Brazil is the exception to the rule of contemporary living. In a world in which, perhaps, too many people take themselves too seriously, the Brazilian capacity for compromise between toil and leisure is unfamiliar. In the light of this combination, Gilberto Freyre measures the contribution Brazil has to offer to the happiness of mankind. While realizing that some aspects of the Brazilian attitude towards leisure are not entirely happy, he shows that this has proved no barrier to great achievements in art and literature as well as in industry and social reform.

     RAPID AND EASY TRAVEL today has made countries appear less mysterious and much less different from each other than they were half a century ago. But, in a world that is passing through a process of intense standardization of dress, architecture, food and even drink, these differences still exist.

     There was a time when the foreigner arriving in even the capital town of Brazil found himself in entirely unfamiliar surroundings. At the same time he himself excited the curiosity of the less sophisticated Brazilians as much as if he had come from another planet.

     How human was the intruder? How Christian? At that time Brazilians believed that the English, heretics from the orthodox Roman Catholic point of view, were perhaps devils in the guise of humans. They even thought that they had webbed feet like devils. And, ironically, the foreigner often imagined he was coming to a heathen country, while some orthodox Protestant and evangelical missionaries expected to find people not only heathen but almost sub-human.

     The fact, however, was that Brazilians were human and had been a Christianized people since the early days of the Portuguese colonization of their country. Pagan survivals can, of course, be found in their civilization, as they can in the purest form of European Christianity, as practised by the common people as opposed to minority groups of theologically strict Christians.

     Sociologically, Brazilian development viewed as a whole , may be considered as predominantly Christian. As a 'human' - in the sense of humane - expression of American culture, characterized more by the desire to enjoy life - in the appreciation of a well-cooked fish, a good cigar, fine guitar music, and in kindness and tolerance to others - than by the pursuit of material gain or highly intellectual conquests to the detriment of a slow and pleasant rhythm of existence.

     Europeans familiar with Brazil during the colonial era (from the sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century) were surprised at the lack of interest shown by Brazilians in books, natural history, natural science and even art. Only music was an exception, for the notes of a guitar were always to be heard coming from some window opened for the fresh breeze; a guitar usually played by a woman with fine dark eyes, with her husband or father as an appreciative audience.

     The limitation of reading matter to Roman Catholic religious books imposed by the Inquisition is a possible explanation of the fact that the study of books was mainly restricted to a few colonists. In spite of this, however, literature began to appear as early as the fourteenth century. In those days, to be a military man was a great distinction but it was equally distinguished to be a scholar, to wear glasses and to be able to read Latin or write Portuguese, and one of the early leaders of Pernambuco, a man of aristocratic Portuguese birth, was both a soldier and a literary man. Trade, industry and any form of manual labour were not so highly considered, and from the earliest colonial days the Brazilians left the conduct of business affairs to Portuguese of humble origin or to other Europeans, and all manual work to negro slaves or free mulattos. They themselves adopted the attitude of landed gentry, giving orders to their slaves from the height of their horses or the depth of their luxurious hammocks where they passed the day in comparative idleness. Those who were not land-owners were satisfied to possess a few slaves to work for them. This widespread lack of ambition for material gain or intellectual improvement was characteristic of the Brazil of this period. It had, however, its compensation in an equally general Brazilian disposition to enjoy life and leisure; a disposition lacking in more energetic and progressive countries where industrial slaves have replaced agrarian, and industrial barons feudal land barons, losing in the process the capacity to appreciate music and art, to eat slowly a good dinner (except Christmas dinner!) to linger over a cup of coffee, a glass of port and a Bahia cigar, or to enjoy aromatic snuff.

     Colonial Brazilians also had a particular love of finery, appearing in public in clothes 'bedaubed with embroidery' according to an early nineteenth-century writer. But at home they dressed simply, the men in shirts and trousers, the women in thin muslin petticoats over an embroidered chemise, anticipating present-day Europeans in the reduction of dress in the tropics hygienically to a minimum. They can indeed claim credit for having 'humanized' dress for the tropics, despite the fact that they continued passively to copy European dress for public functions, suffering even in the present century the torments of top-hats, frock-coats and furs.

