Freyre. 1943. Brazilian Culture

8/13/2019 Freyre. 1943. Brazilian Culture

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International Phenomenological Society

A Consideration of the Problem of Brazilian CultureAuthor(s): Gilberto FreyreReviewed work(s):Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 4, No. 2, Papers and Discussions ofthe First Inter-American Conference of Philosophy (Dec., 1943), pp. 171-175Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2103065.

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CONSIDERATION OF PROBLEM OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE 171Dinamarca quando as necessidades de guerra da Alemanha nazista aantingiram burtalmente. Ora, a reforma de ensino da Dinamarca 6 obraprima de ciencia e filosofia; de humanismo cientifico. Obra prima de quese destacam as escolas para os camponeses com um programa em que sejunta ao ensino da agriculture e da criaga-ode vacas e de aves o da historia,da poesia, da religion.

0 exemplo dinamarques se impoe tambem ao Brasil e aos demais paisesamericanos, cujo sistema de ensino precisa de ser reformado nao porpedagogos so de gabinete, mas sobre o conhecimento vivo e tanto quantopossivel exato da nossa situagdo antropologica-fisica, social e de cultura-ecom o maximo de aproveitamento dos nossos valores tradicionais e popu-lares. Inclusive a poesia do povo, sua musica, sua arte, seu folklore.Realisado esse esforqo, teremos dado ponto de apoio firme as pretensoesde nos desenvolvermos em cultura sob varios aspectos extra-europeia; enao passivamente sub-europeia.

GILBERTO FREYRE.RECIFE, BRAZIL.

A CONSIDERATION OF THE PROBLEM OFBRAZILIAN CULTUREI have just received a letter from a young and unusuallyintelligentBrazilian who is interested in regional problems of anthropological sociol-ogy. He expresses all sorts of doubts and fears. The problem is mainlythis: is Brazil developing or will it ever develop a culture of its own? This

brilliant young student seems to belong to the school of thought whichbelieves that eventually we all shall become completely Europeanized.This will be achieved either directly through Europe or indirectly throughNorth American industrialism which is an offshoot of Europe: that bour-geois Europe, or as Professor Patrick Geddes would say, paleotechnicalEurope, of which the United States became the pathological extension on afantastic scale during the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentiethcentury. Therefore, our attempts to evolve a new, and in certain ways,an extra-European culture will be utterly futile. The accepted sociologicalaxiom that Europe is our only salvation will thus be borne out. But Iinsist that neither racial nor cultural salvation is to be found in Europe.We who wish Brazilian culture to develop and to openly assume non-European aspects, courageously affirming what I have already called asociologically hybrid strength-we do not wish (let this point be well


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172 PHILOCSOPHYND PHETNOMENOLOGICALESEARCHunderstood) every valuable European contribution which is part andparcel of our lives to be discarded for non-European substitutes. This new(and as much as possible original) culture which we wish to develop inBrazil, would be new and original mainly because of the combination andblending of values of various origins Amerindian, European, African,and Asiatic. These values are subject to the needs and conditions ofAmerica in general and Brazil in particular. This is due to racial interbreed-ing and the merging of various cultures. The Christian Portuguese ele-ment is the most decisive factor, although by no means the only one.

In general, the problem presents itself in these terms. It remains to beseen whether that development of useful survivals and of variously begottenliving cultural values is possible in new combinations and blendings whichcorrespond to Brazilian necessities and conditions in physical, bio-chemical,and social fields. This question will only be sociologically resolved, whenthe result of the present war is definitely known. Among other burningproblems of European economic supremacy specifically and Europeanculture in general is being decided now. European supremacy, whichhas hitherto meant the supremacy of western Europe, is being challengedon the continent itself by the surprising vigor of Russian strength, Russiantechnology, and Russian ideology. This ideology is hostile to economicimperialism, which for so many centuries has dominated European culture(technologically and politically enriched by the United States), and con-stitutes a type of dogma of infallibility. By this I do not mean the infal-libility of Catholic Rome which as such is supra-continental but thatof Western Europe.The young man who has just written me is an example of a reaction inour midst to a philosophy which is today undergoing the crisis of industrialprogress on a capitalistic basis to which it has for so long apparently beenassociated: the credo that Europe is the only source of culture capable ofsustaining and enabling the peoples of America. This was true to suchan extent that these peoples believed that they should stamp out all othersources of culture, and eradicate every Amerindian or African survivalin their lives, their blood, and their own country.Against this ideal of European exclusiveness in our lives, our culture,our blood, and our country, we, the men of the younger generation arerebelling today. This is true of various American countries, as well as ofIndia, China, and the colonial and semi-colonial lands of Asia and Africawhose intellectual, moral, political, end economic vigor has been throttledby this myth of Europe's absolute superiority. Anthropological andsociological studies made in the last 30 or 40 years studies which paradoxi-cally enough, were carried on for the most part in the very shadow of thesesame imperialistic powers-are still conferring a new sense of dignity upon


