These were very old notes too, that I kept. Let’s see what is in them. This Burns I was taking notes on must have been E. Bradford Burns.
Brazil became independent because it had become a kingdom. Dom João feared it would ask for independence and told Dom Pedro to declare it. That way, it stayed in the family.
The colonial past formed part of the present in the Empire. The Republic was installed by the military in 1889; Republicans and positivists said monarchy was backward, but the Republic couldn’t do away with its structures just like that.
The Velha República lasted from 1889 to 1930. From 1922-30 there was a challenge to the power structure of rural oligarchy that triumphed in 1930 with Vargas and the Estado Novo. This was the heyday of coffee and the economic dominance of the SE.
The 20s were a time of great hope. there were revolutions in 1922, 1924, 1925 and 1927, there was the Prestes column, there were Keyserling and Spengler, there was the post WWI devasation in Europe. See Martins, O Modernismo, on this.
Graça Aranha and Oswald both went to Europe; there was also a lot of new painting. Like the Buenos Aires avant-gardes, Brazilians thought they’d soon be in the vanguard of world civilization. So the idea was to get modern and get Brazilian, all at once, and to stop being folkloric, and get urban.
Euclides da Cunha also worked with the civilization/barbarism dichotomy, and of course, the nationalists took up the “barbaric” side of this and called it the real Brazil (although there are also those who say the interior needs to be educated by the [lettered] city).
Vargas’ rise in 1930 is the end of the total rule of the coffee oligarchy. Oswald, meanwhile, had become a futurist first, upon his return from Europe in 1912. (Consider Malfatti.) Futurist artists wanted to help discover, define and encourage Brazilian culture; Menotti del Picchia said the goal was to Brazilianize Brazil, and the Semana de Arte Moderna was nationalistic. Many studies of Brazil appeared, and see page 380 on heterogeneity.
Politics was behind all the dissatisfaction from right and left with the “effete” republic, and after WWI the military and government don’t get along as well as they had done. Viz.:
- 1922 revolt of junior military officers, and Communists, Catholics, and workers’ circles. Lots of ferment.
- 1924, another revolt by the army. The held S. Paulo for 22 days!
- 1924-27 Prestes column, trying to get people to take up arms.
Debt rises, and people start wanting right-wing order. Vargas loses the 1930 election but gets in via coup, and stays there until 1937. My notes say I could also look at Martins 88-97.
So that is all very basic information, but I like it, and I was studying well when I took those notes, so I kept them for 30 years.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 