In due course, Itamaraty examines measures taken against discrimination against Brazilians living in Portugal – at a time when xenophobia is on the rise around the world, starting in the USA. But historian Gladys Sabina Ribeiro, of the UFF, who studies the issue, says that in Brazil, too, behind the rhetoric of a brotherly people, there was a strong feeling against Portuguese immigrants – who in 1890 made up a fifth of the population and half of the working population.
“Anti-Lusitanism movements emerged mainly in the 1890s and 1820s, through marches and even newspapers.” See the researcher’s article here:
“Today, Brazilians in Portugal experience what many Portuguese in Brazil have experienced since independence: discrimination and prejudice. Shallow identity issues took over our textbooks with an avant-garde nationalist feeling from 1822 onwards, as if state and nation had already been formed in those years. The famous nights of drinking the bottle, with shouts of ‘Kill, kill Portuguese’ were read in this interpretive key. As a result, the fundamental problem was of knowing who was the other, the Portuguese for whom it was a matter of survival, not With disputes over belonging to the Brazilian nation or the newly formed rival state.
“The struggle for survival was difficult: there were Portuguese immigrants in the city under contracts and many illegal, poor and even wretched people who accepted menial and despicable jobs in order to survive. They arranged that society in a social hierarchy, causing disputes and fights in daily life between Portuguese and Brazilians, even between Portuguese stipulated in Paragraph 4 (Brazilian citizen under the Constitution) and born on Brazilian soil, especially the poor and/or enslaved. It was hostile to Luizism is a feature of that society and is also a strong racial issue, with white men being more favored than black men. Luiz Felipe Alencastro (1) has an interesting analysis of Portuguese immigration up to 1870. In my opinion, the African Portuguese phase may be older. Historian Joel Serrao (2) speaks of Portuguese immigrants from the end of the 18th century because he considers the migrant to be someone who leaves in search of a better life, which can be traced back to the significant increase in the number of immigrants from 1831 onwards. Proved by examining the database of the movement of the Portuguese in Brazil (1808 to 1842), housed in the SIAN of the National Archives in Rio Therefore, anti-Lucitianism and racial prejudice went hand in hand in Brazil, and prejudice against the Portuguese was rejected in the name of brotherhood between colonizer and colonized, brotherhood built in the name of tradition, language and customs, in short, of common origin.
A form of silent xenophobia was also felt and exacerbated in the period following the abolition of slavery and the great migration flows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that time, the Portuguese represented one-fifth of the population in 1890 and half of the active working population. They occupied the most dynamic business possibilities. They were considered exploiters, rapists and exploiters, and did not recognize the benevolence and welcome of the Brazilian people. A kind of bear brother, who disrupted the lives of Brazilians and was therefore considered a threat. Anti-Portuguese movements emerged mainly in the 1890s and 1820s, with the emergence of footnotes and even newspapers against the Portuguese presence in Brazil. Law 2/3 (Decree No. 20291 issued on August 12, 1931) stipulated that this segment of workers be citizens, and was linked to measures to combat unemployment in times of economic depression (3). And then, did anti-Lusitanism disappear? naturally. The discourse of brotherhood has replaced and concealed the prejudice that had always lived in the shadows. Fights can break out in places such as the so-called Pequenos Portugal, often close to Pequenas Áfricas, such as Praça Eleven. Who doesn’t know a good Portuguese joke? The conflict was also revealed in João da Bahiana’s samba dance “Batok Na Cuisine”, which expressed Rio de Janeiro in many faces, a sexist popular culture that also saw the Portuguese as rivals because they were mostly white and single.