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CONSIDERATION OF PROBLEM OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE 173non-European peoples-based on science and biological, social, and culturalconditions. These conditions were depreciated by sociologists of doubtfulscientific standing, like the Frenchman, G. Le Bon, whose writings longenjoyed widespread popularity throughout Spanish and PortugueseAmerica.The young Brazilian, whose letter I have been commenting upon, alsoseems to belong to those who do not see great possibilities of Brazil's de-veloping a culture which in certain ways is non-European, and similar tothat of Mexico. There are so many proofs that our yet rare manifestationsof creative Americanism are succumbing to the strong and solid dominionof organizations determined to preserve our status as a cultural colonyof Europe that the vague stirring of Brazilian culture would be condemnedto. total disappearance.For the young Brazilian preoccupied with problems of Brazilian cultureand anthropology, the case of Ibiapina appears to be full of social sig-nificance. In his opinion it provided a pretext for the recent outbreak ofhatred, which was not only political and religious in character but culturalas well, against Brazilians desirous of a less colonial Brazil.' Ibiapinasucceeded in combining Brazilian energy, Northeastern perseverance, andthe enthusiasm of the Bandeirantes in the cause of Christian expansion in

1 We refer to the imprisonmentin the city of Recife, Brazil, last June, of the authorof this little communication by order of the state authorities. According to what issaid and appears to be so, this was done under pressure of the Jesuits, who are veryinfluential in that city, where, despite the fact that they are all foreigners, mainlyPortuguese and Spaniards, they brazenly dabble in politics. The point of view ofthese Jesuits seems to be what the author characterized as being the philosophy thatculturally there is no salvation outside of Europe. In fact, they seem to be clearlyopposed to any system of social philosophy which sanctions the right of Brazil andother American countries to attempt to evolve a culture, which from various pointsof view, is new, original, and non-European. This idea is being developed by theauthor in various works, as there seems to be no incompatibility to him between simi-lar Americanisms and true Christianity. This must in no way be an expression ofEuropean exclusiveness or of European cultural domination. It should be said thatthese Jesuits and the members of the government of the State of Pernambuco affi-liated with their philosophy, are sympathetic to Falangism and Fascism itself, oneof them having written a virulent attack on the ideas of the famous Catholic phi-losopher, Professor Jacques Maritain.Father Ibiapina-the subject of this article which served as a pretext for theimprisonment of the author was a Brazilian priest with a missionary vocation. Invarious places in the interior of Brazil he founded schools for religious education,agriculture, and industrial training adapted to local Brazilian needs. Unfortunatelythis organization was not continued after Ibiapina's death. Recently it was ascer-tained that various foreign priests engaged in missionaryactivities throughout Brazilwere political agents rather than religious teachers. Hence the author contrasted theexample of the above Ibiapina with the latter.


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174 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCHBrazil. He established a formidable organization of Catholic activity inthe deserts (Sertoes) of the Northeast similar to that of Don Bosco andthe Marists.

