Fraternal Embraces: Getulio Vargas and the Portuguese Community in Rio de Janeiro, 1930–45

Throughout its history, Brazil has both celebrated and downplayed its ancestral links with Portugal. Since gaining independence in 1822, tensions between native-born Brazilians and Portuguese immigrants have periodically erupted into violent clashes over questions of citizenship, race, and economic resources. This hostility reached its apogee during the Old Republic (1889-1930) as hundreds of thousands of Portuguese immigrants poured into Rio de Janeiro. Drawn by a booming export economy, linguistic ties, and family networks, these immigrants would contribute significantly to the political, cultural, and economic fabric of their adopted country. Yet, their mere presence in the rapidly expanding capital was perceived as a threat to nascent Brazilian nationalism. By 1931, however, a new revolutionary government intent on reshaping political and cultural norms transformed the image of the Portuguese from a menacing cultural and economic burden to an integral component of a positive Brazilian national identity. This paper asks how and why the Portuguese were given such a critical role in the ideology of the intensely nationalistic regime of president/dictator Getúlio Vargas, in particular during the authoritarian Estado Novo (1937-1945). I will focus on the Federation of Portuguese Associations of Brazil and its relationship with the Vargas administration to probe how the cultural politics of Portuguese ethnicity affected struggles to define brasilidade (the essence of being Brazilian), in turn shaping the trajectory of twentieth-century racial thought and nation formation in Brazil. This paper will contribute a cultural history of this prominent community of Portuguese immigrants and their progeny and shed light on the complicated, and at times delicate, interaction between this trans-Atlantic community and the political and intellectual elite in Rio de Janeiro.