No one in Brazil has been more concerned with or more successful at searching for a “usable past” than José Honório Rodrigues. Impelled by the stark injustices, the grinding poverty, the backwardness of Brazil’s economic life, as well as by the promises of racial harmony, the abundant resources, and the occasionally impressive strides toward industrialization, Rodrigues has turned his back on the so-called “value-free” historical research in which he had already established a sound reputation. Leaving half-completed bibliographic projects on the shelves of his bulging library, he has sought for a way to relate his professional competence to the problems of his country.
The book now being reviewed, first published in Portuguese in 1963 and revised in 1965, is one product of this effort. Its two major sections are devoted, respectively, to a search for the identity of Brazil through its history—a balance sheet, so to speak, of his nation’s characteristics—and to a positing of “national aspirations” which have formed a theme in Brazil’s past. The book has been an influential work in Brazil, because it reflected the concerns of many Brazilians, and its translation into English is to be warmly welcomed.
Rodrigues’ approach poses problems which transcend the borders of his country. Its difficulty is a universal one: how does the intellectual remain true to himself as a man of thought while simultaneously participating in active struggle? The very polarization of society which made it impossible for the author to remain forever aloof also demands that he overlook the complexity and ambiguity of human experience. But one senses that on the whole Rodrigues is himself uneasy with the contrast which he draws between “the sterling qualities of the common people” and “the ineptness that is characteristic of the elite” (pp. xviii and xix). Certainly the bulk of the book is not so simplistic.
The task of listing the national aspirations of a country as complex and varied as Brazil is a challenging one. Only by raising the level of generalization to a very high plane—perhaps to that of “human aspirations”—is it possible to ignore the deep divisions that beset Brazil. It is all very well to say that “development and well-being” are national aspirations, but what means shall be used to that end and what groups will he sacrificed therefor? To omit these questions is to ignore an abyss dividing Brazil in two. At times Rodrigues resolves this quandary by appealing to the wave-of-the-future, as he does when he speaks of social justice or education as national aspirations. His list of goals thus becomes rather a catalog of Brazil’s failures.
There is another sense in which the author reflects the dilemma of Brazil’s development. He wants radical change in some sectors of his country’s life while wishing to preserve the “positive characteristics” of the old. Is this possible? Is there not room to suspect that race prejudice, for instance, will increase with the advance of industrialization, of which Rodrigues speaks with such enthusiasm? Is not external peace endangered if national control of the country’s wealth is asserted? His heroic effort to place “national unity” and “regionalism” side by side among his country’s aspirations is unconvincing. And he has himself poignantly asserted the contradictions between conciliation and reform in Brazil’s past experience.
This is an important book to which our English-bound students may now be referred directly. The translator is to be congratulated on his rendering of Rodrigues’ rather impressionistic Portuguese style into precise English syntax. Brazil may be better understood as a result of his work.