By Dr Gilberto Freyre,

In his paper on "Du pluralisme d'ethnies aéfiennes", M. Roberto Jaulin poinsts out that in certain areas of Africa "le seul problème de l'occidentalisation de l'Afrique a été posé, et non pas celui de l'africanisation de l'apport occidental". This is no more the situation in the large part of America characterized by an Anglo-American sociál anthropologist, Professor John Gillin, in his chapter for Most of The World (ed. by Ralph Linton, N. Y. 1949), as "Mestizo Americo": a charecaterization accepted by Dr. William Sayres, in this paper on "Indian and Non-Indian in Rural Colombia", though he is careful to write, that "despite racial and cultural mixture and ' general participation' in the mestizo pattern, there are important differences of a cultural kind between the two main groups - the European and the so-called Indian". (Incidentally, I think that in order to avoid confusion with East Indians it would be convenient to speak always of American Indians as Amerindian.) Dr Sayres thinks that in Colombia the two gruops need an education of a type more than academic, to reach a better "awareness of mutual rights and responsibilities". during a phase of transition tha will last for some time. This difficult type of education seems to be needed in every area where there are problems of ethnic and cultural differences. Even the problem of eliminating or maintaining internal differences in a plural society - a problem dealt with by Mr. M. G. Smith in his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in the British Caribbean" - being a problem of choice, seems to be, also, one to be solved through an education of a type more than academic.

This is why Mexico has paid so great an attention to education, in correlation with its "Indian problem". "Mexicanization" in Mexico is an educational process as well as an integrative social and cultural policy. This has been also the technique of General Candido Rondon and his associates dealing with Amerindians in Brazil, through the famous Brazilian Service for the Protection of the groups of indigenous population still to be found in Central and Amazonian areas of Portuguese America. As Dr. Miguel Léon-Portilla writes in his paper on "Ethnic and cultural Pluralisme in the Mexican Republic", "mexicanization" does not mean suppresing the true values of the Indian cultures. It means only seeking the elevation of its people in those aspects in which it can be asserted that the pre-Colombian cultural survivals are harmful". Of course, it is no easy task to determine, in an Europeanized country like Mexico or like Brazil or in any area equally Europeanized in its main characteristics, like modern Angola, what native values are "true" or what nativ customs are "harmful". Personnally, for instance, I find it unreasonable for the Portuguese in Angola to consider essential for a native to be taken as a real "assimilado" or as a Portuguese citizen, to sleep in an European bed. This is because in Brazil there are a number of highly civilized persons, who prefer a hammock, of Amerindian origin and style, to the best European bed, for their sleeping in the tropics. This is true even of Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans; and one of the most apologetic and intelligent pages even written about the Brazilian hammock has been written by an Englishman. On the other hand, it is true that in the 17th century, when the Portuguese in the East began to fellow a policy of assimilating to their culture, Oriental or East Indian styles of dress and not a few food values, they were severely criticized by Englishmen, who saw in this a loss of European dignity.

The present atticude of European and Anglo-American students of Non-European peoples and cultures is one that generally comes, in support of the pioneer policy followed in regard to ethnic and cultural contacts of Europeans with non-Europeans, by the Portuguese in the Eást and in tropical America. In his paper on "Ethnic and Cultural Pluralism in British Central Africa", Professor Kenneth Kirkwood, expressing his confidence "in the ability of the peoples of Central Africa and Britain to face and overcome the various challenges which face them", states that "all ethnic groups possess admirable human qualities". Hence, the need or convenience of "a non-racial approach to human affairs".

In this point, the Belgian policy in Belgian Africa, though one that seems to systematically avoid a mestizo cultural pattern, is, nevertheless, concious of the fact that the Europeans do not have the monopoly of human qualities or of cultural values. Its aim - a very difficult aim to attain under present conditions of human contact and cultural inter-communnication - is, according to M. G. E. J. B. Brausch, in his paper on "Pluralisme ethnique et culturel au Congo belge", to maintain such an equilibrium, between law and reality, that "par la même occasion tous les habitants du pays (Belgium Congo) aient des chances égales devant l'avenir et que les valeurs culturelles de chaque groupe soient respectées intégralement".

A similar policy has been followed by the French in Algeria, where the Mahomedan populations have kept most of their cultural values and, to a large extent, their ethnic purity, though the technical improvements due to French administration in that part of Africa have been a benefit to the Mahomedan as well as to the Christian groups. Perhaps the present situation in Alegeria has something to offer us as a sociological experiment in ethnic and cultual pîuralismo of a kind that allows too much for diversity and too little for unity. Some objective aspectos of this situation are described by Porfessor Louis Milliot in his paper on "Pluralisme ethnique et culturel en Algérie".

Moshamedan ethnic resistance to outsiders, through the prohibition, by Islam, of marriage of orthodox Mohamedan women with non-Mohamedan men, is an obstacle to the development of mesizo cultures and mestizo populations in areas of contact between Christians anda Islamic groups. On the other hand, Syrian and Lebanese mobility in Africa is being favourable to what M. Georges Gayet, in his paper on "Les Libanais at les Syriens dans l'Ouest Africain", calls "larges compréhensions réciproques." through "la prospérité de familles libanaises "africaines".

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. Addenda to the general report on "Cultural Pluralism". Lisbon: International Institute of Differing Civilizations, 1957. 8p.