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DOI 10.1007/s10739-016-9445-8
Abstract. This paper analyzes biological and scientific discourses about the racial
composition of the Brazilian population, between 1832 and 1911. The first of these dates
represents Darwin’s first arrival in the South-American country during his voyage on
H.M.S. Beagle. The study ends in 1911, with the celebration of the First universal Races
congress in London, where the Brazilian physical anthropologist J.B. Lacerda predicted
the complete extinction of black Brazilians by the year 2012. Contemporary European
and North-American racial theories had a profound influence in Brazilian scientific
debates on race and miscegenation. These debates also reflected a wider political and
cultural concern, shared by most Brazilian scholars, about the future of the Nation.
With few known exceptions, Brazilian evolutionists, medical doctors, physical
anthropologists, and naturalists, considered that the racial composition of the
population was a handicap to the commonly shared nationalistic goal of creating a
modern and progressive Brazilian Republic.
‘‘The Negro is not just an economic machine; most of all, despite his
own ignorance, he is an object of scientific study’’ (Romero, 1888a,
268 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
1
Quoted in Rodrigues (1938, p. 7).
2
The literature on Rodrigues is abundant. See, for example, Oda (2003), Corrêa
(2001), Maio (1995), Peixoto (1957) and Piccinini (2003).
3
For a general discussion of scientific approaches to the concept of race in Latin
America during the nineteenth century, see Graham (1990), Stepan (1991), Skidmore
(1974) and Rodrigues (2011).
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 269
Figure 3. Medical School of Bahia. Nina Rodrigues’ portrait is situated in the eighth
position (from left to right) on the upper row
part of the colonial economy based on slave labor. However, by the time
of abolition, it was no longer dependent on the maintenance of slavery
to be self-perpetuated’’ (Skidmore, 1976, pp. 54–55)..After abolition,
those old ideas continued, astonishingly well-established, in part, as we
shall see, because they received a new form of justification by contem-
porary scientific discourses.
By the end of the nineteenth century, racial hierarchies were ex-
plained as results of natural laws, since it was taken for granted the
existence of a biological and intellectual evolutionary progression from
non-Caucasians to ‘‘pure’’ whites (Schwarcz, 1993, 1994). As I will try
to explain in the rest of this work, scientists pointed towards different
biological and intellectual capacities that nature had assigned to the
different ‘‘races’’ (and their different mixed products), in order to
legitimize the higher or lower position that each group could (and
should) occupy on the social scale.
The general assumption of such scientific premises would have
enormous consequences beyond the academic milieu, influencing the
Brazilian society for decades. By 1900, a notion that positive laws and
rights should be based on biological postulates about the natural dif-
ferences of the various human groups was predominant in the two main
Brazilian Schools of Law (established in Recife and São Paulo), where
positivism, Lombrosianism and Darwinism were devotedly adopted by
many influent Brazilian jurists. They tried to conciliate, as much as
possible, political and social legislation with ‘‘scientific laws’’ (Schwarcz,
1994; Koracakis, 1999). It was fashionable to hold ‘‘a scientific concept
of law, which had to come together with evolutionary biology, the
natural sciences, and with a deterministic physical anthropology (…)
Legislative science was trying to distance itself from all the other human
sciences, aiming to associate itself with other disciplines that, were
supposedly, just concerned with certainty and exactness’’ (Schwarcz,
1993, p. 10). Assuming miscegenation as a kind of ‘‘biopolitical’’ dis-
advantage for Brazil, some jurists, in legal circles and juridical journals
(such as the official publication of the Law Faculty in Recife, Revista da
Faculdade de Direito de Recife), debated at length about ‘‘the necessity
of acting on the population profile, since it was composed of unequal
races; some of them were—perhaps- unprepared for the exercise of
citizenship’’ (Schwarcz, 1994, p. 149). During the 1880s, such discus-
sions would enhance legislative initiatives aimed to prohibit the entry of
black and Asian workers in the country (Hall, 1976; Skidmore, 1976,
pp. 130–143; Holloway, 1980; Lesser, 1999; Oliveira, 2001). By 1890, a
new Republican decree stipulated the opening of the country to quali-
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 273
fied immigrant workers ‘‘except for the natives of Asia or Africa, who
only by means of a special authorization of the Congress may be
admitted, in accordance with the stipulated specific terms’’ (Skidmore,
1976, p. 155). At the same time, naturalists, race scientists and physical
anthropologists were developing their own scientific diagnoses and
solutions to what they considered as the main ‘‘national problem’’.
5
For the scientific institutionalization of science and the history of higher education
in Brazil, see, among other references, Lopes (2009), Paulilo (2004), Niskier (1996), de
Almeida (1989) and Romanelli (1978).
