Brazilian History Research Articles

Oil spill in South Atlantic (Brazil): Environmental and governmental disaster

In early September 2019, dense crude oil began to wash the beaches of Brazil's tropical coast. Four months after the first report, the oil has already been found along >3000 km of the Brazilian coastline on >980 beaches and was recently observed along the Amazon coast, making this oil spill the most extensive and severe environmental disaster ever recorded in Brazilian history, in the South Atlantic basin, and in tropical coastal regions worldwide. Four features of this oil-spill disaster make it unique: 1) the characteristics of the oil spill; 2) the characteristics of the affected region in tropical Brazil; 3) the significant number of protected areas (>55) and tropical ecosystems affected by the oil; and 4) the absence of measures and/or flaws in the measures taken by the federal government to address this environmental and social emergency. The affected species and poor human communities in Brazil should receive focused attention in the coming decades owing to the long-term impacts of the oil contamination. Environmental monitoring and response measures must be implemented to minimize the ecological, economic, and social effects of the spill. Biodiversity and climate regulation losses considering blue carbon environments should drive discussions regarding mining accidents and global consequences related to pre-salt oil exploitation, new spill events, and their global impacts. These measures are particularly relevant in areas with high tropical biodiversity and high social inequality, as in the present case, which represents one of the worst-case scenarios of an environmental and governmental disaster.

Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age

In 2009 I started writing the essay Digital Anthropophagy and its companion piece, the manifesto-poem Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age. Being an artist from Brazil, I could not escape the cultural mystique of ‘Anthropophagy’. For those unfamiliar with the term, the etymology has a Greek origin dating back to the mythological Kronos (Saturn) eating his own son – ‘Anthrōpophagia’: ‘Anthropos’= human being + ‘phagein’= to eat, i.e., an eating of a human. The words ‘Anthropophagy’ and ‘Anthropophagus’ were transplanted by the European conquistadors in the late 1400s/early 1500s to the land masses renamed ‘America’ and ‘The Caribbean’ at the onset of colonialism. Starting at this period, some native ethnicities of the ‘Amerindian’ populations have been described as practitioners of ritual Anthropophagy and/or Cannibalism. ‘Cannibalism’ itself supposedly finding its root in a misspelling or ironic naming – ‘Canib’[iii] – by Columbus when describing the Carib people of Antilles/Caribbean Islands during his navigational enterprises between 1492-1504.
 In 1928, Oswald de Andrade devoured Brazilian colonial history itself writing the ‘Manifesto Antropófago’, an adjective form of the term, meaning a Manifesto that possesses the agency to eat. The proposition of the Brazilian Moderns was to devour what comes from outside (‘First World’ novelties), absorb their useful ‘otherness’ in order to output something uniquely Brazilian. Thus ‘Antropofagia’ is appropriated and forever transformed in the 1920s São Paulo into a Brazilian avantgarde. Antropofagia is considered by some critics to be perhaps the only true Brazilian artistic canon. The concepts of this cultural icon have inevitably impregnated my own artworks, especially in my condition of migrant since the age of 19, living in a constant state of becoming ‘other’ somewhere.

Aporte Histórico Sobre os Direitos Trabalhistas no Brasil

O artigo analisa a construção das leis trabalhistas no Brasil como resultado das lutas sociais que vem atravessando a história do país desde a transição do Império à República, tomando como base deanálise obras de autores que estudam o mundo do trabalho brasileiro. Uma retrospectiva histórica demonstra a ascensão dos direitos, que teve seu auge na elaboração da Constituição Federal de 1988, e sua posterior regressão materializada na reforma trabalhista de 2017, aprovada em um contexto de profunda crise econômica, social e política. O estudo mostrou que a flexibilização das leis do trabalho foi um mecanismo que contribuiu para o aumento da precarização laboral. Evidenciou-se ainda que medidasde contratendência do capital à lei tendencial de queda da sua taxa de lucro, tais como o desemprego, a intensificação da atividade laboral e a redução dos salários, contribuíram significativamente para o aumento da precarização do trabalho.

Furtado e a educação pela pedra, entranhada

A importância de Celso Furtado para a história brasileira pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial tem sido amplamente estudada e reconhecida. O rigor acadêmico, aliado ao esforço incansável em promover uma política voltada ao desenvolvimento regional do Nordeste e do país, deu-lhe notoriedade internacional. Porém, tento evidenciar, neste ensaio, que Furtado teve algo anterior que lhe serviu de motivação primeira. Refiro-me à experiência que teve, ainda quando criança, no sertão paraibano. Algo que lhe imprimiu bem o descrito por João Cabral de Melo Neto: a educação pela pedra, entranhada. Além disso, o contexto social, próprio da década de 1950, instigou no Brasil o desejo de mudança, motivado por Juscelino Kubitschek e personagens como Dom Hélder Câmara e Victor Nunes Leal. Assim, busca-se explorar a relação entre indivíduo e sociedade e seus desdobramentos no campo político, evidenciando a importância e atualidade de Furtado.

