Visiting Brazil in the 1930s, Stefan Zweig was amazed by this land that he foresaw would “play one of the most important roles in the future development of our world”.7
What first impresses one about Brazil is the enormous size of its surfaces and its horizons. This country, with its 8,511,965 square kilometres, covers over half of the total area of South America. The great mountains that descend precipitously to the sea, the forests of lush vegetation, the tumultuous Amazon river, which with its basin of over five million square kilometres is the most extensive fluvial system in the world, give the image of a country where everything is present in super-abundance: nature, light, colours, so much so as to make one think, according to the image of Rocha Pita, of a real “terrestrial paradise”.
“In no other region is the sky as serene, nor the dawn more beautiful; in no other hemisphere are the sun’s rays more golden, nor the moonlight reflections more brilliant; the stars are the most gentle and are always happy; the horizons, whether at sunrise or at sunset, are always clear; the waters, whether from springs in the countryside or from the aqueducts of the towns, are the most pure; in short, Brazil is terrestrial paradise rediscovered”.8
The vast Brazilian continent appears perpetually clothed in light
“like a sparkling diamond in the shadows of the Infinite. (…) Its refulgence opens up, within the silence of space, an inextinguishable, tawny, ardent, mild or pallid clarity. Everything is always light. Dazzling luminous waves come down from the sun that maintain the profound calm on the earth. Light invades everything, it absorbs everything”.9
This light, that spreads an inextinguishable radiance and seems to preserve the earth in an atmosphere of intent calm, covers the great spaces with a mysterious spiritual dimension. It almost seems that the luminous extension of the horizons prepares the soul for a generous and great vocation.
Brazil’s date of birth was 22 April 1500, when on the horizon of the new land there appeared the white sails of the Portuguese fleet, commanded by Pedro Alvares Cabral. The first gesture of the descobridores (discoverers) was to erect a Cross on the beach and to celebrate on the new land the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary. From then on Brazil became the “Terra da Santa Cruz”.10 The constellation of the Southern Cross seemed to seal this scene in the skies, a scene that will remain impressed for all eternity in the Brazilian soul. “The Southern Cross, heraldic emblem of the fatherland, with its sweet nocturnal light, eternally recalls the continuity of the alliance. It speaks of an immortal hope to the Christian nation that grows on the land of the holy Cross.”11 Ever since, an Italian diplomat remarked, “the original perfume of Christianity spread to every corner of the Brazilian land, as if it had been sprinkled once for all time”.12
The Cross, recalls Father Leite, “was a symbol and a promise. But not yet a seed. This was to come, prolifically and abundantly, almost a half century later, in 1549, with the establishment of a General Government and the arrival of the Jesuits”.13 In that year, six missionaries of the Society just founded by St Ignatius followed the governor Tomé de Souza, an envoy sent by John III of Portugal to evangelize the new land.14 They, Stefan Zweig observed, brought with them the most precious thing necessary for the existence of a people and a country: an idea, and precisely “the idea of Brazil”.15
The Jesuits infused a soul into what up to then had been a land rich in potential, but shapeless. “The land is our task”16 declared Father Manuel da Nóbrega17 who, with Father José de Anchieta,18 may be considered the founder of Brazil. From the Descobrimento (Discovery) to our times, the missionaries carried out a “task, unparalleled in history”,19 of Christianizing and, at the same time, of civilizing the lands of Brazil. The Jesuits catechized the natives, gathering them into special villages (Aldeias), they opened the first schools, they built colleges, churches, roads and cities.20
When the Huguenots tried to take over the new land, Fathers Nobrega and Anchieta were the overseers (orientadores) of the military operations against the French Protestants who had disembarked in the Bay of Guanabara.21. In the centre of the arching coastline of the splendid bay they had conquered,22 a small city was founded that was destined to become the capital: Rio de Janeiro. Here all the natural beauties of Brazil seemed to flow together in an unrepeatable synthesis: mountains, hills, forests, islands, inlets.23 In the beginning, the capital of the Portuguese colony was Salvador da Bahia, one of the “genetic cells”24 of Brazil, together with São Paulo, Rio, Pernambuco and Maranhão.