274 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
6
Even though Haeckeĺs monumental work cannot be reduced to his anthropological
writings—and it would be very unfair to judge his scientific importance based only on
that dimension of his thought-, his influence on the racial debates that took place among
some of the first Brazilian evolutionists was imponderable, and this will be our main
focus here. An excellent discussion on Haeckel’s evolutionism and its situation in the
context of the cultural, political and scientific debates of his time can be found in
Richards (2008). For further details about Haeckel’s ideas about the origin of the
human races, see also Richards (2007), Di Gregorio (2002, 2005), Gliboff (2014) and
Marks (2012).
276 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
century, and ‘‘the primary and fairly authentic German voice of Dar-
winism’’ (Marks 2012, p. 98)-, would become the most influential
propagator of Darwinism and evolutionary anthropology among the
first Brazilian evolutionists interested in human races.7 Other famous
scientists such as Spencer, Huxley, Vogt, Büchner, Agassiz, Morton,
Knot and Gliddon, Lombroso, Garofalo and Enrico Ferri, were also
read with eagerness by Brazilian scholars.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the vast majority of foreign
scientists that referred specifically to the racial composition of the
Brazilian population, did not question at all the prejudice of Caucasian
racial superiority—in physical and moral terms-, above all other pop-
ulations inhabiting the country. That was the case even for abolitionist
and politically liberal scientists, such as the French Louis Couty, who
directed the Polytechnic School in Rio de Janeiro, exemplifies. Even
though Couty was definitely contrary to slavery, he thought that blacks
were actually inferior to Europeans by their biological and intellectual
nature. ‘‘Black laziness’’ was, ‘‘in part, responsible for the backwardness
of the country: even when they [black people] recovered freedom with
emancipation, they did nothing to work or cultivate land or for social
progress’’ (Petrucelli, 1996, p. 139). According to him, slavery had
worked pragmatically as a social protection for black people, since,
during that period ‘‘they were well fed, cared for and protected against
old age or Unemployment’’ (Petrucelli, 1996, p. 139). In general terms,
for all these foreign scientists, ‘‘some moral values, positive or negative,
were matched with the physical characteristics [of each ‘‘race’’]. The
further away the physical appearance was from the Caucasian proto-
type, the worst moral and esthetic characteristics were attributed to the
population’’ (Oda, 2003, p. 91). Nonetheless, some rare exceptions
could be found to that generalization, such as the work by French
7
In Brazil, Haeckel was first known mainly through the French translations of some
his most popular books, such as Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Haeckel, 1868); The
natural history of creation (Haeckel, 1876) or Anthropogenie: oder, Entwickelungs-
geschichte des Menschen - Anthropogeny: Or, the Evolutionary History of Man- (1874).
Two of the most familiar translations of the German original editions were Haeckel,
Ernst. 1877a. Histoire de la cre´ation des eˆtres organise´s d’apre`s les lois naturelles. Paris:
Reinwald; Haeckel, Ernest. 1877b. Anthropoge´nie ou Histoire de l’’Évolution Humaine.
Leçons familie`res sur les principes de l’’Embryologie et de la Phyloge´nie humaines. Paris:
Reinwald.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 277
warlike nation like the ancient Indians may have suffered such a great
reduction in number, and may have degenerated to such a degraded and
insignificant state. All of which makes of them an object of compassion,
more than a subject of history’’ (Spix and Martius, 1938, vol. 1, p. 197).
According to von Martius, it was presumable that, in short, such bio-
logical and cultural degeneration would lead to the total extinction of
the indigenous peoples of Brazil: ‘‘there’s no doubt that Native Amer-
icans are about to disappear. Other peoples will survive in the New
World while those unhappy populations rest in the eternal sleep’’
(Martius, 1982, p. 70). As previously mentioned, neutral or favorable
descriptions of Brazilian miscegenation were very rare among the
international scientific community during the second half of the nine-
teenth century. In any case, even when they were taken into ac-
count,—as in the aforementioned cases of Quatrefages and von
Martius, the influence of those indecisive, if not contradictory,
defenders of racial mixing were certainly incomparable with the influ-
ence of those defending the opposite point of view, for whom Brazilian
miscegenation was estimated as a source of decadence and degeneration.
The same identification of Indians and their mestiços with degener-
ation, the same kind of predictions of racial extinction for those sup-
posedly retarded branches of human evolution, were also common in
other Latin American countries, apart from Brazil (Graham, 1990;
Bratlinger, 2003). In Argentina, for example, miscegenation not only
triggered interest in the process of speciation, but also in its relationship
with extinction (Novoa and Levine, 2010). Racial degeneration and
racial extinction of the decadent native populations became a synonym
of progress and civilization: ‘‘If the country was civilizing itself, the
‘natural’ elimination of inferior individuals, unfit for the struggle for
existence, had to be proved and displayed. The origin of modernity was
here associated with the existence of evolutionary waste that revealed
the work of natural selection on behalf of national improvement’’
(Novoa, 2009, p. 2017). Similar ideas were expressed in Cuba, where the
native Indians of the island were considered to have been formed by
populations ‘in a degenerative stage, leading inevitably to their extinc-
tion, when the Spaniards conquered them and ‘fulfilled that sentence’’’
(Helg, 1990, p. 58).
