Diplomacia e Relações Internacionais

Luis Claudio Villafane G. Santos: O Dia Que Adiaram o Carnaval - Peter Beattie (book review, HAHR)

Recebo, do meu amigo e colega Luís Cláudio Villafañe Gomes Santos, a resenha que Peter Beattie, um historiador brasilianista, fez sobre o seu livro "O Dia em que Adiaram o Carnaval" para a Hispanic American Historical Review. Está no número atual, de agosto: http://hahr.dukejournals.org/content/current

O Dia em que adiaram o carnaval: Política externa e a construção do Brasil. By Luís Cláudio Villafañe G. Santos. São Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2010. Notes. Bibliography. 278 pp. Paper, R$ 40.00.

This book’s title refers to the Brazilian government’s effort to suspend the celebration of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnaval in 1912 from February until April to mourn the death of the nation’s premier diplomat, the Barão do Rio Branco (José Maria da Silva Paranhos Jr.), who died the Saturday before Ash Wednesday. The common citizens of Rio de Janeiro, however, honored Rio Branco in their own fashion by celebrating Carnaval twice that year. Villafañe uses this extraordinary event to introduce his examination of Brazilian national identity through the little-considered lens of its international diplomacy and Itamarati’s most celebrated historical figure: Rio Branco. For the author, “Num mundo de Estados-nações, a política externa é fator primordial na definição do caráter da nação” (p. 43). This hypothesis is the point of departure for a broad survey of Brazilian foreign relations in tandem with evolving conceptions of Brazilian national identity from late colonial to contemporary times.

Villafañe argues that because Brazilian identity came into existence after Brazilians won independence from the Portuguese, Rio Branco’s diplomatic work to define the limits of Brazil’s national territory made him a founding father after the fact. To support this assertion, he examines a stained glass representation in Washington DC’s National Cathedral celebrating the first Pan-American Congress in 1826 that uses three principal images of Latin American patriots: Simón Bolívar, José Francisco de San Martín, and Rio Branco. In this representation, an artist clearly depicts Rio Branco as a symbol of Brazil and associates him anachronistically with the founding fathers of Spanish American nations. Villafañe, however, does not reveal the stained glass artist’s identity. The Baltimore native Rowan LeCompte designed most of the windows in Washington’s National Cathedral, but I was unable to confirm that he had designed that particular window. In any case, it is doubtful that this stained glass representation reveals how Brazilians understood the place of Rio Branco in their pantheon of national heroes rather than how an American artist interpreted this pantheon. This representation of Rio Branco graces the cover of the book, but its centrality to the author’s argument seems a bit of a stretch. This, however, is a minor criticism, because the author provides many other examples and interpretations of Rio Branco’s prestige within Brazil.

The strength of this manuscript is the author’s agile analysis of the evolution of the Brazilian government’s foreign policy, which Rio Branco’s diplomacy shaped for most of the twentieth century. He argues that Rio Branco came to prominence in the early twentieth century because he fit the historical patriotic moment better than other figures. The transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic in 1889 promoted the image of Tiradentes, leader of a failed republican conspiracy in the eighteenth century, as a symbol of national unity. Meanwhile, the military tried to promote the heroes of the Paraguayan War, principally the Duke of Caxias, in the early republic as symbols of national unity, but the duke’s association with loyalty to the monarchy made him a less than ideal symbol for the new republic. The barão’s image as a republican man of peace who settled most of Brazil’s border disputes through international law fit the way most influential Brazilian intellectuals and politicians sought to project the image of their nation in the early twentieth century. Brazilians lived peacefully with neighbors and other nations across the world. For Villafañe, Brazilian leaders in the early twentieth century debated how Brazil should present itself and interact with the international community, and for all practical purposes, Rio Branco best captured their conclusions (p. 186). Rio Branco was not associated with the fractious politics of Brazil’s past, and his success in international negotiations reinforced the image of a peaceful Brazil. The author points out the contradiction that this image was often at odds with the disorder and violence of Brazil’s early republic, which was convulsed by events such as the 1893–1894 Armada Revolt, the 1896–1897 Canudos Rebellion, the 1910 Chibata Revolt, and the 1912–1916 Contestado Revolt, among others.

Villafañe successfully shows how foreign policy involves and invokes narratives and images that helped to define and reshape conceptions of Brazilian national identity and character, but he recognizes that this mostly top-down, state-led project had its limits. To demonstrate this, he returns to the state’s ham-handed efforts to reschedule Carnaval in 1912. He transcribes the lyrics of a samba march sung during the second celebration of Carnaval that lampooned the government: “Com o morte do Barão / Tivemos dois carnavá / Ai que bom, ai que gostoso / Se morresse o marechá” (p. 265). The government’s failed attempt to enshrine Rio Branco in the public memory by delaying the mirth of Carnaval had the unintended consequence of encouraging a Carnaval wag to imagine how good it would be if Brazil’s president, Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, would also die so that they could celebrate Carnaval yet again. A confluence of popular and elitist projects and representations shaped national identity and memory, a process that often escaped the control of political authorities.

Peter M. Beattie, Michigan State University

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