The immense territory was divided into twelve hereditary Capitanias, from which evolved the various States that would make up the Brazilian Confederation.25 The beneficiaries, provided with ample concessions, were chosen by the king of Portugal from among “the best people. Former navigators, veterans, personages of the court.”26 Brazil continued to be an integral part of the kingdom of Portugal even during the period between 1580 and 1640, when the Portuguese crown was personally united with that of Spain. In the struggle against the Dutch, who managed to get a foothold in Bahia (1624-25), and for a longer period in Recife (1630-54), the Brazilian national conscience began to be formed.27 When Recife, the last Dutch outpost, surrendered to the Brazilian army, a united people already existed. “The Dutch wars had the advantage of consolidating into one type, unknown up to then, all the different elements of the colonization.”28
The first Brazilian aristocratic type was that of the sugar mill lords (senhores de engenho). Sugar cane was the most typical Brazilian crop in the feudal picture of the Capitania, throughout the whole colonial period.29
The sugarcane plantations and the mills, the small refineries where the slaves worked, built near water courses, constituted the beginning of the Brazilian farming civilization. The Great House (Casa-grande), the manor of the sugar mill lords, looked like a military fortress.30 The sugar mill lords formed the great strength that opposed the invasions of the Dutch, the French and the English, enemies of the Faith and of the King.31
The sugarcane cycle was the main agricultural and industrial activity during the first two centuries of national life. In the eighteenth century, after the unexpected discovery of gold in the state of Minas Gerais, this metal took first place in the economic production of the country.
The protagonists of the cycle of gold and of precious stones were the bandeirantes (armed explorers),32 direct heirs of the descobridores for their courage and spirit of adventure. On horseback, with the flag up front, like riders of fortune, they followed the course of the rivers, scaled mountains, ventured inland in search of gold and precious stones.
After the socio-economic cycle of sugar and that of gold, the mid-eighteenth century saw the beginning of the third great civilization, that of coffee, which up until 1930 was the main source of wealth for the Brazilian economy.
During the nineteenth century, Brazil gained its independence, but in a different way from the other Latin-American nations: not through armed struggle, but through the establishment of an empire with the son of the King of Portugal, Dom Pedro I of Braganza (1798-1834) on its throne.
In São Paulo, on 7 September 1822, Dom Pedro I proclaimed the independence of Brazil. Two years later he issued its first constitution. He was succeeded by his son, Dom Pedro II,33 a philanthropic sovereign, whose long and peaceful reign ended immediately after the abolition of slavery with the Republican Revolution.34 The Empire lost the support of the landed aristocracy, who had considered the liberation of the slaves as erroneous and premature. After a bloodless coup, the Republic was proclaimed in Rio on 15 November 1889.
“The Brazilians” the historian Guglielmo Ferrero wrote “saw the monarchy fall gently, without any bloodshed, just like lovely summer days end, calm and luminous.”35
In 1891 the Empire of Brazil became the Republic of the United States of Brazil. Its new flag bore the positivistic motto “Order and Progress”.36 “Brazil was then at the beginning of a time when it would excel in making ‘Progress’ a god, and ‘Science’ a goddess for its intellectual elites.”37 The Republic was composed of a federation of independent states, each with its own parliament and its own government. The Church was separated from the State, civil marriage was decreed and the political economy was altered. The first ten years of the century in Brazil were characterized by a climate of euphoria and optimism, due to the hopes aroused by the institutional change and by the economic and social progress of the country.38 It was the “golden period” of the First Republic.39
Notes:
6. Cf. the entry Saudade, in Grande Enciclopédia Portuguesa e Brasileira, (Lisbôa-Rio de Janeiro, Editorial Enciclopédia, 1945), vol. 28, pp. 809-10. The Portuguese philologist Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos (1851-1925) underlined the complete harmony existing between the Portuguese term saudade and the German Sehnsucht. A Saudade portuguesa, Porto, Renascença portuguesa, 1922.
7. Stefan Zweig, Land of the future, (London, Cassell, 1942), p. 2; cf. also Ernani Silva Bruno, Historia e Tradições da Cidade de São Paulo, 3 vols., Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1954; Affonso A. de Freitas, Tradições e reminiscências paulistanas, 3rd edn., Governo do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo 1978; Luiz Gonzaga Cabral S.J., Influência dos Jesuitas na colonização do Brasil, in Jesuitas no Brasil, (São Paulo, Companhia Melhoramentos de S. Paulo, 1925), vol. III.
8. Sebastião da Rocha Pita (1660-1738), História da América Portuguesa, in Werneck, Antologia Brasileira, (Rio de Janeiro, Livreria Francisco Alves, 1939), p. 210.