Among the defenders of the idea that racial miscegenation caused
degeneration, a prominent place must be assigned to the Count Arthur
de Gobineau, who lived in Rio de Janeiro as the French ambassador
between 1869 and 1870, and eventually became a friend of Emperor
Pedro II (Raeders, 1988). Gobineau’s influence in Brazilian scientific
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 279
circles would be remarkable for decades. Even authors whose work was
developed many years after the Count́s visit to Brazil, such as Nina
Rodrigues, recalled the Count’’s dramatic description of the ‘‘decline
observed in the South-American mestiços’’ (Rodrigues, 1899, p. 4). In
1869, during his stay in Rio, the famous author of the Essay on the
Inequality of the Human Races (Gobineau, 1967) reported, with moral
and esthetic horror, that ‘‘no Brazilian has pure blood. All possible
combinations of marriages between whites, blacks and Indians have
proliferated to such an extent that the nuances in the color of the skin
are endless, and this has produced the most pitiful degeneration, both in
the lower as in the upper classes’’ (Raeders, 1988, p. 40).9 According to
the French diplomat, the deleterious effects of Brazilian miscegenation
were so patent that, following his calculations, decay caused by inter-
racial crosses would ‘‘inevitably condemn the degenerate mestiços to
disappearance (…) in about two hundred and seventy years’’ (Raeders,
1988, p. 62). It was a very similar opinion to that maintained by another
illustrious French visitor to Brazil, the botanist Auguste Saint-Hilaire.
Some decades before Gobineaús arrival in the country, in 1833, Saint-
Hilaire published a book about his travels along the Brazilian coast and
the diamond territories of the inner-lands, which lasted from 1816 to
1822. There, Saint-Hilaire described ‘‘a horrible population, formed
from the mixture of oppressed and oppressors’’ (Saint-Hilaire, 1974, p.
153). In his view, Brazilian Indigenous people constituted only ‘‘the sad
remnants of a civilization that will quickly fade away, accompanied by
the disappearance of the unhappy race to which it belongs’’ (de Saint-
Hilaire, 1974, p. 153).
The future of Brazilian people looked equally pessimistic for one of
the greatest naturalists of the nineteenth century, Louis Agassiz—who
visited the country between 1865 and 1866. A disciple of Cuvier, the
zoologist, geologist and paleontologist Luiz Agassiz remained an anti-
Darwinist until his death. He considered that the human species was the
result of divine Creation, but he asserted that the Bible ‘‘never meant to
say that all men originated from a single pair, Adam and Eve, nor that
the animals had a similar origin from one common center or from a
single pair’’ (Agassiz 1850, p. 135; quoted in Sussman 2014, p. 33). After
leaving Europe, he arrived in the United States in 1846, where he re-
mained for the rest of his life. He joined Morton and Nott in their
defense that different human types were in fact different biological
species, created in different biogeographic areas, each one characterized
9
Letter from A. de Gobineau to Caroline de Gobineau, April 19th, 1869. Quoted in
Raeders (1988, p. 90).
280 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
by a peculiar fauna and flora. ‘‘Agassiźs basic view was that all humans
were created differently, with different talents. People of color had dif-
ferent, but inferior talents to those of whites, and these differences
should be studied so the best could be gotten out of each race. Just as
Hume and Kant before him, he based his theory on the supposition that
Africans had never created a civilization, never developed ‘‘regulated
societies’’, had always been slaves and therefore should remain so.
Furthermore, Agassiz believed that because of this, it was a waste of
time and effort to give to Africans the educational and cultural benefits
of European civilization’’ (Sussmann, pp. 33–34). During his stay in
Brazil, Agassiz conducted anthropological research, comprising a series
of pioneering anthropological photographs intended to prove the bio-
logical degeneration of mixed races in relation with ‘‘pure’’ breeds
(Balanta, 2012; Machado and Huber, 2010). In his travel notes, he
described the devastating effect that racial mixture had caused to the
nation. ‘‘Those who doubt about the pernicious effects of racial mixing
and, led by a false philanthropy, try to deny all the natural barriers
existing between the human races, should come to Brazil. Here, better
than anywhere else, it is not possible to deny the racial decline resulting
from the crosses. They could not deny that miscegenation shuts down
the best qualities of each race: in whites as in blacks or Indians, racial
mixture produces an indescribable kind of hybrid, of poor physical and
mental energy’’ (Agassiz and Agassiz, 1938, p. 366).
