Reviewed by: The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the making of race and nation in Brazil by Barbara Weinstein Flávio Thales Ribeiro Francisco The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the making of race and nation in Brazil By Barbara Weinstein. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015. São Paulo is a state located in the southeast of Brazil with the largest population in the country and the most dynamic economy. However, during the colonial era, São Paulo played a minor role in Portuguese America. The province was largely considered as a small settlement based on subsistence farming. Yet in the late nineteenth century with the boom in coffee production and exportation, the state became one of the major economies of Brazil, leaving behind a past usually associated with economic backwardness. By 1920, as the leading economy of the country, São Paulo, through its elite, challenged the balance in Brazilian politics by posing as the center of Brazilian social and economic progress. Paulista intellectuals and politicians elaborated narratives that stressed the superiority of São Paulo over other Brazilian states. The discourses that diffused the distinguished character of São Paulo in the first half of twentieth century are the main themes of this book written by Barbara Weinstein. In The Color of Modernity, she focuses on the elements that undergirded the narratives of Paulista distinctiveness in Brazilian history. By analyzing a wide range of primary sources, Weinstein pays special attention to how race and gender framed the writings and discourses of key intellectuals engaged in the debate over São Paulo’s superiority. In order to comprehend the hierarchy conceived among Brazilian states that ranked the state of São Paulo at the top, Weinstein explores two crucial events in the making of São Paulo’s regional identity: the Constitutional Revolution (1932), in the first four chapters, and the celebration of São Paulo’s Fourth Centennial (1954), in the following three chapters. In the first event, politicians of the state stood up against President Getúlio Vargas’ rule, allegedly demanding a new constitution. In the second, Paulistas celebrated the history and “greatness” of São Paulo. Weinstein, a leading American scholar of Brazilian History, skillfully highlights some specific codes and overt racist statements employed by intellectuals and politicians in order to justify Paulista exceptionalism, giving prominence especially to notions of Brazilian whiteness. By showing how discourses of superiority construct social differences, the historian reveals the strategies of intellectuals who went back to colonial times in order to recount the history of São Paulo, emphasizing the roots of the state’s uniqueness in the early years of Portuguese America. The explorers of the interior of the country known as the Bandeirantes, important historical figures of the colonial era, were turned into heroes and symbols of the ethic of hard work in São Paulo’s history. On the other hand, during the heights of European immigration to the state, Paulistas celebrated the whitening of the population as evidence of São Paulo’s evolution. Therefore, before the conflict between São Paulo and the federal government in 1932, Paulistas had already constructed narratives of superiority over other Brazilian states, favorably comparing the Europeanized population of São Paulo and other southern states to the African descendants. Weinstein demonstrates that when Paulistas took up arms against Getúlio Vargas in 1932, the event was portrayed as a clash between the “whitened” progressive forces of São Paulo and the “barbarian” forces of the federal government, even though there was a Black platoon that fought for São Paulo. Paulistas thoroughly ignored the role played by Blacks, women, and the working class in the conflicts, and the newspapers heralded the war as a conflict waged only by middle class White men. Nonetheless, twenty-two years later, during the celebration of the Fourth Centennial, a majority of the intellectuals avoided overt racist terms in their statements. According to Weinstein, at that time the narratives that stressed a history of racial mixing in Brazil had already gained ground in the public sphere. Gilberto Freyre, a prominent sociologist, gradually emerged as a leading champion of...