Political Mobilization, Party Ideology, and Lusophobia in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Pernambuco, 1822-1850
2000; Duke University Press; Volume: 80; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1215/00182168-80-4-881
ISSN1527-1900
Autores Tópico(s)Colonialism, slavery, and trade
ResumoConceptualizations of nineteenth-century Brazilian political organization have long emphasized informal structures, such as kinship and patronage networks, over formal political institutions. Political parties, for example, have often been perceived as façades for personalistic groups formed to capture the spoils of government, and devoid of ideological content and significant differentiation. Caio Prado Júnior, for example, asserted similarity in the Liberal and Conservative Parties’ class composition, interests, and political ideas, by affirming that governments had liberal and conservative labels, “without that variety of nomenclature having the slightest significance.”1 However, such generalizations have hardly been tested at the provincial level,2 and evidence from the northeastern province of Pernambuco suggests the need to reexamine such perspectives. Praieiros, the Pernambucan allies of the Liberal Party in Rio, made democratic and nationalistic appeals to the middle and lower classes through Lusophobia (virulent hatred of the Portuguese).3 As in many newly independent countries, the continued economic and social presence of the former colonial power’s subjects appeared to frustrate expectations for change in nineteenth-century Brazil. Not surprisingly, politicians shared and spoke to such strongly held views. In newspapers, in electoral gatherings, and on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, Praieiro leaders proposed policies to limit the Portuguese role in the economy. The challenge to classical liberal economic principles posed by their program of Lusophobic and nationalistic development, as well as their promotion of decentralized, democratic liberalism, marked clear ideological and programmatic differences from Conservatives. Likewise, liberal Lusophobia helps explain differences in the socioeconomic composition of their political support and their willingness to use violence. All of this suggests the need to examine anew the role of ideology and formal political institutions in the era of early Brazilian state formation.In nineteenth-century Brazil resentment of the Portuguese and the Portuguese born was just below the surface.4 The reasons for this bitterness were varied. As representatives of the former colonial power, a certain guilt by association fell upon them; the anticolonial discourse of the independence era had blamed the metropolis for the ills afflicting Brazil.5 Yet the continued Portuguese political influence even after independence proved more disturbing.Across Brazil, anger over the predominance of Portuguese advisors in Dom Pedro I’s Court heightened the opposition to the first emperor. The availability of a prince of the House of Bragança to head the new country had eased the path to independence, yet it also meant that a clean break with Portugal had not yet occurred.6 Dom Pedro’s resistance to giving up his claims to the Portuguese throne gave rise to fears of possible Portuguese recolonization of Brazil upon the death of Dom Pedro’s father, Dom João VI, king of Portugal. Pedro’s acceptance of demanding British and Portuguese terms for recognition of Brazilian independence, including a payment of two million pounds to Portugal and an agreement to end the slave trade by 1830, did little to ease concerns that Pedro was more interested in pursuing dynastic ambitions in Portugal than defending Brazilian interests.7 As early as 1823 charges were leveled in the press about undue Portuguese influence with the emperor, officially through “Portuguese cabinets” and informally through “secret cabinets.” This tension was closely connected to the central political issue of the First Reign (1822–1831), the struggle over the institutional structure of the new government. Proponents of a decentralized system commonly cast Dom Pedro’s centralism as essentially a continuation of Portuguese absolutism, now based in Rio de Janeiro.8Resistance to the emperor’s efforts to construct a centralized system led him to dismiss the Constituent Assembly in 1823.9 News of the forcible closing of the Assembly prompted fears of absolutism and led to intensification of the rioting in Salvador, Bahia, where anti-Portuguese disturbances were already taking place, with largely Afro-Brazilian lower classes in control of the streets, beating Portuguese residents. When the emperor issued a constitution to his liking the following year, three more days of rioting broke out in Salvador and only promises to expel all the Portuguese pacified the Lusophobic crowds.10 Further north the response was an armed successionist attempt centered on Pernambuco, the 1824 Confederation of the Equator, in which there was also violence against the Portuguese.11In Rio