Europe: A window or a mirror? Brazil’s authoritarian intelligentsia before the charms of the Old World (1902-1937)

Abstract

After slavery was abolished in 1888 and the Republic replaced the Empire in 1889, part of the intelligentsia in the Southern coast of Brazil fancied that those changes were just the beginning of a modernisation process that would match the New and the Old Worlds. But less than a decade later, the war between the State and the millenarist fanatics backing Antônio Conselheiro evinced, once more, the distance between the legal country and the real country. This situation reinforced the debate among the members of the reactionary intelligentsia – cases like those of Oliveira Viana and Plínio Salgado will be further revised– who kept looking at Europe, either searching for solutions –such as authoritarianism and fascism– or denouncing the tendency to mirror exotic models that ignored Brazilian peculiarities, as it apparently happened with liberalism, democracy and socialism.

Keywords

• nacionalismo
• intelectualidad
• autoritarismo
• racismo científico