I.6.4 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 1054600

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THE ROOTS OF BRAZIL: FRONTIERS OF EUROPE

Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, 1936


Brazilian writer and historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902–1982) wrote the book Raízes do Brasil, from which this text is excerpted, in 1936 [(Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio)] upon his return from Berlin, where he had lived since 1929. Largely introspective, Raízes do Brasil has been cited as the most influential book written in Brazil. In this passage from chapter 1, Buarque de Holanda brutally confronts many of the primordial characteristics of the Iberian world: its rigid social structure; its lack of hierarchy, order, and discipline; and its acceptance of anarchy. As unattractive as it may seem to Brazilians, writes Buarque de Holanda, all these traits indicate that Brazil is still strongly tied to the Iberian Peninsula. This translation is from the book’s twenty-sixth edition and twenty-ninth printing [Raízes do Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Companhia das Letras, 2008), 31–40].


THE MOST DOMINANT AND CONSEQUENTIAL FACTORS for the origins of Brazilian society were the attempts to transplant European Culture throughout an extensive territory with natural conditions which were, if not adverse, at least largely alien to its millennial traditions. By importing our forms of society, our institutions, and our ideas from distant countries, and proudly endeavoring to maintain all this in an often unfavorable and hostile environment, we remain, until today, expatriates in our own land. We may produce excellent works, enrich our humanity in new and unforeseen ways, bringing to perfection the type of civilization that we represent, but the truth is that all the fruits of our labor (or of our laziness) seem to be part of a system of evolution suited to a different climate and a different landscape.

Therefore, before asking ourselves to what extent this attempt can succeed, we must investigate how far we have been able to reproduce those forms of society, institutions, and ideas that we inherited.

In the first place, it is significant that we have received this inheritance from an Iberian nation. Spain and Portugal are, along with Russia and the Balkan countries (and, in a certain way, also England), bridging territories through which Europe communicates with other worlds. Thus, they constitute a frontier zone of transition, less charged, in some cases, with this Europeanism that they retain as a necessary patrimony.

[It was only] at the time of the great maritime discoveries that the two countries [Spain and Portugal] resolutely joined the European choir. This late entry would have intense repercussions in their destinies, determining many peculiar aspects of their history and their spiritual formation. Thus there emerged a type of society that would develop almost at the margins, in some respects, of their European neighbors, without receiving any inspiration from them beyond that already present in a germinal state.

What are the foundations that, preferentially, underlie the patterns of social life in this indeterminate region between Europe and Africa that extends from the Pyrenees to Gibraltar? How can we explain many of these social patterns, without resorting to indications that are rather vague and that would never bring us to [a position of] strict objectivity?

It is precisely through the comparison of [the peoples of Spain and Portugal] with those beyond the Pyrenees that our attention is drawn to a characteristic very particular to the people of the Iberian Peninsula, a characteristic which they are far from sharing, at least with the same intensity, with any of their neighbors on the [European] Continent. The reason is that none of these neighbors was able to develop to such an extreme the cult of personality, a trait that appears to be most determinative in the evolution of the Hispanic peoples since times immemorial. We can truly say that much of the originality of the Spanish and Portuguese is owed to the particular importance that they attribute to self-love, to the autonomy of each person in relation to others within time and space. For them, the measure of a man’s value is indicated, above all, by the extent to which he does not need to depend on others, to which he needs no one, to which he is self-sufficient. Each one is his own creature, a product of his own efforts, his own virtues—and the virtues sovereign to this mentality are so imperative that they leave their mark on the personal bearing, even on the physiognomy of men. The most complete manifestation [of this position] had already been expressed in Stoicism, which, with little change, has been the national philosophy of the Spaniards since Seneca.

This view of life is perfectly reflected in a very Hispanic word—“sobrancería” [haughtiness]—a word that initially denotes the idea of insuperability. Yet, the struggle and the competition implied by this concept were tacitly acknowledged and admired, exalted by poets, praised by moralists, and sanctioned by governments.

This [concept] is largely responsible for the singular indifference of these people towards forms of organization and all associations that imply solidarity and regulation. In a land where everybody is a baron, it is not possible to arrive at a lasting collective agreement, except in the presence of a respected and feared external force.

