This volume deals in highly provocative fashion with the urgency for and historical obstacles to drastic institutional reform in Brazil. It is made up of papers and essays on these themes prepared by Professor Rodrigues for different audiences at different times over the past few years. Part I, comprising nearly half of the book, contains a detailed review of the origins and development of conciliation as a political device, as well as a separate statement of the theses and antitheses of Brazilian history. Part II first appeared in March 1964 as a series of newspaper articles tracing debate and legislation on political rights of citizens, especially illiterates, since 1822. Part III, written for this book, is devoted to an examination of national policies and the social structure, past and present, and Brazil’s position among the developing nations in the 1960s. It includes an excellent sketch of Brazilian social classes with particular stress on the complexities and contradictions facing the middle class. The author concludes this final section with strong recommendations for national policies to promote the economic development, socio-political integration, and modernization of Brazil. More careful editing could have eliminated much repetition that occurs between the various sections of the study.
José Honório Rodrigues’ present study is in much the same vein as his Brasil e Africa. Outro horizonte (reviewed in HAHR, Volume XLIV, No. 1) and his more recent Aspirações nacionais: interpretação histórico-política. Like these, it seeks to interpret and explain present circumstances in Brazil in terms of basic trends and pertinent incidents in the nation’s past. It touches on many of the same themes and hammers on some of the specific points raised in the earlier volumes. To a larger extent than these, however, the present work is a revisionist effort, almost iconoclastic in its attempt to dispel many illusions which modern Brazilians hold about the evolution of their political system and its relationship to society. The author rejects the traditional idea that Brazil had a relatively peaceful, nonviolent transition from colony to nationhood and that political contests under the empire and republic were remarkably free of bloodshed. He points out, for example, that there were more men under arms in Brazil in 1823 than served in the combined armies of San Martín and Bolívar. After detailing dozens of armed protests, insurrections, uprisings, revolts, and revolutions in Brazilian history, he states flatly that the country has never had a revolution, leaving the reader to draw the conclusion that this is what ails Brazil.
He also tries to silence the clamor over institutional instability, holding that despite protracted periods of political instability the economic and social structure of Brazil has been resistant to change. This paradox is linked to Professor Rodrigues’ principal theme, an attack on the hallowed tradition of the Brazilians’ innate and unfailing gift for political compromise. He sees throughout the colonial and national periods a tremendous gap between society and those who exercised power. He maintains that the privileged, property-owning minority, which has always monopolized political power, deliberately devised the technique of political conciliation or compromise, among its own members, in order to prevent revolution from below and to avert or to postpone indefinitely structural changes that would significantly improve the social, economic, and political position of the people. The latter, which he considers en masse as inherently progressive, is credited with achieving or inspiring such progress as Brazil has attained over the stubborn resistance of the ruling elite. In his view, the governing minority long since came to regard conciliation, the antithesis of reform, as an end in itself.
This is not a partisan study in the usual sense. The author holds no special brief for past regimes and exudes little optimism over the reformist program of the present government. At the same time, he is not a detached or dispassionate commentator on the formation of national policies. Professor Rodrigues identifies himself with the popular, progressive trend in the historical process of Brazil, which he views as the inevitable wave of a more or less distant future. His book was written for a Brazilian audience to provoke debate and discussion of today’s problems. It is meant to be disturbing. Thus Latin Americanists in this country may be bothered by the occasionally strident, polemical tone of the volume. They may quibble over some of his assertions about Spanish American experience and may well object to the scant attention he pays to economic considerations before 1945, but they should not be shocked or surprised by his major theses. The chief value of the book for North American historians of Brazil lies in its close analysis of some of the antecedents of Brazil’s current difficulties and in the new light it casts on details of Brazil’s politico-social heritage.