9. José Pereira da Graça Aranha (1868-1931), A esthetica da vida, (Rio de Janeiro-Paris, Livraria Garnier, 1921), p. 101.
10. “Brazil was born Christian. Its first historian, who was also one of its discoverers, called it the Island of the True Cross”. Padre Serafim Leite S.J, Páginas de História do Brasil, (São Paulo, Companhia Editora Nacional, 1937), p. 11. The chronicler of the expedition, Pedro Vaz de Caminha, wrote to the king: “We cannot tell if there is gold, silver, metals or iron; we have seen none of them. But the land itself is rich (. ) However the best fruit that can be drawn from it, in our opinion, is to bring to its inhabitants the salvation of their souls.” in Roger Bastide, Brasil terra de Contrastes, It. tr., Il Brasile, (Milan, Garzanti, 1964), p. 13; text of the letter of Pero Vaz e Caminho in Jaime Cortesão, A expedição de Pedro Alvares Cabral, (Lisbôa , Livrarias Ailland e Bertrand, 1922), pp. 233-56.
11. Yves de la Brière, Le règne de Dieu sous la Croix du Sud, (Bruges-Paris, Desclée de Brouwer & C., 1929), p. 20.
12. Roberto Cantalupo, Brasile euro-americano, (Milan, Istituto per gli Studi di Politica Internazionale, 1941), p. 89.
13. Leite S.J., Páginas de História do Brasil, pp. 12-13. “Without ignoring the part others had to play, one can, without fear, make this exact statement: the history of the Jesuits in Brazil in the sixteenth century is the history of the formation of Brazil itself as regards its catechetical, moral, spiritual, educational formation and, in great part, its colonial formation as well. The contribution of other religious factors does not significantly modify these results” (p. 14).
14. The Regimento of 17 December 1548 in which the King John III of Portugal outlined to his governor Tomé de Souza the rules of government which he should adhere to in Brazil, stated: “The main reason that drove me to send people to populate the aforesaid lands of Brazil was that the people of that country should convert to our holy Catholic faith”. Regimento de Tomé de Souza, Biblioteca Nacional de Lisbôa, Arquivo da Marinha, liv. 1 de ofícios, de 1597 a 1602. Cf. also Padre Armando Cardoso S.J., “O ano de 1549 na historia do Brasil e da Companhia de Jesus”, Verbum, no. 6, 1949, pp. 368-92.
15. S. Zweig, Brazil, p. 38. Cf. Carlos Sodré Lanna, “Gênese da civilização cristã no Brasil”, Catolicismo, no. 519, March 1994, pp. 23-4; Idem, “A epopéia missionária na formação da Cristandade luso-brasileira”, Catolicismo, no. 533, May 1995, pp. 22-3.
16. in Antonio de Queiroz Filho, A vida heróica de José de Anchieta, (São Paulo, Edições Loyola, 1988), p. 43.
17. Father Manuel da Nóbrega was born in Entre-Douro-e-Minho in Portugal on 18 October 1517 and died in Rio de Janeiro on 18 October 1570. Doctor in Canon Law and Philosophy in Coimbra, in 1544 he entered the Society of Jesus and in 1549 he was sent by St Ignatius to Brazil, where he was the first superior of the Jesuit mission and then Provincial. His mission developed for over twenty years, up to his death.
18. Born on 19 March 1534 in La Laguna (Canaries), Blessed José de Anchieta died in Reritiba (now Anchieta) on 9 June 1957. In 1551 he entered the Society of Jesus and two years later embarked for Brazil with a group of missionaries who followed the Portuguese governor Duarte da Costa. Ordained to the priesthood in 1566, he participated in the Foundation of São Paulo (1554) and of Rio de Janeiro (1565) and in 1578 became Provincial of Brazil, while carrying out a tireless apostolate that earned him the title of “Apóstolo do novo Mundo”. He was beatified by John Paul II in 1980. Cf. Alvares do Amaral, O Padre José Anchieta e a fundação de São Paulo, São Paulo, Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1971.
19. Leite S.J., História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, (Lisboa , Livraria Portugal, 1938), vol. I.
20. Alongside the Jesuits, the Benedictines (from 1582), the Carmelites (from 1584), the Capuchins (from 1612) and other religious orders carried out their The Jesuits, expelled in 1760 by the Marquis of Pombal, returned to Brazil in 1842. On the 40 Jesuit martyrs of 1570, cf. Mauricio Gomes dos Santos S.J., Beatos Inacio de Azevedo e 39 companheiros martires, Didaskalia, no. 8, 1978, pp. 89-155; pp. 331-66 (translation of the study made for the historical office of the Congregation of Saints).