In fact, hereditary privileges, never had a very decisive influence in the countries of Iberian origin, at least not as decisive and intense as in lands where feudalism was deeply rooted. They did not have to be abolished in these [Iberian countries] to allow the principle of individual competition to become firmly established. The weakness of the social structure and the lack of an organized hierarchy were responsible for some of the most extraordinary episodes in the history of the Hispanic nations, including Portugal and Brazil. Anarchic elements always bore fruit with ease here, with the complicity or through the careless indolence of our institutions and customs. The initiatives, even when intended to be constructive, always tended to divide, rather than unite people. Government decrees came about in the first place from the need to contain and moderate the particular passions of the moment, [and] only rarely from the intention to permanently unite [the] active forces [in society].

Therefore, the lack of cohesiveness in our social life is not a modern phenomenon. That is why those who imagine that the only possible defense against our disorder is a return to tradition, to a specific tradition, are profoundly mistaken. The orders and rules formulated by these learned men are, in fact, ingenious creations of their imagination, removed from reality and contrary to it. Our anarchy, our incapability for stable organization is, in their opinion, nothing more than the absence of the one order that seems necessary and efficient to them. The hierarchy they extol, if we consider it well, is one which requires precisely that anarchy to gain legitimacy and influence.

Would this recourse to the past, in search of a model inspiring the better organization of our society, even be legitimate? On the contrary, wouldn’t it serve as an indication of our incapacity for spontaneous creation? Truly vibrant eras were never traditionalist by choice. Scholasticism was creative in the Middle Ages because it was current. Hierarchy of thought was subordinate to a cosmogonic hierarchy. The collectivity of men on Earth was simply a parable, a pale reflection of [Saint Augustine’s] City of God. Thus, in the Thomistic philosophy, the angels composing the three orders of the first hierarchy, the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones, are equated with the men who form the immediate entourage of a medieval monarch. They assist the sovereign in the execution of his affairs: they are his ministers and counselors. Those of the second hierarchy, the Dominations, Powers, and Virtues, are, in relation to God, what the governors are to the king: they are charged with the administration of the different provinces of the kingdom. Finally, those of the third hierarchy correspond, in the temporal city, to the agents of power, the subordinate officers.1

If medieval life aspired to a beautiful harmony resting upon a hierarchical system, that was perfectly natural, since even in Heaven there were degrees of beatitude, as Beatrice informed Dante. The natural order is nothing more than an imperfect and distant projection of the eternal Order, and is explained by it:

Le cose tutte quante
hanno ordine tra loro e questo forma
che l´universo a Dio fa simigliante.
2

Thus, the society of men on Earth cannot be an end in itself. Its hierarchical disposition, although strict, does not seek permanence, nor does it desire the well-being of the world. There is no place in this society for creatures that seek earthly peace in the possessions and gains of this world. The community of the just is a stranger on Earth. It wanders and lives on faith in exile and in mortality. “Thus,” says Saint Augustine, “the earthly city that does not live on faith aspires to an earthly peace, and the purpose it attaches to the mission of authority and subjection, among citizens, is that, when it comes to this mortal life, there exists a certain harmony of human wills.”

The Middle Ages was scarcely aware of the conscious aspirations for a reform of civil society. The world was organized according to incontrovertible eternal laws, imposed from the other world by the supreme organizer of all things. In a singular paradox, the formative principle of society was, in its clearest expression, an inimical force, opposed to the world and to life. All the work of the philosophers, of the great constructors of systems, denoted nothing if not the ardent desire to disguise, as much as possible, this antagonism between the Spirit and Life (Gratia naturam non tollit sed perficit).3 In a certain way, this work was productive and venerable. Yet, in our times, there is no longer the desire to understand it in its essence. The enthusiasm that this grandiose hierarchical concept (as it was known in the Middle Ages) can inspire today is in fact a professorial passion.

In reality, the principle of hierarchy itself was never very important among us. Every hierarchy is necessarily based on privileges. And the truth is that, well before the so-called revolutionary ideas triumphed in the world, the Portuguese and Spaniards seem to have been keenly aware of the particular irrationality, the social injustice of certain privileges, above all of the hereditary privileges. Personal prestige, independent of the inherited name, continued to be important throughout the most glorious periods of the Iberian nations.

On this point, at least, [the Iberian nations] can consider themselves pioneers of the modern spirit.

. . .

If such characteristics were notably constant among the Iberian peoples, it does not mean that this was due to any inevitable biological fatalism, or that, like the stars in the sky, they could subsist at the margins and at a distance from the conditions of earthly life. We know that, in certain phases of their history, the peoples of the [Iberian] peninsula demonstrated singular vitality, an astonishing capacity for adapting to new ways of life. [This was the case] especially, towards the end of the fifteenth century, when they were even able to surpass the other European States, creating political and economic units of modern expression. But wasn’t the very success of this sudden and perhaps premature transformation one of the reasons for the stubborn persistence among them of customs of traditional life that in part explain their originality?

