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Les usages publics du bicentenaire de l'indépendance du Brésil

From the Sesquicentennial to the Bicentennial: commemorating Brazil's independence in authoritarian contexts (1972 and 2022)

Du Cent-Cinquantenaire au Bicentenaire : commémorer l'indépendance du Brésil dans des contextes autoritaires (1972 et 2022)
Do Sesquicentenário ao Bicentenário: comemorar a independência do Brasil em contextos autoritários (1972 e 2022)
Janaina Martins Cordeiro

Résumés

Cet article propose d'analyser les célébrations du bicentenaire de l'indépendance du Brésil en 2022 à partir de la comparaison avec les célébrations du cent-cinquantenaire en 1972, sous la dictature militaire. Elle entend ainsi comprendre les différences et les similitudes entre les deux dates commémoratives et la manière dont elles ont été considérées dans différents contextes autoritaires.

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Texte intégral

1In 1834, while on his deathbed at Queluz Palace in Portugal, Dom Pedro IV made one last request to his wife, Dona Amélia de Leuchtenberg: that his heart be donated to the city of Porto. The request was justified by the relations established between the monarch and the local population during the episode known as the "siege of Oporto", between 1832 and 1833, in the context of the war fought with his brother, D. Miguel for the Portuguese throne.

2Since then and for 188 years, the heart of the Soldier King, as it is called by the Portuguese, has been preserved in formaldehyde and kept under lock and key in the Lapa Church in the city of Porto. On August 22, however, the relic left the site for the first time. The reason for this was the request sent by the Brazilian government for Pedro's heart to travel to Brazil for the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the country's independence.

3The request was received with apprehension by authorities, historians, and other experts on heritage issues in the city of Porto. Among other aspects, the fragility of the body was put forward, as well as the importance of ensuring that the deceased's last request was respected: that his heart remain in the city of Porto. In an article published in May 2022 on the subject, journalist Adriana Negreiros found that, more than apprehension, the Brazilian government's request created some embarrassment for the keepers of the relic. According to her, "in the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Lapa, [...] the subject is avoided. The same occurs in the City Council, administrative headquarters of the city. It is confirmed that 'there were contacts to request that the heart travel to Brazil', but they avoid going beyond protocol statements" (Negreiros, 2022).

4However, in July 2022, the mayor of Porto City Hall, Rui Moreira, held a press conference in which he communicated that the body could travel to Brazil after all, as decided by the municipal authorities and the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Lapa. The authorization, however, occurred only after the heart went through an expertise of the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, which proved that the trip could be made under certain conditions of transport and storage (Porto., 2022).

5The Brazilian government's request to Portugal, if it caused apprehension and embarrassment, was not completely unusual. Many historians and commentators immediately remembered a similar request, made fifty years ago by the Brazilian military dictatorship to the Portuguese: during the celebrations of the Sesquicentennial of Independence, back in 1971, the Brazilian authorities asked for the repatriation of Pedro I's mortal remains. The request was promptly granted since a great celebration was being prepared in Brazil for 1972, centered precisely on the transfer and subsequent burial of Pedro I's mortal remains. So, unlike what has happened with the heart, in 1972, it was not about a loan, but about the repatriation of the Emperor's remains.

  • 1 April 21 and September 7 are the two biggest Brazilian civic dates. The first one celebrates Alfere (...)

6At the time, the dictatorship intended to hold – and held – magnificent celebrations: with an opening scheduled for April 21, it closed on September 71, a party which lasted for almost six months.

7In the early 1970s, the dictatorship established in 1964 was experiencing the peak of its popularity. At that time, the organs of information, repression, and propaganda acted ever more efficiently in the construction of the image of the enemy and in their persecution. At the same time, the country saw a certain nationalist euphoria growing. This, in turn, was strongly driven by the effects of an economic policy responsible for the country entering a period of recovery and rapid economic growth. Sporting achievements – among them the 1970 World Cup – were added to the innumerable structural works throughout the country. Credit facilities made it possible for the middle class to buy new houses and cars. The control of inflation also allowed many families to acquire goods such as refrigerators and televisions, the symbols of modern Brazil. At the time, this process was called the Brazilian miracle, a misuse, perhaps, of the expression used in previous decades to refer to much more intense processes of economic recovery that took place in the Federal Republic of Germany and in Japan after World War II.