de Janeiro a nativist press criticized the Portuguese-born, while street demonstrators whipped up Lusophobia. Some, like Antônio Borges da Fonseca, took advantage of access to the military barracks to agitate there. Borges da Fonseca, editor of the radical liberal newspaper O Repúblico in the Court, and the most prominent republican activist in Pernambuco for most of the next several decades, was a central figure in the street fighting and noites das garrafadas (nights of bottle throwing) in the national capital from 13 to 15 March 1831. These disturbances sharply increased tensions in the Court and set the stage for the emperor’s abdication on 7 April 1831.12In the immediate aftermath of Dom Pedro’s abdication in 1831, there were anti-Portuguese actions in the streets of nearly all of Brazil’s larger cities, typically demanding dismissal of the Portuguese born from public office and the military and often deportation as well. Rio de Janeiro was the scene of four Lusophobic uprisings over the following months, while Bahia witnessed a half dozen over the next two years. Violence between nativists and the Portuguese resulted in nearly one hundred deaths in Belém, Pará, in April 1833, and an anti-Portuguese riot left 30 adotivos dead in Mato Grosso in May 1834. Luso-phobia was central in some of the major rebellions of the regency, such as the awful carnage of the Cabanagem, in Pará, and in the Balaiada in Maranhão, and it played a lesser role in Bahia’s Sabinada.13Conflict with the Portuguese and Portuguese-born was not limited to resentment over continued political influence. Racial tension certainly strained relations with the Portuguese as well. The majority of poorer Brazilians, who for the most part bore the brunt of exploitation by, and economic competition from, foreign shopkeepers, small retailers, and artisans, were people of color. In confrontations, the Portuguese were quick to hurl racial epithets at Afro-Brazilians.14 Yet the greatest source of tension, and by far the most common target of attack, was the Portuguese role in the economy.Two complaints—omnipresence in the economy and exclusiveness among the Portuguese—were staples of Lusophobia. One analyst has noted that in Bahia the terms “Portuguese” and “merchant” were largely synonymous.15 Portuguese merchants did not, of course, monopolize transatlantic trade; in fact, the British dominated it.16 Nonetheless, for many of the native- born, it was the apparent omnipresence of the Portuguese that made for, as Praieiro leader Joaquim Nunes Machado expressed it, “that terrible anomaly of Brazilians being true foreigners, guests in their own country.”17 The Portuguese, who had access to capital gained in international commerce as well as lengthy experience in the country and, of course, command of the local language, controlled a large percentage of the retail commerce in many Brazilian cities, including Recife, the capital of Pernambuco. Both moderate liberals such as Joaquim Nunes Machado and extreme liberals such as Antônio Borges da Fonseca decried the significant number of jobs lost to the Portuguese. It was not simply a matter of competition. There were constant accusations that the Portuguese kept to themselves, aiding each other, and hiring other Portuguese. Portuguese insularity seemed a nearly insurmountable barrier for many Brazilians seeking employment.Liberal newspapers appealed to these deep currents of resentment and, in turn, intensified them.18 Extreme liberal papers went beyond the political and economic influence that the moderate papers focused on and hammered away at the supposed insolence, crimes, and moral depravity of the former colonizers, and called for action against them. In fact, the Voz do Brasil was dedicated exclusively to attacking foreign influence in Brazil.19 Only rarely, however, did the Lusophobic press direct much of its ire at foreigners other than the Portuguese.20It was easy to stoke resentment of the economic success of the Portuguese, who seemingly prospered in the midst of Brazilians suffering poverty. Accusations of Portuguese dominance of large-scale international commerce and small-scale retail trade within Brazil were commonplace.21 A supposed Portuguese “monopoly” controlled the sugar trade and it was charged that the Portuguese dominated warehousing as well.22 The most common accusation was that Portuguese domination of retail commerce sharply limited job opportunities for Brazilians. Indeed, it was common practice for Portuguese businessmen to hire immigrants from Portugal, lending credence to accusations that Portuguese shippers, warehousers, and retailers colluded by routinely hiring other Portuguese rather than Brazilians as clerks. O Regenerador Brazileiro claimed that 6,000 Portuguese-owned retail commerce houses in Pernambuco employed 12,000 Portuguese clerks, depriving Brazilians of 18,000 jobs.23Lusophobic newspapers also claimed that competition from imported goods and from Portuguese artisans working in Brazil ruined opportunities for native-born