Os olhos verdes da mulata: diatribes implícitas sobre a mestiçagem brasileira

Abstract

In Brazil, miscegenation not only became a symbol of “being Brazilian”, but also served as justification for the thesis that the people were either inferior or superior to those of other nations. The racial mixture that was widely spread here, initially by the interaction between the white (Portuguese), with the indigenous peoples, and, later, with the black, was understood both as degeneration, according to precepts whose archeology we tried to unveil, and as exaltation, based on proposals that counterpointed eugenics. According to this eugenics, the races mixed and, consequently, lost their initial purity and even their essence. Moreover, such a mixture would be related to sexual practices that were widespread on this Earth. The indigenous nudity, the scarcity of white women for the Portuguese, the alleged lewdness of the black race, the enslaved condition of black women were all blamed. The result, according to certain theses, was the formation of a lazy, sickly people with an uncertain future, as affirmed by Brazilian scientists, including, of course, a large part of the eugenicists. For many years, these intellectuals argue that the way to reverse the problems that miscegenation caused was through good miscegenation, that is, in the whitening of the population through racial interbreeding controlled by an eugenic policy that was mixed with a hygienic policy. In 1933, Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves innovated the intellectual landscape, inserting the black as a crucial element in the racial and cultural formation of an unique people: the Brazilian. In place of pessimism, racial democracy was born, which, despite denying the inferiority of the black and of Brazilians, fosters the belief that there is no racism in Brazil due to racial mixture: if we are all mixed, how could there be racism? However, the stereotype of the sensual black woman is reinforced in Freyre’s ideas, as if these women were responsible for the racial mixture. This discussion was present in much of the Brazilian artistic and intellectual production. The implicit character of this discursive dispute can be noticed even in indications such as the fact that Paulo Prado wrote the preface of the Manifesto of Pau-Brasil Poetry. Miscegenation overflowed into art, which welcomed it and elevated it to the condition of a great asset, a national treasure, a treasure that refuses to shed social capital.