Accounting Practices Concerning the Boris Family Business in Brazil: 1882–1896

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is to provide a general narrative of the accounting practices of the company Boris Frères & Co. Ltd., popularly known as “Casa Boris,” which played an important role in the trade practices in Brazil's history in the late 19th century. To accomplish this objective, the authors reviewed and summarized the company's account books, accounting records, and other documents from 1882 to 1896, focusing on the usefulness of the accounting practices adopted and identifying the economic and legal factors that influenced its accounting system at the time. The findings constitute important records of Brazil's accounting history in the 19th century and provide evidence concerning the levels of development and adequacy of the accounting practices adopted by Brazilian commercial firms in the period.JEL Classifications: F13; M10; N00; N76.

Brasil e Portugal: o antagonismo na construção da identidade nacional durante a Primeira República

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the identity separation between Brazil and Portugal, and its implications for collective memory, in the process of building the national narrative during the First Republic (1889-1930). The bias of this work places the phenomenon in the space of confluence between journalism and Brazilian history. The analytical cut comprises twelve editions of the magazine “Brazilea” in 1917, studied based on the narrative conception of Ricoeur (1994) and the constructs about memory (Halbwachs, 1990; Pollak, 1992; Catroga, 2016). As a result, the survey revealed: animosity towards Portuguese immigrants; contempt for the Portuguese legacy, considered “vicious”, and an attempt to banish the national ties between countries from the national narrative. The study found signs of antagonism and intolerance, which suggest xenophobic traces against the Portuguese, a kind of lusophobia.

Brazilian Slavery - Slavery Unseen: Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History. By Lamonte Aidoo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 258. $99.95 cloth; $25.95 paper.

Brazilian Slavery - Slavery Unseen: Sex, Power, and Violence in Brazilian History. By Lamonte Aidoo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 258. $99.95 cloth; $25.95 paper.

Corpo/Palavra/Sangue: O Levante de Sangria

Published in 2017, the poetic work entitled Sangria, by the Brazilian poet Luiza Romão, surprises by its sui generis format aligned with an original and daring theme that stages in the word-body-image the phases of the female menstrual cycle orchestrated with the cycles of Brazilian history, from colonization to the parliamentary coup that led to the impeachment of then President Dilma Roussef in 2016. In the considerations on the set of 28 poems I highlight some issues of form, language and thematic treatment, with emphasis on gender and race issues regarding the female body and its domestication in the country’s continuous history of patriarchal violence. I argue that in the projection of the history of Brazilianness as sterile because it is based on the rape of the virgin land / female body, the plundering of its wealth and the coup against democracy, Sangria explores silenced borders in official history, using the power of words and images in a performance act that evokes its affiliation to the tradition of slam poetry. In this sense, the work inscribes an artistic / political activism on the part of the lyrical self that, through denunciation and insurrection, projects the desire for social transformation.

Marquês de Pombal, arauto do Segundo Império (brasileiro)?

Along the nineteenth century, almost all manuals concerning to the Brazilian History helped to build, disseminate and sediment a positive and modernizing image of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, overestimating the «hits» and reducing the «excesses» practiced by the minister of the King D. José I. In this article, we analyze how Pombal’s controversial figure was incorporated into the official historiography of Brazilian nation, based on ideological assumptions agreed upon by the founding partners of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Brasil, under Emperor D. Pedro II protection and patronage. The validation of Conde de Oeiras, especially in didactic materials, obeyed a teleological conception of History, a method that persists in twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ historiography.

“O caso da vara” e “Pai contra mãe”: Entre a Normalização e crise da concepção do humano

Este artigo se propõe a apresentar uma leitura dos contos “O caso da vara” e “Pai contra mãe”, escritos por Machado de Assis na segunda metade do século XIX, a partir das ações de suas personagens, respectivamente Damião e Cândido Neves, que são evidenciadas pelo narrador, de maneira irônica. A fim de discutirmos as representações do comportamento do escravizador, partimos do que Maestri (2004) considera como normalização, e observamos as formas como na narrativa a ordem natural da vida humana é posta em questão e pode desencadear uma crise nesta noção normalizada do que seria o ser humano, considerando também as reflexões de Pinsky (2010), Foucault (2016) e Chalhoub (2003). Portanto, enaltece-se a forma como é retrata a crueldade perante o sujeito escravizado nos contos machadianos, contribuindo para a reflexão a respeito das consequências dos mecanismos abjetos de violência utilizados num passado recente da história brasileira dentro da realidade cotidiana.

How does the ZIKA infection is higher among black women?