8The Sesquicentennial celebrations, which the dictatorship had been preparing since 1971, should, according to the commission instituted to organize the celebrations, have reflected the moment of ascension and greatness that the country was going through. In this regard, the dictatorship was able to mobilize many civil society institutions to tell its own story of independence. Thus, throughout practically the entire year of 1972, the country lived daily with a profusion of national and local civic events, whose main objective was to celebrate the homeland: the glories of the past and the achievements of the present, while projecting a future of greatness.

  • 2 For the set of events, see Cordeiro, 2015.

9Among the most varied events held in 19722, the repatriation of Dom Pedro's mortal remains stood out. All the more so because, that year, the emperor was transformed by the dictatorship into the great hero of the Sesquicentennial, through which it would tell its own story of national independence. From a conception of history that privileged the great national heroes, the emperor was portrayed as a strong, intelligent, audacious, impetuous monarch, but who was also sensitive to the needs of the people.

10In repatriating the mortal remains of Pedro I, the organizing committee's proposal was to promote a great civic-national union around his figure. Once on Brazilian soil, the emperor’s coffin would have a long journey until September, going through all the state capitals, so that it could receive, as proposed by the commission's president General Antonio Jorge Correa, the "personal consecration of all the Brazilian people" (Correa, 1972).

  • 3 The date recalled the arrival of the first Portuguese caravels on the Brazilian coast on April 22, (...)

11Thus, the coffin containing the imperial ashes arrived in Brazil on April 223 of 1972. On that day, the ship Funchal docked at the port of Rio de Janeiro. A committee of Portuguese authorities, among them President Américo Thomaz, disembarked there and were received by President Emílio Médici in a great civic ceremony to mark the transfer of Pedro I's mortal remains to Brazil.

12São Paulo, the heart of the festivities that year, was the last capital through which Pedro's coffin passed, after traveling some 26 000 kilometers from the north to the south of the country. The highlight of the festivities, which would conclude Pedro's long journey back to Brazil, was the burial ceremony of his remains, held on September 6 at Ipiranga, in the presence of President Médici and the President of the Council of Ministers of Portugal, Marcello Caetano. This event was followed by the traditional parades on the 7th, whose center stage that year was also the city of São Paulo.

13The choice of Pedro I as the hero of the Sesquicentennial was a choice of the present time. Through it, the dictatorship sought to evoke a version of the past that valued the conquest of national independence from above, without popular revolutions or major ruptures, valuing the action of the strong man, the authority of the leader. Simultaneously, there was a militarized recovery of the image of Pedro I, favoring his identification with the Armed Forces, exalting qualities such as strength and authority.

14Similarly, by proposing that the emperor’s urn travel the entire country to receive the "civic consecration" of the people, the dictatorship sought to reinforce another fundamental element of its discourse: national integration. This could be understood both as territorial integration – achieved either through monumental works, the building of roads, or the establishment of a modern, nationwide communications system – but also as the civic integration of the Homeland, around shared values and traditions.

15From this point of view, it was only natural that, 50 years after the grandiose sesquicentennial celebrations organized around the transfer of Pedro I's remains, Jair Bolsonaro's government would also organize the bicentennial celebrations around the emperor. This time, carrying out the transfer, even if temporarily, of his heart. Although officially the current government has made no reference to the commemorations held during the dictatorship, the association between the two events was, for many, inevitable, especially between the repatriation of the emperor’s remains in 1972 and the loan of the heart in 2022. Thus, and even if in a veiled manner, the current government seemed to seek to complement the work of the dictatorship and, at the same time, pay tribute to a regime that the current president never tires of evoking as a reference.

16Or, at least, it could be.

17The truth, however, is that when it arrived in Brazil, the emperor’s heart did not play an important role. At least, not as important as the role assigned to the imperial spoils by the dictatorship in 1972. This is because, although debates and initiatives around the bicentennial were being organized by a few civil society institutions, especially by academics, the official policy of the government was discreet, if not silent.