artisans. Particularly galling was the employment of Portuguese in government projects, such as the 50 carpenters employed in 1848 in the naval arsenal in Rio de Janeiro, when there were qualified Brazilians available. One paper asked how Brazilians could find work in commerce or artisanry when “our cities are overflowing with goldsmiths, tailors, masons, cabinet makers, coopers, even barbers from all over the world?”24While the greatest tension with the Portuguese was at the popular level of commercial transactions and employment, Brazilians of greater wealth might also resent the role of the Portuguese. The Praia press, for example, lashed out at the public works projects undertaken by the Baron of Boa Vista in the latter 1830s and early 1840s. Some of the of the complaints were over hiring foreign artisans, such as the 105 European artisans brought to Pernambuco; yet, the hiring of foreign engineers provoked even sharper attacks. Resentment over politically-connected foreigners obtaining access to government contracts may have been behind the criticisms of new construction techniques. The use of new construction materials, for example, threatened suppliers of the traditional materials. The building of iron bridges was defended as a means of reducing the substantial cost of repairing wooden bridges, yet this also prejudiced the interests of the recipients of those contracts.25There was also potential for conflict between Brazilian planters and Portuguese merchants. Even planters with vast estates routinely lacked ready capital. The common practice was to use urban middlemen to sell plantation products, supply goods from the city and abroad, and provide the all-important slaves and working capital. These middlemen, known as comissários or correspondentes, were often Portuguese. The high rates of interest charged seemingly allowed Portuguese correspondentes to prosper at the expense of native-born senhores de engenho.26 Gilberto Freyre, the noted scholar of the northeastern sugar plantation and its civilization, described the figure of the middleman as “[A] city aristocrat, with a gold chain about his neck, silk hat, a tiled mansion, a luxurious carriage, eating imported delicacies, raisins, figs, prunes, drinking Port wine, his daughters ravishingly attired in dresses copied from Parisian fashion books when they attended the premières of Italian divas at the opera house.”27 Clearly, such a figure, enriching himself through seemingly usurious rates of interest, could provoke resentment.Yet the elite did not invariably view the Portuguese as exploiters. After all, marital alliances might be struck that allowed capital-rich, Portuguese comissários, or their offspring, to enter the prestigious world of planters, while the latter gained access to much needed capital. Moreover, while interest rates were elevated, the middlemen did provide a crucial service that entailed risk. The uncertainty of sugar cane crops, as well as the difficulty of collecting debts when harvests failed, made loans to planters something of a gamble.28 Lusophobic papers, however, seized on the risk for Brazilians in the relationship, claiming that once Brazilians were entrapped in debt, the Portuguese raised the rate of interest or demanded that the debtors support political candidates who favored Portuguese interests.29 This was a variation on the common theme of the Portuguese controlling politics behind the scenes, corrupting and buying influence with elected representatives and newspapers.30A frequent charge in Lusophobic journalism was that Portuguese political influence made a mockery of Brazilian independence. Defeated on the field of battle, the Portuguese used their influence over Dom Pedro I to achieve their goals despite independence. A Voz do Beberibi declared that “[w]e were independent, but subject to a foreign prince.”31 Pedro violently shut down the Constituent Assembly and imposed a Constitution that contained “the seed of all the evils that have brought us to the edge of the abyss”—a clause allowing Portuguese residents in Brazil to become Brazilian citizens.32The Court in Rio de Janeiro was supposedly flooded with Portuguese.33 One paper asserted that since the reign of the Portuguese-born Dom Pedro I, a Portuguese plan had been in effect to occupy public posts, expand influence, and limit access to public posts to individuals of pro-Lusitanian persuasion.34 The active promotion of a more centralized political system supposedly allowed the Portuguese dominating the Court greater control over the entire country. The government supposedly overlooked the provinces, choosing ministers from the Court. “[I]nfernal centralization” made for despotic rule by provincial presidents comparable to colonial captains general.35Extreme liberal papers appealed to the offended honor of Brazilians, depicting the Portuguese as untrustworthy, depraved, and abusive. They were accused of cheating Brazilians by misweighing goods, introducing counterfeit money, mixing water into the milk they sold, and selling