport is by rudimentary sailboats. Brazil has an advanced constitution, which forbids any kind of discrimination, yet, in reality, silent and perverse forms of prejudice are deeply ingrained and pervade everyday life. In Brazil the traditional and the cosmopolitan, the urban and the rural, the exotic and the civilized, walk hand in hand. The archaic and the modern intermingle, the one questioning the other in a kind of ongoing interrogation.

  No single book can relate the history of Brazil. In fact there is no country whose history can be related in linear form, as a sequence of events, or even in a single version. This book does not set out to tell the story of Brazil, but to make Brazil the story. In the words of Hannah Arendt, both the historian and her or his reader learn to ‘train the imagination to go out on a visit’. This book takes her notion of ‘a visit’ seriously. It does not intend to construct a ‘general history of the Brazilian people’, but rather opts for a biography as an alternative form of understanding Brazil in a historical perspective: to learn about the many events that have shaped the country, and to a certain extent remain on the national agenda.

  A biography is the most basic example of the profound connection between the public and private spheres: only when articulated do these spheres constitute the fabric of a life, rendering it forever real. To write about the life of this country implies questioning the episodes that have formed its trajectory over time and learning from them about public life, about the world and about contemporary Brazil – in order to understand the Brazilians of the past, and those that should or could have been.

  The imagination and the diversity of sources are important prerequisites in the composition of a biography. A biography includes great figures, politicians, public servants and ‘celebrities’; it also includes people of little importance, who are virtually anonymous. But constructing a biography is never an easy task: it is very difficult to reconstitute the moment that inspired the gesture. One must ‘walk in the dead man’s shoes’, according to the historian Evaldo Cabral, to connect the public to the private, to penetrate a time which is not our own, open doors that do not belong to us, be aware of how people in history felt and attempt to understand the trajectory of the subjects of the biography – in this case the Brazilian people – during the time they lived: what they achieve
d in the public sphere, over the centuries, with the resources that were available to them; the fact that they lived according to the demands of their period, not of ours. And, at the same time, not to be indifferent to the pain and joy of everyday Brazilians, but to enter into their private world and listen to their voices. The historian has to find a way of dealing with the blurred line between retrieving experience, recognizing that this experience is fragile and inconclusive, and interpreting its meaning. Thus a biography is also a form of historiography.

  For similar reasons this book does not go beyond the year that marked the final phase of democratization after the dictatorship, with the election of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 1995. It is our view that the effects of the governments of Cardoso and his successor Lula are yet to be fully felt and that they mark the beginning of a new phase in the country’s history. The present has been influenced by both presidents, and perhaps it is the task of the journalist to register the effects of their governments.

  It is evident, then, that this book does not attempt to cover the entire history of Brazil. Rather, bearing in mind the issues mentioned above, it narrates the adventure of the construction of a complicated ‘society in the tropics’. As the writer Mário de Andrade said, Brazil explodes every conception that we may have of it. Far from the image of a meek and pacific country, with its supposed racial democracy, this book describes the vicissitudes of a nation which, with its profound mestiçagem, has managed to reconcile a rigid hierarchy, conditioned by shared internal values, with its own particular social idiom. Seen from this angle, in the words of the songwriter and composer Tom Jobim, ‘Brazil is not for beginners.’ It needs a thorough translation.

  1

  First Came the Name, and then the Land Called Brazil

  Pedro Álvares Cabral, a young man escaping from tedium, found pandemonium; in other words he found Brazil.

  Stanislaw Ponte Preta1

  ON THE VICISSITUDES OF A NEW WORLD

  It is hard to conceive the impact and the significance of the ‘discovery of a new world’. New, as it was uncharted on existing maps; new, as it was populated with unknown wildlife and plants; new, as it was inhabited by strange people, who practised polygamy, went about naked, and whose main occupations were waging war and ‘eating each other’. They were ‘cannibals’, according to the earliest reports, which were fanciful, exotic and brimming with imagination.

  It was the Genovese explorer himself, Christopher Columbus,2 who coined the term canibal, a corruption of the Spanish word caribal (‘from the Caribbean’). The term originated from the Arawak language spoken by the caraíba, the indigenous people of South America and the Antilles, and soon became associated with the practices reported by European explorers, who were disturbed by the anthropophagical3 habits of the local people. It was also associated with the word can, the Spanish for ‘dog’, and with the biblical figure Cam (in English spelt ‘Ham’ or ‘Cham’). In the book of Genesis Cam, Noah’s youngest son, mocked his father’s nakedness as he lay drunk in his tent. For this Noah cursed him to be his brothers’ ‘servant of servants’.4 Thus the seeds were sown for the Church’s future justification of the enslavement of black Africans – and, by association, the Indians – both of whom were considered to be descendants of the cursed line of Ham.5