This activity would be carried on principally by natives, by caboclosof the country of the same brand as Ibiapina himself, and by most Brazilianladies-who instead of mothers, sisters superior, or nuns would allbe known as mais-sinhas, a characteristically Brazilian expression bothin its composition and its connotations.In the fiasco of the heroic attempt of Father Ibiapina my correspondent

seems to see a proof of the cultural precariousness of mestizo Brazil in theface of a white Europe, still imperialistic in its designs and methods;anxious to maintain her position as all-powerful mistress of the Brazilianeducational system, that is to say, what might be termed the Braziliansystem of education. The result of this, however, would be that we(Brazilians who are integrally or sociologically Christian) would be withoutany means of communicating to the younger generation the consciousnessand the taste for values and combinations of values, which are peculiarto us. Nor would we be able to instill in them the zeal for identifyingCatholicism with the regional needs of Brazil, with folklore, with populartraditions, and with tropical conditions in our country. All this could bedone providing that fusion might be possible without sacrifice to orthodoxCatholicism, that is, so that Catholic orthodoxy might preserve the sumtotal of European national, dynastic or continental interests and preten-sions to supremacy or of sole cultural dominion in the modern world.This includes adherence to the orthodox preservation of the old faith ofHebrew origin which was once devoted to the saints and not to Euro-peans.It is apparent that Brazilian culture, (like other American cultures) hasinherited a rich cultural background from Europe to be developed in ac-cord with its necessities and interests. These interests are to be foundwithin the perspectives which daily develop when provincial or regionalenergies come into contact with the universal ones, but without contactwith European tradition involving the sacrifice of regional spontaneityor cultural development and expressions of life to the exclusion of Europeanstyles and values. It would be a great mistake for us to separate theproblem of educational reforms from Brazilian anthropological problemsand from American questions which require orientation and the help ofapplied anthropology for their solution or attempted solution. By educa-tional reform we do not mean what is understood by conventional peda-gogues, who are limited by their pedagogical theories at best, but educationalreform as determined by physical, social, and cultural anthropologicalstudies of Brazilian populations and of American areas.Neither in Brazil, nor in the United States, nor in any other country


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CONSIDERATION OF PROBLEM OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE 175do men of intellectual and scientific integrity want the present war to befollowed by a new Versailles-a patched peace instead of a lasting peace;a false and narrowly political peace when social and cultural maladjust-ments cried out for and still cry out for a concerted effort to reorganizeEurope and to solve the problem of colonies and raw materials. Thiseffort would be an educational reform based on intercultural and interna-tional relations, the planning of federations which are based on culturerather than on race, and of democracies which are social rather thanpolitical in character which in Europe at least should be substituted forclass, racial, and national stratifications. Versailles, nevertheless, wasremarkable in that it created a peace of narrow-minded politicians. Noteven economists of scientific vision like Keynes were listened to. And asfor. anthropologists-who can imagine a Clemenceau, or a Lloyd George(each one vainer than the other of his political acumen, his experience as ademagogue and his realism as a statesman) capable of taking lessons fromanthropologists, folklorists, and educators?Only the little kingdom of Denmark, feeling that there was somethingrotten in Denmark, as well as throughout Europe, ever since Versailles,concentrated on the task of reorganizing her economy, and her culturethrough the joint efforts of her statesmen and her scientists, including heranthropologists, folklorists, and educators. Hence her new economic set-up and to certain degree her social reorganization, in addition to her mostadvanced educational reforms. These reforms by which the people ofDenmark were gradually being socialized and democratized when thehorrors of war with Nazi Germany brutally assailed here, were conductedon a scientific basis. The educational reforms in Denmark are a supremecreation of science, philosophy, and scientific humanism. A salient featureof this supreme achievement are the schools for peasants embodying aprogram including farming, cattle raising, and poultry raising, as well ashistory, poetry, and religion.Denmark's example is being followed by Brazil and other Americancountries, whose educational system has to be revised not by theoreticalpedagogues, but by men possessing a practical knowledge of and (as far aspossible) an exact acquaintance of our physical, social, and culturalanthropological set-up, capable of making the greatest use of our traditionsand popular values. These should include the poetry of the people, theirmusic, art, and folk-lore. Once we have made this effort, we will haveestablished a firm basis on which to fulfill our aspirations towards a culturewhich is extra-European and not merely a passive and slavish imitationof European culture.

GILBERTO FREYRE.RECIFE, BRAZIL.

Documents

Freyre. 1943. Brazilian Culture