III.2.3 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 807875
In this staunch critique of orthodox Pan Americanism, Gilberto Freyre (1900–1987)—the Brazilian cultural historian, sociologist, and anthropologist best known for his paradigmatic Casa-Grande e Senzala (1933)—defends the inalienable right of each American nation to free-determination, so long as it does not destabilize the region. “Americanismo e Hispanismo” continues with an argument that the author first introduced in the United States in 1939 in an essay published in American Scholar (New York) and a lecture delivered at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The author defends the idea of an Americanism (different from Pan American ideology) through which isolation—the individuality of the “Brazilian island” included—could be preserved. His point is to stress this possibility on a continental scale, taking into account the particular histories of every nation. Although the essay was originally published in Recife’s Diário de Pernambuco on April 28, 1942, this translation is based on the essay as it appeared in Freyre’s Americanidade e latinidade da América Latina e outros textos afins [edited and annotated by Edson Nery da Fonseca, preface by Enrique Rodriguez Larreta and Guillermo Giucci (Brasília/São Paulo: Editora Universidade de Brasília/Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo, 2003), 91–94].
IN 1939, IN AN ARTICLE for the magazine The American Scholar (New York) and also in a lecture at Case Western Reserve University, I defended what then seemed to be a horrible heresy to the most fervent devotees of Pan Americanism: the right of each country in the Americas to determine its own form of government, provided that this did not result in a violent disturbance in the life of the continent. This Pan Americanism would be similar to urban planning, but on a grand, even continental, scale. It would reconcile, just as urban planning does (do not the great civilizations tend principally to be cities?), the ancient with the modern, old churches with new avenues, aesthetics with the ethics of monarchical traditions such as Brazil’s, as well as the necessities of advanced experimentation and sociological innovation as carried out today by the Mexicans and the Brazilians.
I remember that during my lecture at Case Western Reserve University I was challenged by a person who was closely connected to what I supposed was the viewpoint—either official or unofficial—of the United States. As for the article in that illustrious magazine of academia, it provoked heated protests from the orthodox Pan Americanists and from the Universalist democrats. I responded to one of these by emphasizing the points touched on by the new Americanist position: that the type of government was secondary and depended on social conditions and the historical evolution and human ecology particular to each people or cultural region, and that these conditions are variable. For instance, while Brazil has a monarchical tradition that perhaps predisposes it to a less democratic form of government than that of the United States or Uruguay, it nevertheless compensates for this by being more democratic than any other populous nation in the Americas regarding the treatment of interracial relations. During the imperial period [1822–89], for example, distinguished Mestiços such as [André] Rebouças and [Joaquim] Saldanha Marinho ascended to lofty social and political positions. And during the Republic [1889–1930], Nilo Peçanha, who was unmistakably a mulatto, first replaced the red-haired Lauro Müller as minister of foreign relations, and then went on to become president [1909–10].
In a recent article on the articulation of culture in the Americas, I sketched out the possibility for cultural development of this part of the world in the form of an enormous archipelago, in its sociological and, to a certain extent, its political shape. Within this configuration, a sense of the sameness of culture throughout the continent’s extent would be reconciled with the density and indivisibility of the “islands” that constitute it, in a Continentalism, or a pluralist Americanism, that is in no way uniform, but is still Americanism.
Just as in Argentina or Mexico or the United States, the American destiny of Brazil’s culture is clearly anticipated by its communal inclinations. Only it will not be an Americanism in which the individuality of the “island” of, for example, Brazil—an American people singularly formed with a preponderance of Portuguese, a large contribution by Negroes, and the rapid acceptance of the Mestiço, and of an equally singular political formation, considering the long period of monarchy that has marked our character, perhaps forever—dissolves in two steps, if an anxious imperialism of socio-political uniformity should ever develop on a continental scale. It is imperative to stress this point.
But there is also another point: The sociological condition of the “island” representing each great people of the Americas cannot mean dependency on any bloc from which the principal elements of its cultural formation derive. Such a dependency would be colonialism: colonialism with a political flavor. Consequently it would run contrary not just to Americanism’s formulas, but also to its fundamental tendencies, understood as an expression of a culture newer and freer than that of Europe.
On the other hand, we—the American peoples of Hispanic origin, whether Portuguese or Spanish—find ourselves at a stage of cultural development that benefits us, even though it is still a phase of European cultural colonization, or rather, of European cultural post-colonization. Here, Portuguese and Spanish elements—folkloric and popular, as well as from the truly elite—enter into the development of the cultures of the new peoples of the Americas in order to invigorate them with individuality and the Hispanic tradition, and not, it must be stressed, to direct this evolution or to orient it toward intentions or empty desires of political recolonization.
Such a direction would run contrary to the cultural process that suits the people of the Americas, which is somewhat disorganized and not at all prematurely fixed. Equally contrary is that simplistic Pan Americanism which supposes that the people and culture of the Americas are self-sufficient, and as such can dispense with any European role in their evolution.
This is wrong, in my view. Not only is that contribution proper, it is essential. For Brazil this means substantial European—especially Portuguese—participation both from the elites and from ordinary people in the development of our culture, which is American in its rhythm, its freer forms of expression, its creation, and the broadening of its values. At the same time, it is Hispanic—and particularly Portuguese—in its deepest motivations toward life and in its most characteristic ways of being. In their linkage to the Americas, these elite and popular elements are not lost, nor are their energies wasted. Here, the possibilities for their expression are amplified, within each of our peoples and within the Americas as a whole.
For Brazilians—as for Mexicans, Argentineans, and Paraguayans, to mention only four characteristic peoples—the ”islanders” versus “continentals” duality as the expression of a new culture in the Americas seems to me to be an important aspect of the relations of each American people with its neighbors and its motherland. We are dealing here not with an antagonism that is impossible to overcome by means of reconciliation but with a fertile duality to be cultivated. It is perhaps on these grounds that the true articulation of an American culture will be established. This will not be a mere horizontal or superficial Americanism that is concerned only with the extension of progress for the peoples of the continent. Instead, it will amplify those values inherited from Europe, Africa, and Asia without sacrificing the depth of their dimensions.