Introduction: ZIKA is a single-stranded RNA, from the Flaviviridae family. The infection of this virus became extremely visible during its epidemic in 2015 at South America, after the outbreak many speculations that includes newborns with central nervous system malformations and neurological disorders.
 Objective: determine the epidemiological profile of the Brazilian female population afflicted with Zika virus, by means of database research of 2017.
 Results: the higher incidence shows the social inequality of those affected by arboviruses: young, poor, black and brown women, the majority of population in the Northeast and North of Brazil.
 Conclusion: Brazilian epidemiology of Zika virus and Congenital Zika Virus is concentrated in the black and poor female population due to the historical and cultural Brazilian history of colonization, as it is concentrated in the same region where the Aedes mosquito has an easy procreation due to a wet and hot summer leading to propagation of arboviruses.

A verbalização do antidemocrático

Este trabalho almeja analisar dois períodos da história brasileira partindo do ponto de vista de presos políticos, até análise psicanalítica do trauma deixado pela violência, como pode ser visualizado nos escritos em questão. Através de suas narrativas autobiográficas, Eneida e Mário Lago discorrem sobre seus anos no cárcere em dois diferentes momentos antidemocráticos da história brasileira: as eras Vargas e Militar. Enquanto Eneida compila suas memórias no cárcere em crônicas no livro Aruanda, Mário Lago narra no livro Reminiscências do sol quadrado a sua prisão política. Ambos textos retratam e refletem sobre as condições da cultura e da sociedade em períodos ditatoriais, sendo a análise comparativa entre os dois e entre o contexto político-social o principal objetivo deste trabalho.

Crime organizado transnacional e missões militares: tensionamentos da divisão interno/externo nas Relações Internacionais

A área de Relações Internacionais constituiu-se por meio da divisão teórica entre o doméstico pacificado e o internacional anárquico. Os Estados, enquanto agentes soberanos, possuiriam o monopólio legítimo da força dentro de suas fronteiras, ao passo que lutariam por sua sobrevivência no sistema internacional. No entanto, certas dinâmicas e atores desafiam essa divisão. O objetivo neste artigo é analisar como a construção política do crime organizado transnacional como uma ameaça e a definição dos meios de força empregados para combatê-lo, em especial as Forças Armadas, rompem com a divisão entre o doméstico e o internacional. Ao discorrer sobre o caso do combate ao tráfico de drogas no Brasil, compreende-se que a definição de tal atividade como uma ameaça no país foi o resultado de um processo de expansão e internacionalização da política de “guerra às drogas”, iniciado pelo governo estadunidense. A definição do crime não ficou, portanto, limitada à territorialidade de um Estado. Paralelamente, o emprego das forças armadas no combate da criminalidade interna, recorrente na história do Brasil, demonstra que divisão teórica em questão representa um princípio normativo e não a descrição de um padrão histórico.

Should I stay or should I go? A study of IT professionals during a national crisis

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss two important behaviors related to job mobility in the IT profession, namely, changing jobs to move to another organization (turnover) and changing the profession entirely (turnaway), during a national crisis. Based on the theoretical foundation of the push–pull–mooring perspective, a research model is developed that includes professional self-efficacy (PSE), job insecurity (JI) and job satisfaction (JS) as important antecedents.Design/methodology/approachUsing a positivist approach and a survey method, the authors analyzed data from IT professionals from different economic segments in Brazil. Data collection occurred in two distinctive moments of the largest crisis in modern Brazilian history – a pre-awareness moment (first half of year 2015) and a crisis-conscious moment (first half of year 2016).FindingsThe findings reveal that PSE negatively influences JI and positively influences JS, JI positively influences turnaway intention, and JS negatively influences both turnover intention and turnaway intention. The effect of the national crisis was observed in that it further accentuated the intention of IT professionals to leave the profession. Another effect was related to age, as older professionals are less willing to turn over but more willing to turn away.Research limitations/implicationsBesides developing a parsimonious model to study both the intention to leave the organization and the intention to leave the profession, the study sheds light on how IT professionals react to economic crises and how the reaction varies by age.Practical implicationsThe study puts to question the common belief that IT professionals are secure in the job market due to high demand for their skills and investments made by organizations to keep them on the job. Employers must pay attention to JI and turnover/turnaway intentions.Originality/valueThis study is among the few to study JI and aspects of the theory of human migration in IT. It is also possibly the first to discuss the effects of a national crisis on the mobility patterns of IT professionals.

The Indiciary Paradigm as Methodology for Researches in Brazilian History of Communication

The Indiciary Paradigm as Methodology for Researches in Brazilian History of Communication

Normalcy, Race, and Biomedical Technology in Brazil: The Case of Low White Blood Cell Count.