Agassiz, as it is well known, used anti-evolutionary and creationist
arguments to explain the natural differences between the races—con-
sidered by him as different zoological species. But in Brazil, a country
where—unlike in other Latin American States- the theories of biological
evolution were relatively quickly accepted without much tension (Bertol
et al., 2003), these kind of old fashioned creationist anthropological
arguments would rapidly be forgotten and replaced by more modern
evolutionary discourses about the origin of racial divergences.
For these scientists, as for Haeckel, there could be no doubt that the
biological differences between some human races were ‘‘as great and
even greater than the specific differences by which zoologists and
botanists distinguish recognized good animal and vegetable species
(bonae species)’’ (Haeckel, 1887, vol. 2, p. 305). Some authors have
referred to the defenders of these ideas as evolutionary polygenists
(Alter, 2007a, p. 239; Caspari and Wolpoff, 2013, p. 355), while others
refer to them as ‘‘neopolygenists’’ (Sussman, 2014, p. 87).11
The anthropological ideas of these post-evolutionary polygenists
were radically opposite to polygenic creationism, whose basic
tenet—reinvigorated in scientific terms by the ‘‘American School of
Anthropology’’ in the first half of the nineteenth century- was the sep-
arate creation of the human races by God. This old creationist
assumption ‘‘did not die with Darwin’s Origin of Species’’ (Stocking,
1982, p. 45), and was still supported in Darwin’s times by non-Dar-
winian polygenic anthropologists, such as James Hunt and his closest
allies in the Anthropological Society of London (Stocking, 1982, p. 46;
1987, pp. 245–254; Richards, 2007, p. 99). On the contrary, Haeckel, as
well as many other post-evolutionary polygenists, accepted natural
selection and the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm, and explicitly re-
jected any kind of creationist explanations in biological anthropology.
In fact, as some authoritative scholars have recently suggested, some of
Haeckel’s most controversial ideas regarding human racial diversity
cannot be completely understood without placing them in relation with
Haeckel’s radical aversion towards creationism and all form of ortho-
dox religions, particularly Catholicism.12 In this sense, Haeckel’s poly-
genic rejection of the idea ‘‘that all men are descended from one pair’’
(Haeckel, 1887, vol. 2, p. 304) as an untenable supposition ‘‘taken from
11
Alter (2007a, p. 239) says that Darwin’s anthropological ideas ‘‘opposed to a new
evolutionary polygenism formulated in the wake of Darwin’s Origin of Species by his
ostensible supporters Alfred Russel Wallace and Ernst Haeckel’’. Similarly, Caspari and
Wolpoff (2013) state that ‘‘through the end of the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth, many paleoanthropologists and paleontologists were evolutionary poly-
genists, who essentially described human races (= subspecies) as having independently
evolved from different primate species, some in ancient times and others more re-
cently(…). Key elements shared by all variations of evolutionary polygenism include the
independent evolution of human races (for so long that races acquired their humanity
separately) and the tree models at their core’’ (Caspari and Wolpoff, 2013, p. 355). See
also Haller (1995), Alter (2007b), and Gliboff (2014).
12
See Richards (2007, p. 100) and Marks (2012, p. 97).
284 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
13
For a comprehensive discussion of Haeckel’s thought about religion, see Richards
(2008, especially pp. 343–390).
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 285
species, the German scientist refused the idea that they descended from
a single human pair and thus, from this point of view, he could be
classified with the evolutionary polygenists. As Haeckel recognized, this
was a paradoxical situation in which, depending on the perspective
adopted, his evolutionary anthropology could be considered either as
monogenist or as polygenist. In Haeckel’s own words, ‘‘two great par-
ties have for a long time been at war with each other upon this question;
the monophylists (or monogenists) maintain the unity of origin and the
blood relationship of all races of men. The polyphylists (or polygenists),
on the other hand, are of the opinion that the different races of men are
of independent origin. According to our previous genealogical investi-
gations, we cannot doubt that, at least in a wide sense, the monophyletic
opinion is the right one. For even supposing that the transmutation of
Man-like Apes into Men had taken place several times, yet those Apes
themselves would again be allied by the one pedigree common to the
whole order of the Apes. The question, therefore, would always be
merely about a nearer or remoter degree of blood relationship. In a
narrower sense, on the other hand, the polyphylist’s opinion would
probably be right, inasmuch as the different primeval languages have
developed quite independently of one another. Hence, if the origin of an
articulate language is considered as the real and principal act of
humanification (sic), and the species of the human race are distinguished
according to the roots of their language, it might be said that the dif-
ferent races of men had originated independently of one another by
different branches of primeval speechless men, directly springing from
apes and forming their own primeval language. Still, they would of
course be connected further up or lower down at their root, and thus all
would finally be derived from a common primeval stock. While we hold
the latter of these convictions, and while we for many reasons believe
that the different species of speechless primeval men were all derived
from a common ape-like human form, we do not of course mean to say
that all men are descended from one pair. This latter supposition, which
our modern Indo-Germanic culture has taken from the Semitic myth of
the Mosaic history of creation, is by no means tenable’’ (Haeckel, 1887,
vol.2, pp. 303–304).