poor quality goods at inflated prices.36 Tales of Portuguese men abusing Brazilian women by luring them with promises of marriage, only to abandon them after compromising their virtue; prostituting young girls; even raping women with the assistance of slaves, were not unusual. The Voz do Brasil accused the Portuguese of intentionally sowing the seeds of depravity by encouraging gambling, dances, and sexual license.37 The Portuguese were routinely depicted as insolent towards the native-born, because the Portuguese flaunted their wealth, rode in rich carriages, and splattered mud on humble Brazilians.38Lusophobic journalism sometimes appealed to race. The Portuguese were accused of holding the belief that Brazilian people of color were anarchic, always waiting for the opportunity to rise in rebellion (thus suggesting racial contempt for, and fear of, Brazilians).39 Consequently, it was charged, the Portuguese sought to increase immigration of the their white countrymen, as well as to encourage war and violence in Brazil, which would cause the deaths of Brazilian soldiers, largely people of color.40 This charge was a particularly strong formulation of the common accusation that the Portuguese employed a divide-and-conquer strategy with Brazilians.41Lusophobic newspapers at times exhorted their readers to action against the Portuguese. Praieiro journalists, as we shall see, tried to generate support for legal restrictions on Portuguese economic activities. O Liberal, in the September electoral season of 1847, hinted at possible violence, reminding the Portuguese that they had been victims of violence in the past, and offering advice to stay out of politics.42 The Voz do Brasil, like the Praieiros, also proposed severe restrictions on Portuguese immigration, naturalization, and employment opportunities, especially in commerce.43 The extreme liberal paper, however, also made clear, unmistakable threats. In April 1847, the paper declared that the Portuguese had left only two alternatives: Brazilians could accept being enslaved by the Portuguese, or they could demand their rights, with a high cost in blood and war.44 On 2 May 1848, the paper praised France’s 1848 Revolution as the overthrow of tyranny and lamented that shouts of “liberty or death” were not heard in Brazil. Accusing the Portuguese Consul of offering 2,000 Portuguese to help put down any similar uprisings by the native-born, it encouraged Pernambucans not to retreat, assuring them that with 200 canes and ponteiras de Pasmado (artistically worked knives from Pasmado, Pernambuco) they could reduce the Portuguese presence to zero.45Attitudes towards the Portuguese examined here clearly resonate with depictions of groups elsewhere, such as Jews in Europe, Asians in East Africa, Chinese in Southeast Asia, which have been termed “middlemen minority” groups. The classic middleman function is commercial, though others, such as lending money, are frequent as well. Common characteristics are that they remain attached to their homelands and that they form a distinct community within the host society, one with strong ethnic or national ties. Their commercial operations are typically family operated, facilitating great thrift and lower costs, and when they incorporate people, typically extended family members, people from their homelands, or individuals of the same ethnic group, strong bonds of loyalty comparable to family ties are formed. Stereotypes associated with such groups are of shrewd, ambitious, unethical, parasitical businessmen, taking from the host country but returning little. Perceptions of clannishness, disloyalty, and economic strength that increase their capacity for corruption coalesce to suggest dangerous outsiders prepared to take over the society. Such groups have often been the targets of legal discrimination, riots, and deportation.46The liberal Diário Novo and the Praieiro representatives in the Court were not so reckless as to exhort people to Lusophobic violence. As political leaders working within a legal system they could not afford to call openly for such. They were, nonetheless, quite forceful in their denunciations of Portuguese influence and they proposed a range of restrictions on immigration and the economic roles permitted to foreigners. Indeed, Lusophobia was often the medium through which the Praieiros raised issues of economic nationalism and democratic participation.Joaquim Nunes Machado addressed the Chamber of Deputies in Rio on 28 June 1848, and rallied against Portuguese insolence and involvement in Brazilian politics. His speech, however, centered on the baleful effects of the large Portuguese presence in the economy and the need for the state to reduce that presence. He forcefully denounced the importations of finished products that destroyed Brazilian production of goods such as clothing, shoes, furniture, and leather and silver goods. He further criticized Brazil’s exporting raw materials, which foreigners then processed and sold back to Brazil as finished goods.47The circumstances