     Tropical habits already followed by the indigenous population, such as sleeping in hammocks, using clay vases for fresh drinking water and cooking fish in coconut milk, were adopted and improved by the Brazilians at the same time as they gradually assimilated the native customs, styles and values. By a cultural compromise and by their genius in combining civilized and indigenous values they have been able, perhaps better than any other people of predominantly European origin, to adapt a European civilization to the tropics. They have made a considerable tropical area a place where European values now flourish and where men of European culture can live, enjoy life and prosper. In cities like Rio and Santos, they have defeated the tropical enemies of Europeans, yellow fever and bubonic plague, and the 'Oswaldo Cruz' Institute in Rio is one of the foremost centres for the study of tropical diseases. In the country areas the danger of malaria and ancylostomiasis is being overcome, and in the Butantan Institute in S. Paulo, Brazilian scientists, led by Dr. Vital Brasil, are fighting the perils of snake-bite with carefully prepared serum. These are great Brazilian victories in the humanization of the tropics and have contributed much to destroy the European idea that these evils were inseparable from tropical conditions.

     The secret of Brazil's success in building a humane, Christian and modern civilization in tropical America has been her genius for compromise. Whilst the British, as no other people, have had this genius for compromise in the political sphere - their political system is a masterly combination of apparently antagonistic values - the Brazilians have been successful in using this same power of compromise in the cultural and social sphere. Hence their ethnic democracy, the almost perfect equality of opportunity for all men regardless of race or colour. The successful and almost free mingling of different cultures can, again, be seen in the assimilation of values as diverse as British football and the French taste for pastry, the East Indian love of rice and the North American sewing-machine, the Amerindian hammock and the Portuguese toothpick, the African dish 'cus-cus' and the Chinese style of roof. But it is not mere passive imitation, for Brazilian footballers dance with the ball as if they were doing the samba, 'cus-cus' is made with the local products manioc and corn in place of the African, and sewing-machines are used to produce clothes in traditional Brazilian styles. The old art of hand embroidery is not forgotten in such provinces as Alagoas, and girls in convents are still taught the lace making and hand work of colonial days. For though, in the last half century, parts of Brazil have gone through an intense process of North Americanization, the typical Brazilian has a deep aversion to standardization - including ethnic standardization.

     The mixture of races produces regions where the population is a constant surprise to a European, in its variation of colour and anthropology. A large family may have three or four anthropological types represented in it and various skin colours, through the father's marriage first to an Amerindian and then a negress. And though each one may have a family nickname according to the colour of his eyes or the type of his hair or the shape of his nose, they love each other as brothers. This 'family' situation - though there are many Brazilian families that pride themselves on being exclusively white - is to a large extent typical of the Brazilian population. Men regard each other as fellow-citizens and fellow-Christians, independent of colour or ethnic differences. Not that there is no race or colour prejudice in Brazil, mixed with class prejudice. There is. But no one would think of having churches only for whites. No one in Brazil would think of laws against inter-racial marriage. No one would think of barring coloured people from theatres or residential sections of a town. There is among Brazilians a general spirit of human brotherhood much stronger than race, colour, class or religious prejudice.

     It is true that racial equality did not become absolute with the aboliton of slavery in Brazil in 1888. But it is true, also, that even before the 1888 law, the relations between whites and coloured, between masters and slaves, in Brazil, attracted the attention of foreign observers as being particularly cordial and humane. Even before that law, there was miscegenation, freely practised among the people in general and, on rare occasions, among the distinguished families, though it was often a scandal for a member of a distinguished white or white-Amerindian family to marry outside his colour caste.

     As a Brazilian historian who was also a philosopher has said, the Brazilian solution of the racial question is certainly wiser, more promising, and above all, more humane than any solution which operates through separation or segregation. He suggests that because of the fraternal relations between individuals of different races, there exists a certain Brazilian 'happiness', though, as a good philosopher, he refuses to admit that Americus Vespucius was right when he located the Earthly Paradise in Brazil. There is probably no earthly paradise, but in respect of race relations the Brazilian situation is probably the nearest approach to a paradise that is to be found anywhere in the world.

     Brazilian happiness is however relative, for there is still, for a large part of the population, a poverty, a misery, and a series of diseases that probably accounts for the sadness expressed in Brazilian folk music and guitar songs. To some extent, this sadness is to be explained also by a trauma in the social past of a large part of the population: slavery. The slave, even when well treated, felt vaguely nostalgic which made his song one of sadness, though his dance was often one of joy. From the Portuguese, the Brazilians inherited the well-known nostalgia of the sailor, who is frequently far from his home; a feeling expressed in the Portuguese language by the word 'saudade'.

     In a country where women have been oppressed by men, some hypercritical foreigners think it is pure fiction to speak of social democracy, but the truth is that for years in Brazil women have been as nearly the equal of men as coloured are the equal of white, and native the equal of European. The first woman Governor in the history of the Americas was Dona Brites of Pernambuco in the sixteenth century, and in the early colonial days there were numerous cases of widows who took charge of large plantations and were accepted as real substitutes for their dead husbands.