This article explores the intersection between low-complexity biomedical technologies and ideas about race in Brazil. Using ethnographic material collected in the northeastern city of Salvador on the clinical management of low white blood cell count (leukopenia), and debates involving doctors, biomedical scientists, and social movement activists on establishing racialized parameters in complete blood count tests, I explore how the notion of normalcy is connected to ideas about racial difference. Taken both at a population and individual bodily level, normalcy serves to contrast local history, portrayed as the result of widespread admixture between groups, with other national contexts, such as that of the United States. While a material body that cannot be classified as racially pure is seen as normal in the contemporary Brazilian context, nevertheless these pure racial types feature discursively as existing in a long lost past of Brazil's history. At the same time, normalcy can also be locally challenged by certain actors, such as social movement activists, who underline the specific experience of certain racialized bodies, questioning the overarching national narratives of admixture and arguing for the need to recognize these bodies as normal as well, particularly in the context of political struggle for the reduction of social inequalities. These two ways in which normalcy appears articulated with local meanings of race gives way to seemingly contradictory and confronting discourses. Thus, racial categories that are explicitly not identified with admixture are seen as a thing of the past (the history of the Nation) and a thing of the future (a more racially equal country). This can be better comprehended by the process through which different historical discourses on racial difference in Brazil appear in connection with, or as a proxy for, ideas such as nation, population or gender, originating from different places and moments in history.

Exposições blockbuster: mecenato privado e política cultural no Brasil

Qual é o papel das artes visuais na sociedade contemporânea? Como as determinações econômicas se relacionam com a produção, distribuição e fruição artística? Como as políticas culturais fomentam a experiência estética e quais setores da sociedade as impulsionam? 
 Essas são algumas das perguntas que mobilizam a reflexão em torno das exposições internacionais de arte que aportam no Brasil desde a década de 1990, e que dinamizam o setor cultural provocando um fenômeno de visitação crescente na história brasileira. Nesse sentido, a proposta deste trabalho é fazer um balanço preliminar acerca dos aspectos políticos, econômicos e sociais da arte, bem como apresentar algumas informações acerca das exposições blockbuster para que sejam identificadas interfaces da circulação desses eventos artísticos com o contexto contemporâneo.

Organizational crime and corruption in Brazil a case study of the “Operation Carwash” court records

This paper aims to examine the informal mechanisms and factors of corporate crime in Brazil that contribute to the persistence of political corruption. For this analysis, official records, e.g. closed criminal trials produced by Operation Carwash, one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime and political corruption in Brazil's history, will be used. The focus of the analysis is on the criminal trials, generated in the early phases of the investigation, which revealed the illegal activities of large Brazilian construction companies as well as its cartel-building to defraud the Petrobras' contracts. The analysis on the modus operandi of this cartel served to reconstruct the unwritten rules inside organizations that are involved in the bribery-scheme. The analysis showed that Brazilian private enterprises, represented by its senior executives and top managers, used the lack of regulation and informal rules, rooted in the political system, to achieve illegal profits.

A GESTÃO ESCOLAR NA EDUCAÇÃO DA REDE PÚBLICA ESTADUAL: o processo de escolha do gestor escolar em um estudo de caso na escola Professora Maria de Fátima Souto

School management is seen as a process rooted in Brazilian history education that carries within it school administration and the participation of the school community in this management. Thus, the present article has the objective of evaluating the process of school principal’s choice as a constituent part of democratic management, bearing in mind how this choice is being made in the state of Paraíba and how it is impacting the process of democratic management , specifically the reality of a school in the municipality of João Pessoa. Based on authors such as Lück (2009), Paro (2003) and the Brazilian legislations that give us theoretical and methodological framework on the understanding of school management in Brazil. Then, we present the models for the managers’ choice in the national scope first and then the local realm. In order to do so, we focused on a bibliographical and documentary research and semistructured interview so as to conclude the case study in Professor Maria de Fátima Souto state school. Results showed that the school principal’s choice is not a democratic one, for the school’s community does not participate in this process. It is necessary to have an association between the voting process, in this case the participation of the school community and the strategy of previous examinations. It is also important that these candidates are part of the academic community.

Women of African Descent and Protestantism

AbstractThis article aims to highlight critical elements of the Brazilian history and context as a basis for understanding the participation and action of women of African descent within Brazilian Protestantism. It begins by reviewing the establishment of Protestant denominations in Brazil against the background of slavery, which was abolished only in 1888, before turning to how a national identity was developed in Brazil that strove to be White, ignoring inequalities due to slavery, and the existence of racism in Brazil, thereby feeding what came to be known as the “myth of the Brazilian racial democracy.” The article goes on to discuss the historical and continuing conditions of women of African descent, and to offer elements for a clearer understanding of the lives of women of African descent in Protestant churches in Brazil.