Lusotropicalism
Encyclopedia
Lusotropicalism or Luso-Tropicalism was first coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

,to describe the distinctive character of the Portuguese imperialism in several lectures, and is a belief and movement especially strong during the António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...

 dictatorship in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

(the Estado Novo regime), proposing that the Portuguese were better colonizers than other European nations.

It was believed that because of Portugal's warmer climate, being geographically close to Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, and having been inhabited by Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

, Visigoths, Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

 and several other peoples in pre-modern times, the Portuguese were more humane, friendly, and adaptable to other climates and cultures.

In addition, by the early 20th century, Portugal was by far the European colonial power with the oldest territorial presence overseas; in some cases its territories had been continuously settled and ruled by the Portuguese throughout five centuries. It celebrated both actual and mythological elements of racial democracy
Racial democracy
Racial democracy is a term used by some to describe race relations in Brazil. The term denotes some scholars' belief that Brazil has escaped racism and racial discrimination. Those researchers contend that Brazilians do not view each other through the lens of race and do not harbor racial...

 and civilizing mission
Civilizing mission
is a rationale for intervention or colonisation, proposing to contribute to the spread of civilization, mostly amounting to the Westernization of indigenous peoples....

 in the Portuguese Empire
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...

, and was a pro-miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....

 attitude toward the colonies/overseas territories. It is best exemplified in the work of Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

.

Lusotropicalism can be defined as follows:

"Given the unique cultural and racial background of metropolitan Portugal, Portuguese explorers and colonizers demonstrated a special ability - found among no other people in the world - to adapt to tropical lands and peoples. The Portuguese colonizer, basically poor and humble, did not have the exploitive motivations of his counterpart from the more industrialized countries in Europe. Consequently, he immediately entered into cordial relations with non-European populations he met in the tropics. This is clearly demonstrated through Portugal's initial contacts with the Bakongo Kingdom in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The ultimate proof of the absence of racism among the Portuguese, however, is found in Brazil, whose large and socially prominent mestiço population is living testimony to the freedom of social and sexual intercourse between Portuguese and non-Europeans. Portuguese non-racism is also evidenced by the absence in Portuguese law of the racist legislation in South Africa and until recently in the United States baring non-whites from specific occupations, facilities, etc. Finally, any prejudice or discrimination in territories formerly or presently governed by Portugal can be traced to class, but never colour, prejudice."

"...Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

 - the 'father' of lusotropicalism..."

Gilberto Freyre on the criticisms that he received

The life of Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

, after he published Casa-Grande & Senzala
Casa-Grande & Senzala
Published in 1933, Casa-Grande e Senzala is a book by Gilberto Freyre, about the formation of the Brazilian society. The "Casa-Grande" refers to the landlords residences in sugar plantations, where whole towns were owned and managed by one man...

, became an eternal source of explanation. He repeated several times that he did not create the myth of a racial democracy and that the fact that his books recognized the intense mixing between "races" in Brazil did not mean a lack of prejudice or discrimination. He pointed out that many people have claimed the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 to have been an "exemplary democracy" whereas slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 and racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...

 were present throughout most of the history of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

"The interpretation of those who want to place me among the sociologists or anthropologists who said prejudice of race among the Portuguese or the Brazilians never existed is extreme. What I have always suggested is that such prejudice is minimal (...) when compared to that which is still in place elsewhere, where laws still regulate relations between Europeans and other groups". Gilberto Freyre

"It is not that racial prejudice or social prejudice related to complexion are absent in Brazil. They exist. But no one here would have thought of "white-only" Churches. No one in Brazil would have thought of laws against interracial marriage (...) Fraternal spirit is stronger among Brazilians than racial prejudice, colour, class or religion. It is true that equality has not been reached since the end of slavery (...) There was racial prejudice among plantation owners, there was social distance between the masters and the slaves, between whites and blacks (...) But few wealthy Brazilians were as concerned with racial purity as the majority were in the Old South
Old South
Geographically, Old South is a subregion of the American South, differentiated from the "Deep South" as being the Southern States represented in the original thirteen American colonies, as well as a way of describing the former lifestyle in the Southern United States. Culturally, the term can be...