of independence, Nunes Machado lamented, in which Brazil needed foreign support, had forced an open-door policy, allowing foreign goods and immigrants to enter without restrictions. The influx of foreigners, with their insularity, impeded native commerce and industry. That Brazilian artisans, not up-to-date with the latest techniques, and Brazilian merchants, lacking capital, were competing with foreigners who worked together, was indicative of the national peril. Nunes Machado invoked recent revolutionary events in Europe (the revolutions of 1848), affirming that chronic problems must not be put off. “First of all, we should assure our countrymen of reliable means of subsistence,” he declared.48 Nunes Machado thus outlined the rationale for strong corrective action.Challenging the universality of basic liberal economic thought, the Praieiro leader argued that statesmen needed to apply economic principles according to the circumstances of each country. In the young country of Brazil people were “still learning all of the artisanal skills and kinds of work.” Only recently emerged from a colonial regime, they were behind in knowledge and could not effectively compete with foreigners.49On 3 June 1848, Praia representatives Joaquim Nunes Machado, Felipe Lopes Netto, José Francisco de Arruda Camara, Joaquim Francisco de Faria, and Jerônimo Vilella Tavares, as well as a deputy from Rio Grande do Sul, Casimiro José de Moraes Sarmento, proposed the nationalization of retail commerce. On 28 June, speaking on the floor of the Chamber, Nunes Machado defended the nationalization of retail commerce. Foreigners were to be allowed a short time to liquidate their holdings; subsequently, only the native-born would work in this sector of the economy.50 He further proposed selectivity in who Brazil accepted as immigrants. Instead of Portuguese “adventurers” who were immediately offered good jobs in the cities by their countrymen, Brazil should welcome only those who would work uncultivated rural lands. In defense of his proposals he offered examples of European countries restricting the economic activities of foreigners.51Liberal Lusophobia was not limited to Portuguese economic domination, however. It also encompassed fundamental political issues as well. As noted earlier, the Portuguese were accused of exploiting their economic power to influence voting. More significantly, wealthy Portuguese merchants had long found entrée into prominent social (and, thus, political) circles in Pernambuco. Many merchants managed this by fulfilling their aspirations to enter the prestigious, and influential, world of the province’s planters.Moreover, as Praieiros and other Liberals made clear, the political position of the Portuguese was not a problem exclusive to Pernambuco. Portuguese merchants were well established at the nation’s center, in socially and politically prominent families in the court and province of Rio de Janeiro. By the late 1840s, the Portuguese-born emperor, Dom Pedro I, was no longer on the scene, nor was his Brazilian-born son, Dom Pedro II, surrounded by a completely Portuguese circle of advisors, as the father had been. Nonetheless, Portuguese who had settled in Brazil and become naturalized Brazilians still dominated, in many ways, the Court in Rio de Janeiro. There were important links between various Portuguese bureaucratic and merchant families, the provincial planters of Rio de Janiero, and the Conservative politicians who rose to power during the Regresso (1835–1841).52 This could only sharpen the Liberal nativism felt by those in Per- nambuco and other provinces who resented the Portuguese influence and the authoritarian centralization of the post-1835 era. More than simple xenophobia, the weight of these factors helps explain Praieiro conflation of Liberal hatred of authoritarian centralism and Lusophobia, as well as the willingness to incite Lusophobia among the discontented urban middle and lower classes. The domination of state institutions was a key subtext.At least in this era of political debate, Liberals and Conservatives were far from being ideologically identical. On Lusophobia and the issues the Praieiros linked to it, the parties were sharply distinguished as they were over mobilization of mass support and the issue of decentralization of political institutions. Given the depth of feeling about the Portuguese, it is hardly surprising that Liberals saw the usefulness of Lusophobia as a means of mobilizing support. Acknowledging the instrumental value of Lusophobia, however, is not to deny its ideological quality or to reduce ideology to nothing more than partisan manipulation. Readers may recall the ways that the ideology of anti-Communism in postwar United States, for example, independent of the merits of the ideology in its own right, was also useful as a political weapon with which to bludgeon one’s opponents in electoral contests. Few analysts would deny the ideological quality of anti-Communism simply because it also served partisan interests.Appeals