This peculiar combination of the defense of the multiplicity of the
human species with the idea that they all had a monophyletic origin,
having evolved from a common primeval proto-human Urform, situated
Haeckel’s anthropology in an intermediate position between Darwin’s
monogenism and the radical polygenism of the time. This last position
was represented in Haeckle’s times by the advocates of polygenic
286 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
14
It was under Schleicher’s influence that Haeckel firstly drew inspiration for his
genealogical trees, which he transferred from philology to natural history. Besides,
Schleicher was responsible for convincing Haeckel that the origin of language was
crucial to understand human evolution. Based on his own linguistic research, Schleicher
thought that the existence of an original Urform at the base of the human genealogic
tree was unconceivable. A further discussion on the influence of Schleicher on Haeckel’s
understanding of evolution and on his Monist philosophy can be found in Richards
(2008) and Di Gregorio (2002).
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 287
civilize those lowest races, have abandoned the attempt, express the
same harsh judgment, and maintain that it would be easier to train the
most intelligent domestic animals to a moral and civilized life,
than these unreasoning brute-like men’’ (Haeckel, 1887, vol. 2, pp. 365–
366).
Moreover, Haeckel’s characterization of the big human divisions as
different species implied that miscegenation could be interpreted as a
process of hybridization (Haeckel, 1887, p. 303). For many of the
neopolygenists of the period, this kind of racial admixture would in-
evitably result in the biological degeneration of the population. This
idea obtained additional scientific support from the French Anthropo-
logical Society, led by Paul Broca, whose theories about human crossing
between what he considered as different human species had been pub-
lished in 1860, with the significant title ‘‘On the phenomenon of Hy-
bridity in the Genus Homo’’ (Broca, 1860, 1864). As mentioned before,
perhaps because of a simple question of linguistic proximity, the newest
advances and theories of evolutionary anthropology came to Brazil
mainly through original French publications or French translations
(even though, in Brazilian scientific libraries, such as in the Medical
School of Bahia, there could also be found scientific books in Italian,
English, and to a lesser extent, in German). For that reason, the French
anthropological school had a decisive influence when evolutionism was
first received in the South American country. In the 1870s, when one of
the pioneers of Brazilian evolutionism, Domingos Guedes Cabral, a
Bahian student of medicine, begun to speak publicly in evolutionary
terms about the inaccuracy of the Bible’s account of human origins
(Cabral, 1876), his denial of the existence of Adam was clearly influ-
enced both by Paul Broca and especially, by Ernst Haeckel. Cabral’s
polemic affirmation that Adam was just ‘‘a myth’’, directly taken from
the German scientist (Haeckel, 1887[1868], vol. 2, p. 304) was oriented
towards a twofold goal. In the first place, the denial of the biblical
narrative was a defense of evolutionism against creationism; but at the
same time, Cabraĺs denial of Adam was a refutation of the monogenic
belief in a single human species, and of a common human origin for all
races.
Cabral was not the only one to adopt this Haeckelian interpretation
of human origins. Despite Darwin’s final victory in the defense of the
unity of the human species (Darwin, 1871, vol. 1, p. 228)-, French and
German evolutionary polygenic anthropological models of human
evolution were enthusiastically received in Brazilian academic circles at
290 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
15
Explicit defenses of the evolutionary polygenic theory among Brazilian medical
doctors and physical anthropologists were published both in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro
before 1900. Significant examples can be found in Domingos Guedes Cabral, Funções do
Ce´rebro (Bahia: Imprensa Nacional, 1876); João B. de Lacerda, and José Rodriguez
Peixoto, ‘‘Contribuções para o estudo anthropologico das raças indı́genas do Brazil’’
Arquivos do Museu Nacional de Rio de Janeiro 1876, 1(10): 47–75; Sı́lvio Romerós
Ethnographia Brazileira. Estudos crı´ticos sobre Couto de Magalhães, Barbosa Rodrigues,
Theophilo Braga e Ladislau Netto, (1888); Justo Jansen Ferreira, O parto e suas con-
seqüeˆncias na espe´cie negra. These inaugural. (1887); Pedro A Corrêa Filho, A
genealogia Humana. These de doutoramento apresentada à Faculdade de medicina e
Pharmacia da Bahia (1895); and João B. de Sá Oliveira, Craneometria comparada das
espe´cies humanas na Bahia (1895).