     In modern Brazil women enjoy more freedom of expression than in any other Latin American country and today any talented woman can take up a career as doctor, writer, civil servant, nurse, musician or lawyer. Rachel de Queiroz, a notable Brazilian authoress, writes as vigorously and independently, denouncing political corruption or social abuse today, as did a brilliant mulatto publicist Antonio Torres a few years ago, when, as Brazilian consul in Nazi Germany, he gained the respect of even the Germans in spite of the independence of his views on the colour question.

     Probably the Itamarati - the Brazilian Foreign Office - remains the last great fortress of Brazilian 'racism' or 'Aryanism', as well as of Brazil belief that public office is a privilege of men. But even the Itamarati has surrendered to the pressure of the Brazilian tendency towards equalization of opportunity to all. Not only mulattos like Torres have been appointed consuls but also women have been admitted to the Brazilian foreign service and have risen as high in rank as consul or minister.

     Women have been members of the Brazilian parliament and of the Municipal Chamber at Rio de Janeiro. A woman is now the very capable director of the National Museum of Natural History of Brazil. There are a number of coloured men in high public office, though Brazilian courtesy would never describe them as 'negro' - (as even near-Nordic individuals with a drop of African blood are described in the United States) but as 'morenos' - that is people of dark complexion. Even during the Empire, a number of distinguished statesmen, members of the Imperial Cabinet and of the Imperial Senate, diplomats, judges and national deputies, were morenos.

     It is said of the Emperor Dom Pedro the Second that he was a strict Puritan as regards the private as well as the public morality of statesmen, whose rise in office depended somewhat upon his approval. He used a red pencil to mark names of men of whose conduct as private individuals or as public officers he disapproved. But the probably never used his red pencil against a man simply because he was 'moreno' or negroid or had a drop of a African blood. On the contrary: he had among his best personal friends men like the Rebouças, who were dark mulattos. It is said that once, at a very elegant Court ball, one of the Rebouças was present but felt rather out of place among a predominantly 'Aryan' aristocracy. Dom Pedro then asked his own daughter, Princess Isabel, to dance e quadrille with Rebouças. It was Princess Isabel who signed the 1888 Abolition Law, in the absence of the Emperor, who was then in Europe in very bad health. She was the wife Prince Gaston d'Orleans, Count d'Eu, and would have succeeded her father on the throne of Brazil had not a Republic been established in 1889 by a group of Brazilians eager for up-to-date political 'democracy'. The fact is, that the Imperial régime in Brazil was a happy combination of monarchy with democracy, together with a system of aristocratic selection, based not so much on birth, race, colour or class as on individual capacity. The monarchy gave Brazil a tradition of quality, as opposed to the mere power of quantity, characteristic of both plutocracy and demagogism. That tradition seems to explain why even today public life attracts or retains some of the most refined and cultured Brazilians to the highest positions, while in other American countries, capable men tend to become business and industrial leaders. Though pessimistic critics think that now men of quality are being defeated as a general rule by men whose power comes from money or from the votes they can command, pessimists always exaggerate the dark side of facts, and for years the Republic has remained loyal to this typical tradition of the Monarchy. But one should always remember that such a tradition was never incompatible with a broad tendency towards equality of opportunity for all. Hence the considerable number of men of humble birth, who, during the monarchy, became barons, counts, viscounts, and, during the Republic, have also reached high office. This perhaps unique combination - certainly unique in America - of democracy with aristocracy, explains why Brazil is, as an American nation, at the same time so 'old' and so 'new', so conservative and so liberal, so attached to its past and yet so ready to make experiments to social and technical progress.

     For Brazil, though, in certain respects, one of the most picturesquely archaic countries of the American continent - with 'gauchos' or cow-boys who have still Moorish customs of dress and of dealing with horses; with mulatto and negro women sweet vendors dressed as in Bahia, in somewhat Muslim or African styles; with sugar-cane planted as in the sixteenth century and carried from the most archaic sugar-mills to the coast in primitive boats or in ox-carts of the most rustic type; with two pretenders to the national throne, one living like a prince in a palace in Petropolis and ready to become the third Emperor of Brazil under the name of Pedro the Third - is, at the same time, in certain other respects, one of the most socially, culturally and technically advanced countries, not only in America, but in the world.

     In aviation, architecture, music, science, art and literature, Brazil can hold her own in the modern world. Santos Dumont, a Brazilian, was a pioneer of aviation in being one of the first men, if not the first, to fly a plane of his own invention, a feat which the French have recognized by dedicating a public monument to his honour, and today commercial aviation in Brazil is far more highly developed than in any other part of Latin America.

