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Note: thesis: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2018
Genre (aat): theses
Abstract: This dissertation is a study of the shifting definitions and political currency of nationalism in Brazil from 1955 through the end of the dictatorship (1964-1985). It traces the emergence of a progressive nationalist discourse in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when a loose coalition of political parties and grassroots movements succeeded in claiming and establishing the contours of a legitimately reformist nationalist agenda. Next, I address how the military regime that seized power in 1964 made deliberate attempts to neutralize the nationalist claims of progressive actors in order to claim for itself the political legitimacy such sentiment conferred. Following a chronological framework, I end the dissertation with a discussion of the regime's demise amid new attempts to recast and reclaim the nationalist mantle. Beginning with the presumption that nationalism holds an abiding appeal for a broad swath of the Brazilian population, this dissertation surveyed the use of nationalist rhetoric as a political weapon employed by Left and Right over the course of three critical decades. Understanding the nature and uses of such rhetoric is crucial because nationalism, by definition, communicates an ideal vision of society and the proper civic role for the individual not necessarily shared by everyone who would call himself a nationalist. The particularity of nationalist visions is an urgent topic of historical inquiry, not least because of the present challenges facing Brazil and the world. I argue that the conservative nationalism employed by the military regime reflects an enduring tendency of the Brazilian Right to undermine and underappreciate democracy in order to carry out an agenda for economic development that would almost certainly repel most voters in a free and fair election. Their vision of popular nationalism was presented as a passive force, translated most often into abstract, apolitical, and generalized love of country. For leftists, generally, nationalism reflected a sense of injustice at exploitation by foreign economic interests and a servile national elite. This ideological current has unabashedly embraced a central role for the state in steering economic development (in contrast to the dictatorship, for example, which paid lip service to shrinking the government’s place in the market but almost apologetically refused to take active steps in that direction) even at the expense of high short-term growth. The idea is that it is preferable to foster development autonomously even if it takes longer than to depend indefinitely on foreign capital to spark immediate growth. Both approaches have tradeoffs and overlap in significant ways but they represent distinctive solutions to fostering development with the ultimate goal of allowing Brazil to live up to its natural potential as a hemispheric and global power that can influence global events and provide for the basic needs of its people. These two strains of nationalism—to the extent that they can be boiled down to a clear binary, as I propose—reflect deep-seated characteristics of Brazil’s traditional elite and those pushing for structural changes over the course of the twentieth century. Their clashing visions of the national good illustrate their mutual contempt. Drawing on a wide array of Brazilian periodicals, U.S. government records, personal paper collections, memoirs, and interviews, my dissertation argues that the question of “legitimate” nationalism has been the defining feature of Brazilian politics since the mid-twentieth century. During much of the postwar period, it served as the basis for reformist platforms and as a common denominator around which diverse groups organized. My dissertation, a political history that attempts to resituate debates over nationalism in Brazil and Latin America, has two main goals. The first is to contextualize the dictatorship within a broader twentieth-century political history. Too often the dictatorship is seen as a period of exception with very little connection to what came before and what came after. The second is to trace shifting understandings of what nationalism and the nationalist label meant over time. What did people think of nationalism? What did it mean to them in different moments? Ultimately, I elucidate how nationalism in Brazil could at one moment be invoked to serve a social justice agenda and to justify dictatorial repression in another.
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Identifier: DOI: 10.26300/y0qb-kh94
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"): In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access: Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo): dissertations