to anti-Portuguese sentiments were clearly part of the Liberal strategy. One contemporary noted in his diary that stirring up hostilities with the Portuguese “attracted the people to the Liberals’ side.”53 Campaigning for his party’s nominees to the imperial senate in 1847, Joaquim Nunes Machado invoked Lusophobia, making a speech from a shoemaker’s shop in which he called for the nationalization of retail commerce.54 Mobilization of aggrieved artisans, clerks, and individuals who aspired to positions which Portuguese immigrants occupied, as well as those who generally harbored resentment towards the Portuguese, such as the free poor, marked a major difference with the Conservatives.The Conservative press in Pernambuco, in sharp contrast to the Diário Novo, defended the Portuguese presence. The Lidador noted Portuguese contributions to commerce that stimulated the economy and raised customs revenue, as well as the benefits Portuguese artisans conferred on industry in Brazil. The Lidador further argued for the beneficial effects of immigration of industrious white Europeans “in preference to that African race that … every day … demoralizes and barbarizes our land.”55 The prominent organ of the Conservative Party thus insulted Afro-Brazilians, to whom the Praieiros were successfully appealing.56The Praieiro mobilization against the post-1835 status quo was especially daring because order was a fundamental, common political value.57 Lusophobia, in contrast, as we have seen, appealed to a potent tradition of violence against the Portuguese. There were veritable outpourings of Lusophobia in Pernambuco. The 1824 Confederation of the Equator had occasioned attacks on the Portuguese. News of Dom Pedro’s abdication led to two days of rioting in Recife, disturbances which strengthened the hand of the soldiers and law students who successfully demanded the dismissal of various Portuguese and their “absolutist” allies from public posts. In September 1831, soldiers rioted in Recife, overwhelming the city in several days of chaos. They pierced the air with shouts against restorationist officers, corporal punishment, and the Portuguese. The soldiers aimed much of their ire at the office corps, which was heavily composed of Portuguese-born officers.58In November 1831, army officers and propertied citizens seized the Cinco Pontas Fort in Recife and demanded dismissal and deportation of over 30 restorationists, the dismissal from their posts of adotivos, Portuguese-born individuals who had become Brazilian citizens, and the deportation of all Portuguese with less than two million reis, that is, the large majority of the Portuguese. The rebels initially gained strength as people entered the fort to join them, including soldiers instructed to impede such actions; yet isolated in the fort, they gave up after several days.59On 14 April 1832, a restorationist rebellion erupted in the Barrio do Recife, the commercial district with a heavy Portuguese presence. The movement joined together Portuguese army officers, shop owners, clerks, artisans, large merchants, all victims of the heightening nativism of the period, and restorationist planters. Casualties were relatively low, about sixteen, until the rebels were routed, at which point massacres began. The worst case was the group of perhaps 60 rebels seeking refuge in the Madre de Deus Convent who were systematically killed.60 All of this points to a powerful tradition of liberal violence against Portuguese economic and political domination.During the Regresso the province, under the Barão da Boa Vista’s presidency, had enjoyed a respite from Lusophobic violence, and both Portuguese and Conservative interests flourished. Order prevailed.61 The return of a Liberal ministry to power at the Court in 1844, however, and the subsequent appointment of a Praieiro ally as provincial president, set the stage for renewed challenges to the social stability the Conservatives had achieved (and dominated). Indeed, in Pernambuco the willingness of the Praia to attack an order they identified with the Portuguese and the Conservative Party, and their willingness to do so by popular mobilization, significantly shaped the identity of their party, in contrast to their enemies. In fact, contemporary accounts by their enemies defined the Praieiros as a party of the lower classes.In Pernambuco, Conservative journalists of the period naturally denounced this Praia involvement with the lower classes, using a traditional appeal to an ordered, hierarchical society. Following the September 1844 elections, for example, the Diário de Pernambuco criticized the tactics of the Praia leaders in the suburb of Afogados. The paper claimed that three hundred men armed with clubs had marched to Afogados to steal ballot boxes and invalidate the election.62 Praia parliamentary leader Joaquim Nunes Machado, the paper asserted, had harangued the “heterogeneous masses” to “throw themselves like wild beasts, with clubs and knives, against
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