21. Giuseppe Adorno was counsellor to Fathers Nobrega and He was an Italian aristocrat of the family of the Genoese Doges, who had put his fortune and his life at the service of the new Lusitanian country, after having been forced to abandon his city. As well as the Adorno family, the Acciaiuoli (Accioly), Doria, Fregoso, Cavalcanti (Cavalcanti d’Albuquerque) families all transferred to Brazil in the sixteenth century.
22. Sodré Lanna, “A expulsão dos franceses do Rio de Janeiro”, Catolicismo, no. 509, May 1993, pp. 22-4.
23. “Rio de Janeiro, from the point of view of its panorama, can be considered a synthesis of Brazil. It is the heart of Brazil that continues to beat there, in spite of the fact that the capital has officially been transferred to Brasília. There is a mysterious synthesis of the country there, an invitation to a future laden with mysterious promises.” Corrêa de Oliveira, “Meditando sobre as grandezas do Brasil”, Catolicismo, no. 454, October 1988.
24. “The noted historian of Brazil, João Ribeiro, calls, with energetic exactness, the following places of its territory as genetic cells of the fabric of Brazil: Bahia, Pernambuco, S. Paulo, Rio and Maranhão. Now, of these five genetic cells, two (…) were the exclusive result of the Jesuits: S. Paulo, which they founded with their own hands, and Rio de Janeiro, which they were able to found against all odds. The other three: Bahia, Pernambuco e Maranhão developed as they did because of the Jesuits” L. G. Cabral S.J., Jesuitas no Brasil (século XVI), (São Paulo, Companhia Melhoramentos de São Paulo, 1925), p. 266.
25. Homero Barradas, “As capitanias hereditárias. Primeiro ensaio de um Brasil orgânico”, Catolicismo, no. 131, November
26. Pedro Calmon, História do Brasil, (Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1959), vol. I, p. 170.
27. Lucio Mendes, “Calvinistas holandeses invadem cristandade luso-americana”, Catolicismo, no. 427, July 1986, pp. 2-3; ID., “Martírio e heroismo na resistência ao herege invasor”, Catolicismo, no. 429, September 1986, pp. 10-12; Diego Lopes Santiago, Historia da Guerra de Pernambuco, Fundação do Patrimonio Histórico e Artístico de Pernambuco, Recife 1984. There were many Italian officers, especially Neapolitans, who came to Brazil during this period (cf. Gino Doria, I soldati napoletani nelle guerre del Brasile contro gli olandesi (1625-1641), Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, Naples, 1932). When in 1624, the Dutch West Indian Company had occupied Bahia, Philip IV sent a fleet, which included a Neapolitan tercio, guided by Carlo Andrea Caracciolo, Marquis of Torrecuso. Another Neapolitan commander, the Count of Bagnoli Gian Vincenzo Sanfelice, in 1638 successfully defended Bahia from the Dutch Calvinists, who aspired to form a Protestant State in South America. Between Brazil and the Kingdom of Naples there was always a fruitful exchange (cf. for example: Paolo Scarano, Rapporti politici, economici e sociali tra il Regno delle Due Sicilie e il Brasile (1815-1860), Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, Naples 1958).
28. Calmon, Storia della Civiltà brasiliana, It. tr. (Rio de Janeiro , Industria Tipografica Italiana, 1939), p. 52.
29. Sugarcane, an ideal product for a country beginning its development, was cultivated up to the end of the sixteenth century in the north and in the south of Brazil. The centre of cultivation was the state of Pernambuco, whose port of Recife became in the seventeenth century the greatest emporium of coffee in the world (P. Calmon, Storia della Civiltà brasiliana, p. 85). Cf also P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Genesis, Development, and Twilight of the “Nobility of the Land” in Colonial, Imperial, and Republican Brazil”, appendix to the American edition of Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII, (York, Hamilton Press, 1993), pp. 331-79.
30. Gilberto Freyre, Casa-Grande & Senzala, 5th edn., (São Paulo, Editora José Olympio, 1946), vol. I, p. 24.
31. The conquest of lands has after all a warrior characteristic “Every ploughed estate, every ‘peopled’ sesmaria, every fence built, every sugar factory ‘constructed’, has a difficult military operation as a necessary From north to south, the establishment of new farms and pastures is made with the sword in hand”. Francisco José Oliveira Vianna, O Povo Brasileiro e a sua Evolução, (Rio de Janeiro, Ministério da Agricultura, Indústria e Comércio, 1922), p. 19.
