Producing Silencing: Portuguese Teaching/Learning in Rural Schools in the Italian Colonial Region, Brazil

Abstract

The teaching of Portuguese in schools in Italian immigration regions in Brazil became compulsory after 1937 as determined by Getulio Vargas’s dictatorial government. This also occurred in the colonial region, in the south of Brazil, although children only spoke Italian dialects in rural areas. After Brazil entered World War II, Italian was prohibited and Portuguese was to replace it. Using accounts recorded in Memory Banks and Historical Archives, the objective of this paper is to analyze testimonies of students and teachers of that time, and try to reconstruct this subtractive teaching. Some teachers, however, used the Italian dialect of the region (Talian) to explain the Portuguese language. On the other hand, some pupils mentioned punishments that where given because they used Italian words. It is concluded that school had a crucial role in spreading the Portuguese language, and in starting the process of silencing Italian, which has been highly successful so far, despite a few attempts to rehabilitate Talian.