16
The emperor Pedro II was member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (which only
accounted for 8 foreign Academics). He even gave economic support to some of Louis
Pasteur researches.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 291
17
See Romero (1888b, pp. 28–34, 87–90, 100, 105, 112).
18
In 1876, he declared that if he had to choose between the two hypotheses (mono/
polygenism), he would be ‘‘a polygenist with Agassiz’’. Lacerda and Peixoto (1876, p.
75).
294 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
from species. The one test by which we can provide a secure foundation
for this distinction is the fertility or infertility of the offspring which
results from crossing the two species in question. If their progeny con-
tinues to reproduce in successive generations, the parents constitute a
race. If on the opposite, they prove sterile, the parents which were
crossed must be considered species. Admitting this principle, which
seems to me sounder physiologically and more natural than any of the
others, I have no difficulty in granting that the white man and the black
man are merely two races and not two distinct species. Everyone is aware
that the metis, who come of the mating of the White and the black,
remain fertile for many generations’’ (Lacerda, 1911, pp. 377–378).
In 1882, Netto and Lacerda had organized a great anthropological
exhibition at the National Museum, in which a group of living Botocudo
natives was exhibited as the main attraction. Before further considera-
tions, it is important here to introduce a brief digression, in order to
better understand why the organizers of the exhibition chose the Bo-
tocudo, among the many native indigenous nations living in the country,
in order to be transported to the city of Rio,19 and get displayed for the
public. Given their peculiar appearance, as a result of their use of the
Tembeta,20 the Botocudos became object of special attention, curiosity
and interest for naturalists and anthropologists since their first contact
with whites. Besides, the Botocudos had provided some of the most
valuable skulls to the National Museum anthropological collections,
since their creation. Those skulls had been object of systematic
anthropometrical studies by the Musem’s naturalists Lacerda and Ro-
drigues Peixoto (Lacerda and Peixoto, 1876; Lacerda, 1876; Peixoto,
1885). But, in the context of exacerbated nationalism that characterized
Brazilian society during the last decades of the nineteenth century, there
were also other political reasons for considering these particular Indi-
ans—and no others—as perfect examples of biological primitivism and
cultural savagery.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, ‘‘national charac-
ters’’ were considered to be determined by ethnic or racial factors. After
their independence, many Latin-American countries tried to build a new
national identity through a complete revision of their national history.
The creation of new Historical Institutes, such as the Brazilian Instituto
Histórico e Geográfico, founded in 1838, stimulated the production of a
new kind of historical narratives in which the racial matters played a
19
The exhibited natives came from the inner lands of the Brazilian States of Goiás and
Espı´rito Santo. See Langer and Rankel (2004).
20
Traditional wood tablets used by Botocudos as labial and auricular extensors.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 295
central role. In the case of the different Indian nations living in the
Brazilian territory, some native groups were stereotypically represented
as being ‘‘noble by nature’’, while other populations, especially those
who resisted occupation of their lands and were not subjugated to the
colonial rule, such as the Botocudos, used to be depicted as brutish and
primitive savages, evolutionary underdeveloped. Historically—al least
since the seventeenth century—the Portuguese had established in Brazil
a clear demarcation between the Tupi and Tapuia Indians (Peixoto,
1885, p. 205). The Tapuia group—to which the Botocudo belonged-
included non-acculturated indigenous populations, whose languages
belonged to the Jê family. The Tapuians included some resistant, belli-
cose, and rebel peoples, such as the Botocudos themselves, or the
aforementioned Kaingang, who historically had always resisted to ren-
der their original lands to the administration of the white authorities.
Significantly, Tapuians were commonly considered by contemporary
Brazilian scholars and anthropologists as representatives of the lowest
grade of human civilization. On the contrary, the Tupi—who originally
spoke different Tupinambá dialects and—after their standardization by
the Jesuits-, used the Nheengatu language, or Lı´ngua Geral, had been
largely assimilated by the Portuguese colonial authorities and mission-
aries. After the independence from Portugal, in a period still marked by
violent conflicts for the land between Indian natives and white set-
tlers—or Bandeirantes-, the dichotomy Tupi/Tapuia gained new politi-
cal connotations, associated with the search for a new national identity.
‘‘For the Empire intellectuals (…) the Tapuia Indians, frequently
characterised as enemies instead of allies, represented the treacherous
savage of the inner lands, always menacing and interrupting the pro-
gress of civilisation. They were situated in the opposite pole of the
Tupi—the noble warrior who signed a peace and blood brotherhood
with the coloniser’’ (Monteiro, 2001, p. 174).