32. On the Bandeirantes, the imposing História Geral das Bandeiras Paulistas, 11 vols., São Paulo, 1924-50, by Affonso de Taunay, summarized in História das Bandeiras Paulistas, Edicões Melhoramentos, 2 vols., São Paulo 1951; cf. also J. Cortesão, Raposo Tavares e a formação territorial do Brasil, Ministério da Educação e Cultura, Rio de Janeiro 1958; Ricardo Roman Blanco, Las “bandeiras”, Brasilia, Universidade de Brasilia, 1966.
33. Dom Pedro II (1825-91) married in 1843 Princess Teresa Cristina, sister of Ferdinand II, king of the Two Her eldest daughter Isabella (1846-1921) married Prince Gaston of Orléans, Count d’Eu, of whom she had three sons: Pedro de Alcântara, Luiz and Antônio. The first having renounced, in 1908, for himself and for his descendants, the right of succession, his brother Prince Luiz of Orleans-Braganza (1878-1920) became heir to the throne. He married Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Sicily (cf. Armando Alexandre dos Santos, A Legitimidade Monárquica no Brasil, São Paulo, Artpress, 1988). On Dom Pedro II, cf. Heitor Lyra, Historia de Dom Pedro II: 1825-1891, Editora Nacional, São Paulo 1940. “Dom Pedro was a magnanimous, generous and just sovereign, a model of patriotism and culture, of zeal and integrity, of tolerance and simplicity. He was wise and a philanthropist. A Member of the Institute of France and of the main foreign scientific and literary societies, he was a protector of the arts, sciences and literature. He gave monetary aid for the education of many distinguished Brazilians; this great patron never closed his purse to them.” S. Rangel de Castro, Quelques aspects de la civilisation brésilienne, (Paris s. d., Les Presses Universitaires de France), pp. 29-30. Cf. also Leopoldo Bibiano Xavier, “Dom Pedro e a gratidão nacional”, Catolicismo, no. 491, December 1991.
34. A first law of 1871, the so-called “law of the free womb”, granted freedom to children born of a slave mother starting at 21 years of age. In 1885 the “law of the sixty-year-olds” was approved; this emancipated slaves over 65 years of age. On 13 May 1888, under the conservative ministry of João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira, the Princess Isabella, Countess d’Eu and Imperial Regent during the absence of her father travelling in Europe, ratified the law that definitively abolished slavery. At that time Brazil had a population of 14 million inhabitants with a little over 700,000 slaves. The phenomenon of slavery was actually fading out spontaneously. On the act of abolition of slavery cf. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A margem do 13 de maio”, O Legionário, no. 296, 15 May 1938. Cf. also Robert Conrad, Os últimos anos da escravatura no Brasil, 1850-1888, 2nd edn., Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira, 1978,; Emilia Viotti da Costa, A abolição, São Paulo, Global, 1982.
35. in Rangel de Castro, Quelques aspects de la civilisation brésilienne, p. 29.
36. Guglielmo Ferrero tells of having visited in Rio de Janeiro, on Benjamin Constant Street, a “temple of mankind” where one discusses “pleasantly about many things with the high priest, Mr Teixeira Mendes”. Ferrero, Fra i due mondi, (Milan, Fratelli Treves Editori, 1913), p. 187.
37. Freyre, Ordem e Progresso, 3rd edn., 2 vols., (Rio de Janeiro, Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1974), vol. I, p. 515, and more in general, Ronald M. Schneider, “Order and Progress.” A Political History of Brazil, Boulder (Colorado), Westview Press, 1991.
38 The successive Heads of State were: Prudente de Morais (1894-98), Campos Sales (1898-1902), Rodrigues Alves (1902-06), Afonso Pena (1906-09), Nilo Peçanha (1909-10), Hermes da Fonseca (1910-14), while Brazilian foreign policy was continuously directed during this period by the Baron of Rio Branco (1845-1912).
39. “It was ‘the golden period’of the First Republic, if we are to give names to different epochs as did the historians of old….” Plinio Doyle, Brasil 1900-1910, (Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca Nacional, 1980), vol. I, p. 14. At the dawn of the century, Brazil had 17,318,556 inhabitants, over 60 percent of whom lived in the rural areas.