Portuguese National Identity:
The Role of Racial Miscegenation, Colonialism, and Imperialism
Before, During, and After the Fascist Estado Novo Regime
Relevant terms, names concepts
Antonio de Oliveira Salazar Economist who studied at U Coimbra, Established Estado Novo, Prime Minister until 1968, friendly with Francisco Franco and supported/recognized the Nationalist government in Spain in 1938, but he kept Portugal neutral in World War II and led the country into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. After World War II, Portugal’s railways, road transport, and merchant navy were reequipped, and a national airline was instituted. Electrification was planned for the whole country, and rural schools were developed. However, Salazar’s insistence on maintaining Portugal’s colonies in Africa could only be sustained with difficulty at a time when the other European colonial empires in Africa were being dismantled
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/518989/Antonio-de-Oliveira-Salazar#ref280168
Lusotropicalism - Gilberto Freyre
"Given the unique cultural and racial background of metropolitan Portugal, Portuguese explorers and colonizers demonstrated a special ability - found among no other people in the world - to adapt to tropical lands and peoples. The Portuguese colonizer, basically poor and humble, did not have the exploitive motivations of his counterpart from the more industrialized countries in Europe. Consequently, he immediately entered into cordial relations with non-European populations he met in the tropics. This is clearly demonstrated through Portugal's initial contacts with the Bakongo Kingdom in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The ultimate proof of the absence of racism among the Portuguese, however, is found in Brazil, whose large and socially prominent mestiço population is living testimony to the freedom of social and sexual intercourse between Portuguese and non-Europeans. Portuguese non-racism is also evidenced by the absence in Portuguese law of the racist legislation in South Africa and until recently in the United States baring non-whites from specific occupations, facilities, etc. Finally, any prejudice or discrimination in territories formerly or presently governed by Portugal can be traced to class, but never colour, prejudice."
^ Gerald Bender, "Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality", Univ. Calif. Press, 1978, pp. 3-4
Racial miscegenation was a liability and now turned into a positive – used as a tool during the Estado Novo
“We will see the ways in which different disciplinary approaches (historiography, socio-history, sociology, anthropology and social psychology) have been related to the formulation/critique of a “Portuguese specificity” – described as a capacity to contact other peoples and to be convivial, an idea which is now commonsensical, enunciated as Lusotropicalism (Freyre, 1952; Castelo, 1998). Moreover, we will relate this (a-)historicity of “Portuguese colonialism” to the construction of racism as a non relevantsocio-political debate.”
And
“problematic hegemonic definition of racism as beliefsor attitudes arising from specific (extremist) ideologies. On the contrary, we defend the need to conceive of racism and race"
and
‟as emerging from political situations, that is, racism should be understood rather as a political technology of (post-)colonial governance (Hesse, 2004; Bauman, 1987); more precisely, as Eric Voegelin‟s pioneer study anticipated, the „race idea‟ has been effective “in the governmental organization of the community” within the historical formation of the European national states (1997: 117).”
and
“It is our view that these historical approaches reproduce, although in a much sophisticated manner11, the narrative of the Portuguese “expansion” as a history ofreciprocal cultural impacts,interactions, contacts andexchanges. Although power relations are not neglected, we believe that there is a taken for granted use of notions such as“the Portuguese world”, “the Portuguese empire”, “Portuguese culture” or “the European presence”, giving way to the reification of processes such as “Christianization and Westernization” (Disney, 2007: 296). We consider it crucial to use these categories as part of the configuration of “imperial maps” that “despite the apparent fixity of their geographic referents....have historically possessed remarkable fluidity” (Coronil, 1996: 53); that is, we need to problematise the “very idea of Europe as an ideological construct” (West, 1993: 121) and its consequences for the modern configurations of “race” and racisms.”
and
“within the Enlightenment‟sgrowing centrality of scientific and empiricist rationality, the idea of „race‟ entered common usage. At the time, it was used to refer to discrete categories, empirically observable, according to phenotypical traits (Mosse, 1978; Solomos and Back, 1996; Hannaford, 1996), and to justify racism on the basis of “scientific” evidence of the fundamental inferiority of specific races and populations. It was also during this period that the renovation of discourses on civilisationepitomised by that ideological construct of the “Enlightened Europe” (with its internal geographies and inequalities), naturalised racism in the name of [Western] culture. This process was evident within the Portuguese colonial configuration and it had important consequences on the imagining of the Portuguesenation: the naturalisation of racism was inextricably bound with the process of naturalising a racial and cultural homogeneous Portuguese nation. In this sense, some key historical approaches to this period have downplayed the relevance of this racist configuration by not considering it as “properly racist” but a consequence of “ethnocentrism” and “exacerbated nationalism”. It is in this terms that the historian Valentim Alexandre understands the link between “populist nationalism” and the production of a “Imperial mystic” from 1875 to 1945; for instance, his analysis of the political elite‟s idea of “national integration” that regarded the African colonies as an extension of the “Portuguese civilisation” and the (black) indigenous population‟s submission to forced labour as a means for their civilisation, considers that:
What we have here it is not a properly racist conceptualisation but rather, a strongly ethnocentric one, deeply marked by the exacerbated nationalism that, since the last quarter of the 1800s, was embraced by almost the totality of the Portuguese political elites (the exceptions could be found among some groups within the working class movement). They all had in common the idea of an “end” or a “mission” to be accomplished in the name of overseas Portugal, as the incarnation of the values of “civilization” before the “primitive peoples” [...].When the 2nd article of the 1930 Colonial Act [Acto Colonial] states that “it was in the organic essence of the Portuguese nation to perform a historical function of possessing and colonising the overseas lands and of civilising the indigenous populations comprised within them”, was merely giving official signature to a typical view and feeling of Portuguese nationalism, in its different versions (from Seara Nova to the integralistas) (Alexandre, 1999: 140)13.”
^http://www.ces.uc.pt/projectos/tolerace/media/Working%20Paper%201/Portuguese%20(post-)colonial%20situations%20national%20identity%20and%20the%20understanding%20of%20racism%20the%20politics%20of%20academic%20narratives%20-%20CES.pdf
Making racism seem like an ontological consequence depoliticizes it, disregarding the fact that it is in truth a political and historical construction that has everything to do with history. Sweeping it under the rug would be the equivalent to calling it simply “prejudice”
Lots of academic narrative (from Freyre to James Duffy) has caused racism to be eitherjustified, critiqued poorly, or critiqued in such a way that makes Portugal out to be so ill-equipped that they can’t help it (as opposed to being the world super power, which they were)
“Cultural Differentiation” between White and Indigenous Populations by law in Moz/Ang : 2 different schooling systems,
Though integration is important, simultaneously, Europe is increasingly becoming a collection of “regions” and each benefits more from having their own specific characteristics and national identities – homogenous ones, (however false that homogeneity may be, as is the case with racial miscegenation).
http://www.ceg.ul.pt/finisterra/numeros/1998-65/65_16.pdf
