500th Anniversary of the discovery of Brazil (was: prisao de militantes de esquerda...)

[Carlos Eduardo Rebello <crebello@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Comrades, we all know that an anniversary of any past event is
always a rememberance of the past through the lenses of whatever
ideology does obtain *at the moment of the anniversary*, and not at the
time of the event itself; the discovery of Brazil, in itself, was
nothing more than a very minor episode in the opening of the trade
routes between Portugal and India, and Brazil only became something more
than a neglected trading-post in the outskirts of the Portuguese empire
after the sucessful expansion of Dutch and English imperialism forced an
impoverished Portugal to concentrate in its Atlantic colonies after the
loss of Sri Lanka and Bombay (handed out as Catherine of Braganza's
dowry at the time of her marrying Charles II in exchange for Britsh
support of Portuguese independence against Spain).

The 500th anniversary was supposed to be a celebration, not of the
discovery itself, but of a social and political authoritarian order
lined with "democratic" trappings that allows people of all ethnic
origns to mingle freely - provided they behave "responsibly" i.e.,
accept the political and social tutelage of a paternalistic bourgeois
ruling class. Had this anniversary been celebrated in such a way at,
say, any time between the 1930s and the 1960s, such a commemoration
would not fail to evoke powerful fellings about common participation -
no matter how undemocratic the regime - in the making of a common
destiny; as opposed to, say, the commemorations of the 400th anniversary
in 1900, that had beeen celebrated by the nationally alienated landowner
ruling elite of the Oligarchic Republic as the celebration of the
victory of a supranational "civilization" over "barbarism".

Unfortunately to Cardoso and his henchmen, who were disposed to make all
rethorical concessions to the ideology of the common national
consciousness and of the all-embracing national consensus - although
Cardoso heads the most anti-national government in the last 70 years of
Brazilian history - in the present state of economic stagnation, misery,
rampant crime, subemployment and informal civil warfare prevailing in
Brazil, such an ideology of the national paternalistic consensus cannot
have any chance of attracting any wide support, as it has completely
exhausted itself. Therefore the deep feeling of lack of interest and
general alienation provoked by the 500th "anniversary" of Brazil, and
the show of violence directed by Cardoso - who was clearly out of his
wits with fear, and had considered not going to Porto Seguro at all-
against protesters. Anyway, I believe that this anniversary is bound to
stay in history, perhaps, as something akin to the 300th anniversary of
the Romanov dymnasty, that was celebrated as a tangible proof of the
union of "Russia, united and indivisible" behind the Orthodoxy faith and
the Autocracy, and entered in history as the twilight of the said
Autocracy.
Carlos Rebello