". Gilberto Freyre
Sugar cane plantations were introduced in the New World in 1515. The first ingenio (machine to crush cane and extract sugar) was built by Blas de Villasanta in 1523 on the Rio Anasco, in what is now Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. In 1541, Gregorio de Santaolalla started construction of a trapiche (a circular mill powered by one or more horses, oxen, or on rare occasions persons) at Bayamon, then an ingenio at Aybacoa. In 1546, Alonzo Perez Martel accepted a loan to build an ingenio, not a trapiche nor a trapichito. It is to be noted that the Puerto Rican plantations were cultivated by white men, not blacks, possibly because Puerto Rico originated as a penal colony. Thus, the freed prisoners had been seasoned (acclimatized to tropical labor). This constitutes a counter-example to racial theories based upon climate or geography, such as Freyre’s, that white men were unable to work in tropical conditions. White prisoners also helped develop Cayenne
Cayenne
Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Cayenne River on the Atlantic coast. The city's motto is "Ferit Aurum Industria" which means "Work brings wealth"...

 (French Guiana
French Guiana
French Guiana is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. It has borders with two nations, Brazil to the east and south, and Suriname to the west...

), at the penal colony at Devil's Island
Devil's Island
Devil's Island is the smallest and northernmost island of the three Îles du Salut located about 6 nautical miles off the coast of French Guiana . It has an area of 14 ha . It was a small part of the notorious French penal colony in French Guiana until 1952...

.

Origin of Lusotropicalism

In Brazil, the racial ideology that underpinned slavery was that the slaves, primarily of African negro origin, were inherently inferior of higher cultural achievement, and could only be used for labor in tropical environments. The Brazilian aboriginals proved not to be strong enough to withstand diseases from outside the New World nor decimation by the Europeans. Once slavery was abolished, the Brazilian elite realized that industrialization was the next phase of development and they were faced with a population that according to their ideologies was incapable of being an industrial worker. A new ideology was necessary. Lusotropicalism claimed that the mestizo in the tropics was superior to both European and Negro, and thus the only population capable of industrial labor in the Brazilian tropical environment.

"The book [Masters and the Slaves] claimed that miscegenation had been a positive force in Brazil, and this argument helped turn the shame of a nation into a source of pride. The art, literature, and music created by Afro-Brazilian culture and miscegenation were suddenly held in great esteem. Racial mixing moved from a perceived liability to an asset, and Freyre credited the Portuguese tendency to miscegenation among colonized peoples for the uniqueness of Brazilian
culture."

"Freyre turned the country's [Brazil] inferiority complex inside out and converted Brazil's multiracial past from a liability into an asset. ... They no longer needed to see scandal and shame in their racial mixture; instead they could look to their art, literature, music, dance, in short to their culture to discover a richness and a vitality that were a result of the fusion of races and civilizations."

"He [Freyre] argued that the Portuguese appreciation of tropical (non-European) values and peoples distinguished them as pioneers of modern tropical civilizations. His emphasis on Portuguese tolerance and assimilation of tropical values added a new dimension to the Portuguese ideology which, until then, had almost exclusively viewed the assimilation process in a unilinear fashion; that is assimilation had connoted the Europeanization of the Africans, not the reverse! Whenever African values and living patterns influenced the Portuguese, it was viewed as a setback."

Salazar's view

In order to support his colonial policies, António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar
António de Oliveira Salazar, GColIH, GCTE, GCSE served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1932 to 1968. He also served as acting President of the Republic briefly in 1951. He founded and led the Estado Novo , the authoritarian, right-wing government that presided over and controlled Portugal...

 adopted Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

's notion of Lusotropicalism, maintaining that since Portugal had been a multicultural, multiracial and pluricontinental nation since the 15th century, if the country were to be dismembered by losing its overseas territories, that would spell the end for Portuguese independence. In geopolitical terms, no critical mass would then be available to guarantee self-sufficiency to the Portuguese State.

Salazar had strongly resisted Freyre's ideas throughout the 1930s, partly because Freyre claimed the Portuguese were more prone than other European nations to miscegenation, and only adopted Lusotropicalism after sponsoring Freyre on a visit to Portugal and some of its overseas territories in 1951-2. Freyre's work Aventura e Rotina (Adventure and Routine) was a result of this trip.

See also

  • Gilberto Freyre
    Gilberto Freyre
    Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...

  • Colonial Brazil
    Colonial Brazil
    In the history of Brazil, Colonial Brazil, officially the Viceroyalty of Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to kingdom alongside Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.During the over 300 years...

  • Portuguese Angola
  • Portuguese Mozambique
  • Portuguese Guinea
    Portuguese Guinea
    Portuguese Guinea was the name for what is today Guinea-Bissau from 1446 to September 10, 1974.-History:...

  • Portuguese Timor
    Portuguese Timor
    Portuguese Timor was the name of East Timor when it was under Portuguese control. During this period, Portugal shared the island of Timor with the Netherlands East Indies, and later with Indonesia....

  • Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
    Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
    At the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...

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