The 1930s in Brazil was marked not only by the political turmoil the country went through, but also the 1930 revolution, a Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932 and the coup of New State of1937. In that same decade there was also a great cultural and intellectual ferment inherited from the Modernism of the previous decade – mainly expressed in the 1922 Modern Art Week. Some of these cultural and intellectual manifestations were imbued with political ideologies of a communist, fascist or nationalist character. It was the case of a movement entitled "Green-yellowism", which originated the integralismand another, less known, but important: the flag movement, or flagship.
Verde-Amarelismo was born around 1927 in response to the 1922 Week and to the proposal of the “Anthropophagous Manifesto” written by Oswald de Andrade. Its two main members were Pliny Salty and Cassian Ricardo, which aimed at a radical break with the European tradition and that Brazil could actually modernize itself. For that, they saw in political authoritarianism the key for Brazil to be able to fulfill itself politically and culturally with authenticity.
From 1930 onwards, inserted in the atmosphere produced by the revolution that put Getúlio Vargas in power, Cassiano Ricardo and Plínio Salgado each followed their own path. The Green-Yellow group split into two trends, the Brazilian Integralist Action it's the flag movement. This second trend was less known than the first, given that integralism had a strong influence of fascism and its members attacked the Guanabara Palace (headquarters of the federal government at the time) in 1938 and were defeated by the forces of the dictatorship Vargas.
O flag movement it was a strongly nationalist movement, like integralism, and similarly it advocated a strong state, but it rejected the fascist mold that integralism had adopted. In the words of its creator, Cassiano Ricardo:
[…] Integralism is against individual freedom, as happens in countries with a totalitarian regime; the “Bandeira” is for valuing the Brazilian as an individual and as a social being; […] integralism is against democracy, because it is for the dictatorship; the “Banner” is for democracy and more properly for a nationalist social democracy.” (Ricardo, Cassian. Brazil in the original, P. 233)
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The book Brazil in the original, from C. Ricardo, was published during the wave (1936 and 1937) of great works that sought to think about what defined the originality and singularity of Brazil, such as Roots of Brazil, by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Houses and Mucambos, by Gilberto Freyre, and Brazilian civilization concept, by Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco. For C. Ricardo, the bandeirismo sought the pure Luso-Brazilian sources for the formation of the nation in the old "Flags” from the colonial era, in São Paulo's pioneerism. It was a kind of vanguard of geographic and territorial expansion in search of a typically Brazilian democracy.
Cassiano Ricardo was the main creator of the Bandeira Movement in the 1930s **
According to this view, the pioneers would have “forged Brazil” and would have opened the authentic paths for the construction of the nation through their incursion into the interior of the country. The creation of a properly Brazilian democracy, according to Cassiano Ricardo, should take into account the experience of the Bandeirantes and fight for a Bandeirante State that would erect a social democracy and nationalist.
Cassiano Ricardo's reflections would continue in his second work on the subject, entitled The march to the West, published in 1940. Despite the great repercussion it had at the time, mainly because its author was one of the eminent Brazilian artists of the 20th century, the political ideas of the Bandeira Movement did not penetrate so deeply into the Brazilian State, given that the control that Getúlio Vargas exercised over ideas and intellectuals was also notorious in that same era.
* Image credits: new millennium
** Image credits: Brazilian Academy of Letters
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
FERNANDES, Claudio. "Flag Movement"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/movimento-bandeira.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.
