A single word or theory would not be able to encompass all the historical processes and experiences that marked the formation of the Brazilian people. Marked by the contradictions of conflict and coexistence, we constitute a nation with unique traits that are still show alive in the daily life of the various types of "Brazilians" that we recognize in this territory of dimensions continental.
The first striking mixture took place at the time the region's indigenous populations came into contact with Old World settlers. Amidst the interest in exploration and the departure from European moral standards, the Portuguese impregnated several Indian women who gave birth to our first generation of mestizos. Outside the dichotomy imposed between the “savages” (Indians) and the “civilized” (Europeans), the mestizos form a first moment in our varied range of mixtures.
Later, thanks to the primordial interest in setting up the sugar company, a large number of Africans were expropriated from their lands to live as slaves. Arriving at a place far from their cultural and family references, considering that the merchants separated the relatives, blacks had to re-elaborate their way of seeing the world with the leftovers of what was left of their land Christmas.
This does not mean that they lived the same reality as slaves. Many of them, unable to bear the trauma of the diaspora, resorted to suicide, violence and the quilombos to get rid of exploitation and elaborate a culture apart from the colonial order. Others found ways to buy their own freedom or, even though they were seen as slaves, conquered roles and relationship networks that gave them a life with greater possibilities.
Not limited to the sphere of contact between the Portuguese and the native, this mixture of peoples also opened new paths with the sexual exploitation of the masters on their slaves. In the abuse of the meat of their “female goods”, yet another part of the unclassifiable was constituted in the colonial environment. Over time, the complex paradigms of recognition of these new people began to limit the distinction of social groups in terms of skin color and income.
Even so, this did not prevent the kaleidoscope of people from establishing a broad formation of other cultures that marked the regionalization of so many spaces. The townspeople of the large coastal cities, the country people from the interior, the caboclos from the arid regions of the Northeast, the riverside dwellers of the The Amazon, the Cerrado region and the Gaucho pampas are just some of the examples that escape the restrictive blindness of generalizations.
While so many syntheses took place without reaching common ground, the agro-export model was very slowly losing ground to the urges of capitalist modernization. The crude and expensive force of slave labor ended up opening space for the entry of other peoples from the Old World. Many of them, unable to bear the shocks caused by revolutionary theories, the advance of capitalism and the end of monarchies, sought a new opportunity in this already undefined terra brasilis.
Italians, Germans, Poles, Japanese, Slavs and many more not only contributed to the exploration of new lands, but also completed the first days of work in a factory environment. Thus, we reach the first decades of the 20th century, when our modernist intellectuals thought more intensely about this huge skein of cultures that makes up the culture of a single place. And so, despite the differences, gaps, prejudices and ways, we still recognize this “Brazilian”.
By Rainer Sousa
Master in History
See more:
Brazilian population
Indigenous slavery
African slavery