Lusotropicalism () is a term and "quasi-theory"[Miguel Vale de Almeida, Portugal’s Colonial Complex: From Colonial Lusotropicalism to Postcolonial Lusophony]
Freyre theorized that because of Portugal's warmer climate, and having been inhabited by Celts, Ancient Rome, Visigoths, Moors and several other peoples in pre-modern times, the Portuguese were more humane, friendly, and adaptable to other climates and cultures. He saw "Portuguese-based cultures as cultures of ecumenical expansion" and suggested that "Lusotropical culture was a form of resistance against both the 'barbaric' Soviet communist influence, and the also 'barbarian' process of Americanization and capitalist expansion."
In addition, by the early 20th century, Portugal was by far the European colonial power with the oldest territorial presence overseas; in some cases its territories had been continuously settled and ruled by the Portuguese for five centuries. Lusotropicalism celebrated both actual and mythological elements of racial democracy and civilizing mission in the Portuguese Empire, encompassing a pro-miscegenation attitude toward the colonies or overseas territories. The ideology is best exemplified in the work of Freyre.
Background
The beginning of the Portuguese Empire is usually traced to the 1415 Conquest of Ceuta in
North Africa. In the succeeding decades of the 15th century, Portuguese sailors traveled all over the world:
Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; Vasco da Gama reached
India in 1498; and Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall in
Brazil in 1500. At first the Portuguese were interested primarily in lucrative trade opportunities (including the slave trade), and by the end of the 16th century the Portuguese had established trading outposts in Africa, India, Brazil, the Middle East, and
South Asia. During this time there was some minimal Portuguese intermarrying with and settlement among African and Asian peoples. It was much more common for the Portuguese to bring Asian and especially African peoples to Europe and Brazil, most often though not always as enslaved people. As early as the 1570s,
Lisbon had a sizeable and well-known Black African population of enslaved and free people.
During the New Imperialism Scramble for Africa of the 1890s onward, Portugal expanded its coastal African territories in modern Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau inland. Like other European colonial empires, Portugal achieved this expansion primarily through physical and economic violence against native peoples. After the 1910 Portuguese Revolution, and as an official policy of the 1933–1974 Estado Novo dictatorship, Black people in Portuguese Africa were de jure eligible for full Portuguese citizenship and its attendant rights. In practice, Black people hardly ever achieved such status, and during the Estado Novo even white Portuguese born in Africa were denied the same legal rights and protections as whites born in metropole Portugal.
Application during the Estado Novo
Prior to Freyre's publication of
Casa-Grande & Senzala, few—if any—Portuguese politicians and colonial administrators conceived of the Portuguese Empire as a multicultural, multiracial, and
pluricontinental nation (the idea that Portugal was not a colonial empire but a nation-state spread across continents).
They were more likely to think of Portuguese colonialism as a logical historical extension or continuation of the
Reconquista.
For example,
Armindo Monteiro, Portuguese Minister of Colonies between 1931 and 1935, is considered a "
Social Darwinism" due to being a proponent of the traditional colonial "civilizing mission" and
.
Monteiro believed Portugal had a "historic obligation" to civilize the "inferior races" who lived in its African and Asian territories by converting them to Christianity and teaching them a
work ethic.
Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar strongly resisted Freyre's ideas throughout the 1930s and 1940s, partly because Freyre claimed the Portuguese were more prone to miscegenation than other European nations. He adopted lusotropicalism only after sponsoring Freyre on a visit to Portugal and some of its overseas territories in 1951 and 1952. Freyre's work Aventura e Rotina ( Adventure and Routine) was a result of this trip.
Salazar adopted lusotropicalism by asserting that since Portugal had been a multicultural, multiracial, and pluricontinental nation since the 15th century, losing its overseas territories in Africa and Asia would dismember the country and end Portuguese independence.
Influence on Hispanism
In Hispanic circles, an "
Ibero-tropicalist" movement has been developed, with the aim of developing an
anthropology of
Mestizo based on the similarities between the Portuguese colonial model and the
Spanish Empire one to integrate the native peoples and having organically given a
transculturation that forged a syncretic identity of Iberian and
West Indies roots. This "Ibero-tropicalism" considers that
Iberism should not be understood as something purely European, but as an Ibero-Afro-American identity in which cultures of 3 great civilizations were integrated into a single transcontinental social community, evidenced in the cultural exchange present in food (beans, cocoa or potatoes), genes (Mestizaje), clothes, music (Reggaeton), terminologies, etc. in a common heritage (in addition to mutual migratory currents). This sociological approach would make
Spain and
Portugal be understood as nations that are not purely European, but also American and African; and analogously with the fact that
Ibero-America is not purely American, but also European and African, just as Portuguese Africa and
Hispanic Africa are not purely African, but also European and American; and that all these regions with a common tradition would be part of the Iberian Civilization and its plural character (expressed in the
Hispanidad or
Lusophonie).
Critique
Freyre's response to criticism
The life of Freyre, after he published
Casa-Grande & Senzala, became an eternal source of explanation. He repeated several times that he did not create the myth of a
racial democracy and that the fact that his books recognized the intense mixing between "races" in Brazil did not mean a lack of prejudice or discrimination. He pointed out that many people have claimed the
United States to have been an "exemplary democracy" whereas
slavery and racial segregation were present throughout most of
US history:
"The interpretation of those who want to place me among the sociologists or anthropologists who said prejudice of race among the Portuguese or the Brazilians never existed is extreme. What I have always suggested is that such prejudice is minimal... when compared to that which is still in place elsewhere, where laws still regulate relations between Europeans and other groups".
"It is not that racial prejudice or social prejudice related to complexion are absent in Brazil. They exist. But no one here would have thought of "white-only" Churches. No one in Brazil would have thought of laws against interracial marriage ... Fraternal spirit is stronger among Brazilians than racial prejudice, colour, class or religion. It is true that equality has not been reached since the end of slavery.... There was racial prejudice among plantation owners, there was social distance between the masters and the slaves, between whites and blacks.... But few wealthy Brazilians were as concerned with racial purity as the majority were in the Old South".
See also
Further reading
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Castelo, Cláudia, O Modo Português de estar no Mundo' O luso-tropicalismo e a ideologia colonial portuguesa (1933–1961). Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1999.
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Cahen, Michel, "'Portugal is in the Sky': Conceptual Considerations on Communities, Lusitanity and Lusophony", in E.Morier-Genoud & M.Cahen (eds), Imperial Migrations. Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World, London: Palgrave, 2012.
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Nery da Fonseca, Edson. Em Torno de Gilberto Freyre. Recife: Editora Massangana, 2007.
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Nery da Fonseca, Edson. Gilberto Freyre de A a Z – Referências essenciais à sua vida e obra. Rio de Janeiro: Zé mario Editor, 2002.
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Ribeiro, Ana Beatriz. Modernization Dreams, Lusotropical Promises: A Global Studies Perspective on Brazil-Mozambique Development Discourse (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 23). Leiden: Brill, 2020.
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Vakil, Abdoolkarim, "'Mundo Pretuguês': Colonial and Postcolonial Diasporic Dis/articulations", in E.Morier-Genoud & M.Cahen (eds), Imperial Migrations. Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World, London: Palgrave, 2012.
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Villon, Victor. O Mundo Português que Gilberto Freyre Criou – seguido de Diálogos com Edson Nery da Fonseca. Rio de Janeiro, Vermelho Marinho, 2010.