It was exactly this mentality that became the biggest obstacle, among them, to the spirit of spontaneous organization, so typical of Protestant peoples, [and to] the Calvinists above all. In fact, the doctrines that proclaim free will and personal responsibility are all less-fostering of association between men. In the Iberian nations, lacking this rationalization of life that some Protestant countries had attempted so early on, the unifying principle was always represented by the governments. In these nations, the kind of political organization that continuously prevailed was artificially supported by an external force. In modern times, [this external force] found one of its most characteristic forms in military dictatorships.

A fact that we must take into consideration when we examine the psychology of these [Iberian] peoples is the insuperable repugnance inspired in them by any morality based in the veneration of labor. Their normal attitude is precisely the opposite of that which, in theory, corresponds to the system of the medieval crafts guilds, which values physical labor to the denigration of profit, the “torpid lucre.” Only very recently, with the greater prestige enjoyed by the institutions of Northern peoples, has this work ethic succeeded in gaining some ground with them. But the resistance [this ethic] met (and still meets) with is so intense and persistent that it is legitimate to doubt its complete success.

. . .

We can also understand how the lack of this work ethic is closely allied to a reduced capacity for social organization. In effect, humble, anonymous, and disinterested effort is a powerful agent of joint interests and, as such, stimulates the rational organization of men and sustains cohesion between them. Wherever any kind of work ethic prevails it will be difficult to find a lack of order and tranquility among citizens, because they are both necessary to the harmony of interests. The truth is that, among the Spaniards and the Portuguese, the work ethic was always an exotic fruit. It is not surprising that among these peoples the idea of solidarity was precarious.

. . .

To the free will of the individual, to the extreme adulation of personality that is a fundamental passion that tolerates no compromise, there is but one alternative: the renunciation of this personality for the greater good. That is why, although rare and difficult, obedience sometimes appears as the supreme virtue for the Iberian peoples. So, it is not strange that this obedience—blind obedience, fundamentally different from the medieval and feudal principles of loyalty—has been the only really strong political principle for them until today. The desire to command and the disposition to obey orders are equally characteristic of them. Dictatorships and the Holy Office [of the Inquisition] seem to constitute forms as typical of their character as their inclination toward anarchy and disorder. In their view, no other kind of discipline is perfectly conceivable, except that based on obedience and excessive centralization of power.

Yet, it was the Jesuits who demonstrated, better than anyone, this principle of discipline through obedience. They left, even here in our South America, a memorable example of this with their austerity and their doctrines. No modern tyranny, no theoretician of the dictatorship of the proletariat or of the totalitarian state, came even close to conceiving the possibility of the enormity of rationalization achieved by the priests of the Company of Jesus in their missions.

Today, simple obedience as a principle of discipline seems an exhausted and impractical formula, and from this, above all, results the constant instability in our social life. In the absence of this restraint, we have been trying in vain to import from other modern nations, or even to create by our own means, an appropriate surrogate capable of overcoming our uneasy and disorderly nature. Experience and tradition teach us that, in general, each culture only absorbs, assimilates, and develops traits of other cultures when these traits can be adapted to their ways of life. In this matter, we must remember what happened to the European cultures transported to the New World. Neither the contact nor the mixture with the indigenous or adventitious races made them as different from the cultures of our grandparents from overseas as we would sometimes like them to be. In the case of Brazil, as unattractive as it may seem to some of our countrymen, the truth is that we are still tied to the Iberian Peninsula. [What binds us] to Portugal, specifically, is a long and living tradition, alive enough to nourish, even today, a common soul, despite everything that separates us. We can say that the current form of our culture came from there; the rest was matter that adapted well or poorly to this form.

1
On the parallelism between these two hierarchies, see the theological teachings of João de São Tomás, the Portuguese philosopher considered by many modern Thomists the best interpreter of the Angelic Doctor, translated by M. Benoit Lavaud, O.P., Jean de Saint Thomas (Paris, 1928).

2
Dante, La Divina commedia (Paradise, I, 103–105). “All things existent possess order among them and this favors a similarity between the universe and God.” —Ed.

3
“Natural Grace does not create, but perfects itself. . .”.