  In the diary of his first expedition to the Caribbean (1492–3), Columbus, with a mixture of curiosity and indignation, comments on the fact that the island’s natives were in the habit of eating human flesh, and uses the adjective caribes (or canibes) to describe them. It was on his second expedition to the Antilles (1493–6) that the term first appears as an adjective, canibal. The spreading of the news that the indigenous peoples of the Americas practised cannibalism would provide a convenient justification for the monarchy’s new proposal: the implementation of slavery. In his letter to their Catholic Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, Columbus declared that the natives were lazy and lacking in modesty – they covered their bodies in war paint and wore no clothes, using only necklaces, bracelets and tattoos to cover their intimate parts. The argument went that although the cannibals were devoid of the values of Western civilization, they could be put to good use as slaves.

  In his letters, Amerigo Vespucci also mentioned the presence of cannibals in America. One letter, allegedly from Vespucci to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici,6 which was printed in book form in 1504 under the title Mundus Novus, immediately became a great success and was published in various parts of Europe. Vespucci’s observations had an even greater impact than Columbus’s, as they described scenes of cannibalism the author had witnessed first-hand and were illustrated with graphic prints. Vespucci’s persuasive arguments, accompanied by equally persuasive images, made a decisive contribution to the demonization of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. They were portrayed as a people with no social order or religious faith and with no notion of property, territory or money, ignorant of institutions such as the family and marriage.7 His image of the New World was inextricably associated with a decadent people. They were seemingly another part of humanity, oblivious to the values of the Old World.

  The news that arrived from this Portuguese part of the Americas, replete with tales of its paradisiacal natural abundance and the diabolical practices of its people, ignited the imagination of Europeans. The realization that an unknown, unfathomed territory existed marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of humanity. The canon of Brazilian history begins with the achievement of the ‘discoverers’, who not only founded the new Portuguese territory but also had a clear perception of its value. Paradoxically though, this official, metropolitan narrative would always be altered when indigenous peoples were included in the story – those apparently forgotten by humanity, impossible to classify, name or understand.

  But if the tone of these descriptions was marked by surprised reactions – the logs described sea monsters, gigantic animals, warriors and cannibals – historians no longer contend that the Americas were discovered by chance. After Vasco da Gama established the sea route to the Indies in 1499, the Portuguese monarchy immediately planned a further expedition based on the information he brought back. This, clearly, was the best way forward for the kingdom of Portugal, a tiny nation located at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean. The country had finally unified its territory after years of fighting against the Moors, who had occupied the Iberian Peninsula. The unification was completed by Dom Afonso III8 with the reconquest of the Algarve in 1249. The unification, along with the development of its navy and of maritime instruments, placed Portugal in a privileged position to undertake the great explorations. And it is no coincidence that the first conquest by the Portuguese Empire, the longest-lasting colonial empire with domains on four continents, was that of Ceuta, on the West African coast, in 1415.

  From the outset Portugal’s impulse to expand was based on a combination of commercial, military and evangelizing interests. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for example, the market for spices had motivated the Portuguese to discover new routes to the East. The term ‘spice’ referred to a group of vegetable products with either a strong aroma or flavour, or both. These were used to season and to conserve foods, but also in oils, ointments, perfumes and medicine. Their consumption began to increase after the Crusades, with tropical spices such as black peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg in highest demand in the fourteenth century. These spices were indigenous to Asia and commanded a very considerable price. They were used as currency, included in the dowries of aristocrats and royalty, in bequests, in capital reserves and in revenues of the Crown. They were also used for bartering – in exchange for services, in agreements, for meeting religious obligations and obtaining tax exemption – as well as for bribing high-ranking officials.

  When the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople, on 29 May 1453, however, the spice routes came under Turkish control and were closed to Christian merchants. As a result, the Spanish and Portuguese embarked on exploratory
expeditions to discover new routes, by land and sea, with the aim of monopolizing the spice trade. They attempted to circumnavigate the African continent, a hazardous venture that had never been undertaken before. Success would take a century, but the delay would prove advantageous. Portugal set up trading posts along the African coast, which became strategic locations for present and future colonization.

  The route was consolidated with the arrival of the Portuguese in the East, and became known as the ‘African Periplus’. Originally, the term implied a good omen: a long journey undertaken and a successful return. But with time, since language is always subject to the oscillations and moods of any given period, the term acquired a more negative connotation, associated with failed ventures and the ‘curse of Sisyphus’. It was used to refer to all those who had undertaken adventures that had proved beyond their powers to complete, just as Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, had cheated Death, but only for a time. In Portuguese, a ‘periplus’ came to mean a journey without end that led to nowhere. But such scepticism proved to be unfounded. The new route generated extraordinary dividends and served as a symbol for Portugal’s entry into the modern era. It was the departure point for the construction of an extensive and powerful empire.