The First Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition—one of the most
important scientific events held in Brazil during the whole nineteenth
century—was inaugurated on July 29,1882, in the presence of the Em-
peror and the Imperial family (Arteaga and El-Hani, 2010; Andermann,
2005; Langer and Rankel, 2004). With its scientific authority, the
exhibition reinforced the idea of the biological, intellectual and moral
inferiority of the rebel Tapuians. The Botocudo natives were exhibited
‘‘in a simulated everyday-life environment’’ (Andermann, 2003, p. 300),
as it was fashionable in contemporary anthropological exhibitions
(Sánchez-Gómez, 2013; Abbatista, 2005; Rothfels, 2002, Bancel et al.,
2002). The ‘‘human zoo’’ was complemented with an official catalogue,
296 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
such as the Aryans, could have evolved. Netto supported his unortho-
dox biological assertions on even more unorthodox philological argu-
ments, considered as ridiculous pseudoscience by intellectuals as Silvio
Romero.21 ‘‘According to some linguists, Quichua is a corruption of
some military language closely related to Sanskrit (…). Why could not
be stated that, contrary to this assumption, Sanskrit evolved as a pro-
found alteration of the ancient sources of the primitive language spoken
by the men of the Andes?’’ (Netto, 1882d, p. 77).
Reinforcing the idea of a great evolutionary primitivism of the Bo-
tocudo, another article in the Revista—signed by Lacerda-, explained
that the morphology of modern Botocudo skulls presented similarities
with the prehistoric fossils of Lagõa Santa (Neves et al., 2007). The
anatomical peculiarities of these ancient skulls, discovered by Lund in
1843, had been considered by many polygenists as one of the main
arguments in favour of the hypothesis of the evolutionary autochthony
of the American races, and their belonging to a common American
human species, the Homo americanus. Lacerda had described the Bo-
tocudos as one of the most ‘‘brutalized’’ indigenous breeds of Brazil, but
in relation with the Lagoa Santa men, he thought they occupied a
slightly higher position in the evolutionary scale of brain development
(Lacerda, 1882a, pp. 22–23). Another of Lacerda’s studies in the cata-
logue dealt with the dental anatomy of the Botocudos. His comparative
analysis with Europeans reinforced the idea that both races had di-
verged from the first stages of human evolution. According to Lacerda,
the teeth and mandibles of the Botocudo people clearly showed their
closer evolutionary proximity to the extinct races and the great apes,
and ‘‘could be considered as a biological character of ethnic inferiority.
When you see the Museum’s whole anthropological collection […], at
first glance, it becomes apparent the bestiality printed on the teeth of
these Indian skulls’’ (Lacerda, 1882b, p. 91).
21
Sı́vio Romero considered Ladislau Netto as a vacuous and egotistic pseudo intel-
lectual, of very limited scientific skills and lacking the anthropological culture required
for directing the National Museum. Concerning Netto’s limited knowledge of linguistic
matters, Romero sarcastically ridiculed his extravagant incursions in the comparative
philology of ancient languages: ‘‘I take the historical responsibility for the affirmation of
Netto’s absolute ignorance in any of the branches of oriental languages, auctoritate ex
qua fungor. For confirming this, it suffices a 10 min talk with him’’ (Romero, 1888b, p.
152). In this same book, Romero accused Netto of stealing and plagiarizing many of the
ethnographic materials that the Canadian-American naturalist Charles F. Hartt—chief
of the Imperial Geological Commission and director of the section of geology at the
National Museum—had left unpublished in the Museum, after contracting yellow fever
and dying in Rio de Janeiro in 1878. See Romero (1888b, pp. 149–151). About Charles
F. Hartt, see Freitas (2002).
298 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
In another short note, Netto explained that the Botocudos had be-
come aesthetically repulsive for the civilized eyes because of their par-
ticular code of sexual selection. Darwińs idea that different sexual codes
and beauty patterns could have played a main role in the diversifying
evolution of the human races through sexual selection became very
popular in Latin-America, a continent where sex and race where tightly
intertwined in many aspects (Lavrin, 1989). According to Netto, sexual
selection operated through generations on the peculiar sexual prefer-
ences and beauty patterns of the Botocudo Indians, forcing ‘‘this de-
plorable race to become not much more than animals’’ (Netto, 1882e, p.
