There has resulted a society where racial tensions are few. As early as colonial times the Jews discovered so little prejudice against them that they had trouble preserving their cultural identity. After a couple of generations of intermarriage they melted away into the rest of the population. The same thing seems to be happening to the Germans and Italians who colonized the southern states and to recent European immigrants pouring into Rio and São Paulo. There is an amoebalike quality about the mild Portuguese culture which absorbs the most diverse elements.
The growing diversity in the national origins of the Brazilians shows up in public life. One of the leading politicians is ex-President Kubitschek. Oscar Niemeyer is their bestknown architect. The pioneer in modern architecture at São Paulo was named Warschavchik. Rio’s famous afterluncheon speaker is named Herbert Moses. Particularly in São Paulo you meet families with North American surnames that date back to the southern slaveholders who emigrated to Brazil after the Civil War. There are Smiths who don’t speak a word of English. Even the Japanese, established at first in tightly exclusive colonies, are beginning to melt into the population.
The patriarchal mentality, combining with the humane impulses of the European nineteenth century, produced during the last fifty years an attitude of tenderness towards the Stone Age peoples of the Brazilian forests. In that period Brazil was a leader in the effort to conciliate and preserve primitive peoples.
It’s worth noting that one of Brazil’s great military heroes was Candido Rondón, who died a field marshal at the ripe old age of ninetytwo. Rondón was three fourths Indian. His paternal grandfather was a bandeirante out of São Paulo who settled in Mato Grosso and married a Terena Indian. His mother was a Bororó. From the day he entered a military school back in the days of the empire, throughout his long and successful military career, he devoted his great energies to the gradual civilizing of the forest Indians. Like his bandeirante grandfather Rondón was irresistibly attracted to the rainforests and the jungles. He personally mapped and surveyed more undiscovered territory than any Brazilian of his time. It was Rondón who shepherded Theodore Roosevelt during the exploring trip to the River of Doubt that was nearly the end of T.R.
The Indian Protection Service Rondón set up is unique. He worked out a battery of methods for civilizing the wild tribes without destroying them. At the same time his Boundary Commission to map the disputed frontiers with the Guianas and Venezuela and Colombia accomplished miracles in eliminating international friction. Rondón managed to replace nationalist fanaticism by a spirit of rational give and take. “Never be the first to shoot,” was his motto.
Along with racial toleration, religious toleration has been the rule. Although Brazil is predominantly Catholic it is one of the few South American countries where Protestant missionaries are not interfered with. The Inquisition never reached Brazil. For a century there religious toleration has been so complete that the average Brazilian city offers today almost as many religious sects as Los Angeles. Alongside of the predominant Catholics you find Episcopalians, evangelistic Protestants of every stripe, Christian Scientists, followers of Auguste Comte, spiritualists, and votaries of various African cults brought over by the slaves. In the thoroughly upto-date city of Pôrto Alegre in Rio Grande do Sul we found a half voodoo, half spiritualist group called The White Line of Umbanda announcing its meetings in the newspapers.
As the threat of a Communist-colored dictatorship looms ever larger, the votaries of the most various religious sects tend to draw together. The last time I was in Rio I attended a meeting organized by a league for the defense of civil liberties. A large crowd, made up of the most diverse elements among rich and poor, gathered on the open lawn between the ranks of great trees that form the square behind what is known as Russell Beach on Guanabara Bay. The Catholic archbishop of Niterói, a number of church dignitaries, several Protestant ministers, a positivist, a representative of the spiritualists and a Jewish rabbi spoke from the same platform.
The rabbi’s speech was one of the most touching I have ever heard. He told of the oppressions and miseries of his early life in Russia and Poland, the constant harassment on account of his race and his religion, the agony of the escape and the delight of landing in the new world of Brazil. He had been received with hospitality, and with a sort of inattentive friendliness that could hardly be called toleration, because the Brazilians saw nothing particular about him that needed to be tolerated. He was a man like themselves. He spoke with pride and gratitude of his Brazilian citizenship. Only in Brazil had he come to understand the meaning of freedom.
II
THE PEOPLE THE LORD PUT THERE
Travels with a Studebaker
I first landed off an airplane in Rio back in 1948 when I was on a South American tour to do some articles for Life. Bill and Connie White, who were then running the Life-Time bureau in that part of the world, let out that they were starting next morning to drive their Studebaker up into the hinterland of Minas Gerais (the state of “assorted mines”), which lies to the north of the mountain barrier that hems in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the great bay of Guanabara. I snatched at the opportunity to take a peep into the back country before getting tangled up with the capital city. Their faces certainly fell when I asked them if they would mind if I came along. They’d been planning a private expedition on their own. They mumbled a reluctant yes. As it turned out the trip was a success all around. None of us ever laughed so much in our lives.
The roads were rough. The hotels were worse. At a place named Conselheiro Lafaiete the only lodging we could find seemed to be built over a railroad roundhouse. Smoke and steam from the engines occasionally came up through the floor. In one room there was an open manhole that threatened to drop you into some black pit below. We’d barely got settled round a rickety table in the bare loft and were pouring ourselves out a drink when the electric lights went off. That meant every light in town. The streets were deep in mud. To find the local restaurant we had to grope our way along the walls in the dark.
The eating place turned out to be a sort of saloon lit by kerosene lamps. There was a rough noisy crowd, railroad section hands mostly. At that time, in spite of my Portuguese name, I was still trying to communicate with people in Spanish. In Conselheiro Lafaiete nobody understood a word, but they didn’t show the slightest surprise or annoyance at having three foreigners come crawling in out of the dark. They made us feel at home. The meal was mostly beans and rice and those not of the best, but the proprietor served up the dishes with a sort of flourish that made them seem better than they were. We got the feeling we were eating quite a blue ribbon dinner. We had a wonderful evening. By the time we made our way back to our uncertain couches in the self-styled hotel we felt we knew something about the people there and that they knew something about us. Don’t ask me how. We’d made friends.
It’s always been like this. I can’t help a sort of family feeling for the Brazilians. Perhaps the fact that I had a Portuguese grandfather helps account for it. When people ask me why I keep wanting to go to Brazil, part of the answer is that it’s because the country is so vast and so raw and sometimes so monstrously beautiful; but it’s mostly because I find it easy to get along with the people.