18Entirely focused on and absorbed by the presidential elections, which took place less than a month after September 7th, the Bolsonaro government seemed stunned by the increasingly concrete possibility of defeat in October. In this respect, all its artillery – figuratively speaking (?) – turned to questioning the electoral process, its smoothness and the reliability of electronic ballot boxes, resulting in constant coup threats.

19But the electoral scenario – unfavorable to Bolsonaro and to Bolsonarism – was not the reason why the year of the bicentenary of Brazil's independence went practically unnoticed. Here, it is necessary to consider a particularity of Bolsonarism, which differentiates it from the military dictatorship of 1964, which it constantly claims, but also distinguishes it from other recent radical right-wing governments and movements, such as Trumpism and Orbanism. I am referring to its disregard for history and the past.

20I am not referring here, of course, to the well-known Bolsonarist aversion to history as an academic discipline and to the social sciences generally. But rather, to its contempt for national history, for history as the foundational narrative of the nation. The constant references in Bolsonarist discourse and logic to "patria" and "patriotism" do not consider the historical-temporal dimension of the nation, its emergence and the developments of its experience. Even when Bolsonarism takes over national symbols, as was the case with the colors of the national flag, it does so more from the attribution of signs that refer to Bolsonarism itself than from the attribution of a historical-national or civic-patriotic sense.

21Rather, the patriotic evocation of Bolsonarism has a somewhat ahistorical character. It is based on a virile and bellicose conception of politics and social relations and, at the same time, on a mythical religious synthesized in the slogan of his government – "Brazil above everything, God above everyone". This, in turn, enables the construction of a patriotic narrative that aims at the fusion of the nation with the divine, creating an equivalence, in this specific case, between the nation and the evangelical nation.

22In this sense, it is not surprising that, when receiving the heart of D. Pedro, with honors of the head of state, in Brasilia on August 23rd, Jair Bolsonaro limited himself to a few words: "Two countries, united by history, connected by the heart. Two hundred years of independence. Ahead, an eternity of freedom. God, patria, family! Long live Portugal, long live Brazil!"(Gomes and Borges, 2022).

23Note, by the way, that in the sentence uttered by Bolsonaro, the quick mention of "History" ended up being overshadowed by the subsequent reference to "God, patria and family". Incidentally a reference which was particularly uncomfortable for the Portuguese authorities present at the scene, since it alluded to the slogan widely used by the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal (Amato, 2022).

24It is also not surprising that, during the civic acts of September 7th in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, President Jair Bolsonaro made no mention of the historical event of the Proclamation of Independence. Pedro I, who had been so important in 1972 – when there was no lack of comparisons between the emperor and the dictator General Médici – was forgotten in the context of military parades transformed into political-electoral acts.

25It is because of this aspect that one can affirm that, as important as the military dictatorship is to Bolsonarism, and as it is perhaps the only event from the past that he appreciates, the current government is not interested in a celebration along the lines of the sesquicentennial. From this point of view, the coming of Pedro I's heart is merely circumstantial, a tribute that Bolsonarism has agreed to pay to the civic-national tradition consolidated since the 19th century around the Emperor and September 7th.

26In his analysis of what he called homo bolsonarus, Renato Lessa states that Bolsonarism has characteristics that distinguish it from the whole post-1930 Brazilian republican tradition (Lessa, 2020). It is even very distinct from the military dictatorship itself. In 1972, the official narrative of the regime tried to build an idea according to which 1822 represented the country's "political independence" and 1972, in turn, represented the achievement of "economic independence". This was one of the ways, among many, from which the historical proposal of the sesquicentennial was expressed: to tell a history of independence that made the coup of 1964 an unfolding of national history.

27Such a concern does not exist within the Bolsonaro government, in which a mythical and ahistorical evocation of the homeland predominates. From this point of view, it is a mistake to imagine that the bicentennial celebrations – muted, diminished, shy, especially if compared to the civic apotheosis that was the sesquicentennial – represent a kind of failure of the Bolsonaro government. They are, rather, an expression of his conceptions of the world and of history. Even when, or especially when reduced to an election rally, they are an expression, once again according to Lessa, of the destructive character of homo bolsonarus.