60). Among the amatory rituals of this indigenous people, an entire
deployment of manifestations of brutality reflected, in Netto’s view,
their ‘‘simian’’ primitivism. According to Netto, the use of Tembetá
prevented the Indians from the knowledge of the European kiss, con-
sidered by him as the true and ‘‘sweet expression of pure love’’ (Netto,
1882e, p. 60). In his view, ‘‘this ignorance of kissing must have been also
helped by the way in which sexual unions are held among many of these
Indians. Whether or not this kind of sexual union could be a con-
comitant cause—along with the use of labial ornaments—for the ab-
sence of kissing (…), I am led to believe that among peoples relegated to
such a wild state, so far from the heights reached by the civilized na-
tions, their sexual union would always happen ad instar animalium’’
(Netto, 1882e, p. 60). In this sense, Lacerda agreed that their already
brutal physical appearance was further reinforced by the special orna-
ments with which they deformed their lips, causing their physiognomy
to acquire the most ‘‘repulsive aspect’’ (Lacerda, 1882c, p. 2).
Some decades after the Brazilian Anthropological exhibition, sexual
selection would be interpreted by Lacerda as a theory that opened the
possibilities of both explaining and promoting the whitening of Latin-
American populations on scientific terms, when combined with scien-
tifically oriented public policies (Appelbaum et al., 2003). Lacerda used
the Darwinian theory of sexual selection to explain the whitening pro-
cess that, according to the National Museum statistics, eventually would
lead to an almost Caucasian Brazil, with black Brazilians becoming
completely extinct in the year 2012 (Lacerda, 1911). This transformation
of Brazil into a white country would be obtained, according to Lacerda,
by means of combining an adequate immigration policy with the natural
effects of Sexual selection operating in the Brazilian population. The
reason, Lacerda explained, was simple: most Brazilians naturally pre-
ferred to marry someone whiter, the only way to aspire to social
ascension.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 299
22
The term Caucasian was coined by the German Christoph Meiners in his The
Outline of History of Mankind (Meiners, 1876), and later was popularized under Jo-
hann Friedrich Blumenbach́s enormous influence in physical anthropology.
300 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
23
Professor of Anthropology at the National Museum, Pinto would become its Chief
Director after Lacerda’’s retirement. He would also be the President of the First
Brazilian Congress of Eugenics, held in 1929. About Roquette Pinto, see Santos (2012).
302 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
24
For decades, the idea of a multiethnic Brazilian ‘‘racial democracy’’, based on
Gilberto Freyre’s assumption that an absence of violent rancor due to race constituted
one of the peculiarities of the Portuguese colonial system, became the official paradigm
for historians and social scientists (Freyre, 1933). According to Freyre interpretation,
the plasticity of the Portuguese national character and their racial tolerance impeded
classes and institutions to be definitely determined in terms of race in Brazil. But recent
scholarship has debunked Freyre sweetened narrative of the mixed origins of Brazilian
population (Marx, 1997, p. 29).
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 303
25
Pages on the apêndix of Cabraĺs book, devoted to discuss Racial diferences in brain
function, were not numbered in the original edition.
304 JUANMA SÁNCHEZ ARTEAGA
26
Candomblé is the name given to the syncretistic cult that—although forbidden- was
object of a fervent devotion among many African slaves and their descendants in Bahia.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 305
Concluding Remarks
During the second half of the nineteenth century, different forms and
degrees of racism penetrated biological discourses about human diversity
in Brazil. Protected under the theoretical and rhetorical apparatus of the
natural sciences, it was precisely their scientific status which provided
these ethnocentric discourses with the greatest legitimacy in the Brazilian
society. Thus, biology was (mis)used as a formidable symbolic apparatus
for the naturalization of Brazilian social inequalities between different
ethnic groups. Of course, it was not nineteenth century biology that in-
vented racism in Brazil or Latin America. Ideas about the inferiority of the
African People, the degeneration of the Indians and their mixed descen-
dants, etc. had appeared long before in American history. In fact, the
degeneration theory of race was the most accepted version in prescientific
times. ‘‘Rather than challenging the biblical account of human origins, a
generally unpopular approach, the degeneration theory assumed that all
humans were created by God, beginning with Adam and Eve. Nonwhites
were thought to be inferior and to need the guidance and control of
rational, moral men (i.e. European Christians). Their condition was
considered to be caused by some degenerative process that was related to
climate or conditions of life, to isolation from Christian civilization, or to
some divine action explained in the Bible (Popkin, [1974] 1983). This was,
in fact, the more liberal point of view, since proponents of this approach
believed that these degenerates could be remediated by giving them the
benefits of European education and ‘culture’, especially by missionizing
them to Christianity’’ (Sussman, 2014, p. 14). Brazilian racism was not
created by science, but at the end of the nineteenth century, it was ab-
sorbed and recreated into a new form of modern ideology by natural
sciences (Arteaga and El-Hani, 2012). Scientific discourses in human
biology, anthropology, evolutionary theory, craniometrics, obstetrics,
psychiatry, etc., became, in many cases, perfect theoretical instruments for
the legitimation of racial hierarchies after the abolition of slavery.
HUMAN RACES AND SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN BRAZIL (1832–1911) 307
Acknowledgments
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