     Brazil is a pioneer also in modern functional architecture. Public buildings, factories and private residences recently built in São Paulo and Rio are considered by foreign architects to be examples of a really new method of building and as happy solutions of a numbers of problems facing a modern architect in the tropics. In the music of H. Villa Lobos, Brazil has a composer as modern and experimental as any in Europe. His work is typically Brazilian, combining, as it does, both the gaiety and the sadness of his country.

     In the American continent Brazilian painting - with Portinari, Dias and others - is considered by some critics, both foreign and Brazilian, to be next only to Mexican painting in its expression of advanced artistic feeling; and Brazilian sculpture, inspired by the vigorous work of an eighteenth-century mulatto sculptor whose monumental statues and decorations can be seen in the churches of Minas Geraes, is becoming equally original in execution.

     From the point of view of artistic vigour and human significance, Brazilian literature is probably second to none in Latin America. The poet, Manuel Bandeira, is great by any standard, his only deficiency being that he writes in the Portuguese language: a language that Brazilian pessimism sometimes describes as 'clandestine'. The same is true of Machado de Assis, a Brazilian prose writer of the nineteenth century, who is today followed by novelists such as Jose Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos and Rachel de Queiroz. The Brazilian essay - of which Assis, Joaquim Nabuco, Euclides da Cunha and Ruy Barbosa were also masters - is considered by foreign critics the most original expression of Brazilian literature. For it combines philosophical and social preoccupation with the artistic and literary, becoming therefore more than 'belles-lettres', a tradition which originated with the Luso-Brazilian of the seventeenth century, Father Antonio Vieira - a real genius - whose sermons were more like modern essays than orthodox sermons.

     Brazil is also proud of its achievements in industry, and, indeed, much has been accomplished during the last half-century. It is interesting to observe that during the Empire the modern industrial development of Brazil had a remarkable pioneer in Viscount de Mauá, a man of great creative energy; and today he is succeeded by the well-known editor and industrialist Assis Chateaubriand, whose activities are amazingly widespread.

     It would not, however, be accurate to take these dynamic figures in art and industry as truly representative of the Brazilian rhythm of activity, which expresses itself more typically in a combination of toil and leisure (the number of civil and religious holidays for which Brazil is famous well illustrates this point).

     For Brazilians, being Latins, are free - perhaps too free - from the Protestant conception of leisure as a vice, and, apparently instinctively recognize its importance as an antidote to those money-making activities which reduce man to a mere economic entity.

     The too-hard-working people of today (with special reference to North America and Russia) think of leisure as something to be achieved in the future. But why leave the enjoyment of leisure to the future? Why not more machines, but at a rate that will not break up the Brazilian tradition of leisure? Elihu Root, the well-known North American Secretary of State, when he first arrived in Brazil in 1906, was delighted with Salvador, with its suave rhythm of existence as well as its hospitality, and the people of Salvador themselves, in their capacity to enjoy leisure without being indolent, may well be considered the most civilized in Brazil.

     In this happy combination of toil and leisure, an optimist might see that Brazil has a contribution to offer to the happiness of mankind. But some of the aspects of the Brazilian attitude towards leisure are not entirely happy, one being the assumption that the state exists to provide them with leisure. It is a common thing for governmental departments for instance, to have a staff greatly in excess of the work to be done, the surplus manpower being nothing more than parasitical.

     However, the systematic combination of these two extremes, toil and leisure, is one of the tasks of social legislation in Brazil as the country changes over from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Work for all and leisure for all would be the ideal solution, but this can only be achieved gradually, for Brazilians in particular despise violent solutions. One should not forget that both capital punishment and duelling were abolished in Brazil many years ago as too barbarous to be tolerated by so humane a people. Revolutions, either for independence from Portugal or for the Republic in 1889, have tended to be 'white' rather than bloody, and even the abolition of slavery was carried through without violence. Brazil has also managed to solve her boundary disputes with neighbouring Spanish-speaking republics by arbitration rather than war.

     With Vargas as President and Lindolfo Collor as Minister of Labour, Brazil went through yet another non-violent social and political revolution from 1930-45, and today Vargas, elected President once more after five years of political ostracism, will probably continue in the typical Brazilian tradition a policy of social reform through compromise.

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. Human factors behind Brazilian development. Great Britain: Brazilian Ministery of Foreign Affairs, 1952. capa, p.3-12. Separata de Progress (London), v.42, n.233, p.3-12, Winter, 1951/52.