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Bibliographie

Amato, Gian, "Bolsonaro repete lema da ditadura de Salazar diante do coração de D. Pedro e surpreende portugueses", O Globo, 25/08/2022, https://oglobo.globo.com/blogs/portugal-giro/post/2022/08/bolsonaro-repete-lema-da-ditadura-de-salazar-diante-do-coracao-de-d-pedro-e-surpreende-portugueses.ghtml, accessed on 09/11/2022.

Catroga, Fernando, Nação, mito e rito: religião civil e comemoracionismo, (EUA, França e Portugal), Fortaleza, Nudoc/Museu do Ceará, 2005.

Cordeiro, Janaina Martins, A ditadura em tempos de milagre: comemorações, orgulho e consentimento, Rio de Janeiro, FGV, 2015.

Correa, Antonio Jorge, As comemorações do Sesquicentenário, Rio de Janeiro: Comissão Executiva Central do Sesquicentenário da Independência do Brasil, Biblioteca do Sesquicentenário, 1972.

Gomes, Pedro Henrique and Borges Beatriz, "Bolsonaro recebe coração de Dom Pedro I na rampa do Palácio do Planalto", Globo.com, G1, 2022, https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2022/08/23/bolsonaro-recebe-coracao-de-dom-pedro-i-na-rampa-do-palacio-do-planalto.ghtml, accessed on 09/11/2022.

Lessa, Renato, "Homo bolsonarus. De como nasceu e se criou o confuso e perigoso animal artificial que encarna momentos arcaicos da socia- bilidade brasileira", Serrote, Edição Especial, 2020, https://www.revistaserrote.com.br/2020/07/serrote-edicao-especial/

Melo Filho, Murilo, O milagre brasileiro, Rio de Janeiro, Bloch, 1972.

Negreiros, Adriana, "Portugal teme que Brasil perca ou estrague o coração de Dom Pedro 1", Tab uol, repórteres na rua em busca da realidade, https://tab.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2022/05/23/portugal-teme-que-brasil-perca-ou-estrague-o-coracao-de-dom-pedro-1.htm?cmpid=copiaecola, accessed on July 24, 2022.

Porto., "Executivo aprova por unanimidade transladação do coração de D. Pedro IV", Porto., https://www.porto.pt/pt/noticia/executivo-aprova-por-unanimidade-transladacao-do-coracao-de-d-pedro-iv, accessed on July 24, 2022.

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Notes

1 April 21 and September 7 are the two biggest Brazilian civic dates. The first one celebrates Alferes Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes. Raised to the rank of national hero at the end of the 19th century, when the Republic was proclaimed in the 18th century, Tiradentes was tried by the Portuguese government and sentenced to death for his participation in a failed rebellion in the then captaincy of Minas Gerais. September 7th, on the other hand, refers to Brazil's Proclamation of Independence in 1822, made by the then Prince Regent and heir to the Portuguese throne, Pedro de Alcantara, who became, from then on, the first Emperor of Brazil.

2 For the set of events, see Cordeiro, 2015.

3 The date recalled the arrival of the first Portuguese caravels on the Brazilian coast on April 22, 1500.

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Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Janaina Martins Cordeiro, « From the Sesquicentennial to the Bicentennial: commemorating Brazil's independence in authoritarian contexts (1972 and 2022) »IdeAs [En ligne], 20 | 2022, mis en ligne le 01 octobre 2022, consulté le 29 mars 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ideas/14294 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ideas.14294

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Auteur

Janaina Martins Cordeiro

Janaina Martins Cordeiro is an Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Rio de Janeiro/Brazil) and holds a PhD in History from the same institution. Researcher at CNPq and FAPERJ, she is the author of a series of academic articles and the book A ditadura em tempos de milagre: comemorações, orgulho e consentimento (FGV, 2015).
janainamcordeiro[at]gmail.com

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