Lusotropicalism - Gilberto Freyre On The Criticisms That He Received

Gilberto Freyre On The Criticisms That He Received

The life of Gilberto Freyre, after he published Casa-Grande & Senzala, became an eternal source of explanation. He repeated several times that he did not create the myth of a racial democracy and that the fact that his books recognized the intense mixing between "races" in Brazil did not mean a lack of prejudice or discrimination. He pointed out that many people have claimed the United States to have been an "exemplary democracy" whereas slavery and racial segregation were present throughout most of the history of the United States.

"The interpretation of those who want to place me among the sociologists or anthropologists who said prejudice of race among the Portuguese or the Brazilians never existed is extreme. What I have always suggested is that such prejudice is minimal (...) when compared to that which is still in place elsewhere, where laws still regulate relations between Europeans and other groups". Gilberto Freyre

"It is not that racial prejudice or social prejudice related to complexion are absent in Brazil. They exist. But no one here would have thought of "white-only" Churches. No one in Brazil would have thought of laws against interracial marriage (...) Fraternal spirit is stronger among Brazilians than racial prejudice, colour, class or religion. It is true that equality has not been reached since the end of slavery (...) There was racial prejudice among plantation owners, there was social distance between the masters and the slaves, between whites and blacks (...) But few wealthy Brazilians were as concerned with racial purity as the majority were in the Old South". Gilberto Freyre

Sugar cane plantations were introduced in the New World in 1515. The first ingenio (machine to crush cane and extract sugar) was built by Blas de Villasanta in 1523 on the Rio Anasco, in what is now Puerto Rico. In 1541, Gregorio de Santaolalla started construction of a trapiche (a circular mill powered by one or more horses, oxen, or on rare occasions persons) at Bayamon, then an ingenio at Aybacoa. In 1546, Alonzo Perez Martel accepted a loan to build an ingenio, not a trapiche nor a trapichito. It is to be noted that the Puerto Rican plantations were cultivated by white men, not blacks, possibly because Puerto Rico originated as a penal colony. Thus, the freed prisoners had been seasoned (acclimatized to tropical labor). This constitutes a counter-example to racial theories based upon climate or geography, such as Freyre’s, that white men were unable to work in tropical conditions. White prisoners also helped develop Cayenne (French Guiana), at the penal colony at Devil's Island.