Avenues and Monuments

The urban reforms read with Benjamin: no document of culture that is not also one of barbarism.

If the diploma legitimated the First Republic by turning the university credential into a customs house, silencing significant voices of the Empire, the architectural reforms that signalled progress carried other meanings. They camouflaged the social reality being ignored, sweeping the human rubble into excluded quarters. The capture of the federal budget was for the exclusive use of the new owners of power.

> "There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is never free of barbarism, neither is the process of transmission by which it passes from one hand to another."

> Walter Benjamin

4.0 Avenues and monuments

The Brazilian First Republic, proclaiming itself a regime of order and progress, established a political and social system that in practice operated under sectarianism and institutional exclusion. The internal contradiction between the structural bankruptcy of education and the exaltation of diplomas crystallised a secular profile for the nation. Recent attempts to solve that structural deviation have amounted to inverting the problem — turning it, so to speak, upside down: ignorance comes to be prized and knowledge despised. This is no legitimate change. It is a symmetrical unfolding of the image of the original constellation. Symmetry will be examined in an essay of its own.

4.1 The Empire: other forms of legitimacy

Patronage, the recognition of artistic or technical talent, community leadership, and even military influence could, in certain contexts, open doors for individuals without formal university training. By centralising legitimacy in the diploma, the new regime eliminated those alternative trajectories, forcing everyone to conform to a single model of ascent which was, by its very nature, excluding for the majority of the population.

The composition of the National Congress mirrors the new conditions. Data on the colour, social origin and education of parliamentarians show an overwhelming predominance of white men, landowners, and invariably doctors trained in the country's few law faculties. That homogeneity in political representation was no accident but the direct result of the filtering mechanisms imposed by the nascent republic of diplomas, which barred the rise of black people, of women and of the poor to positions of power.

4.2 The farce of republican citizenship: the disappearance of black intellectuals

The Republic saw the disappearance of black intellectuals who had won space under the Empire. Without formal credentials or the support networks of the republican oligarchies, their voices were marginalised and their contributions made invisible. Many, despite their talent and engagement, could not hold their place on the political and intellectual map of the Republic — showing how the circulation of their work and their values was barred by the new regime.

4.3 The disappearance of André Rebouças

André Rebouças, one of the greatest engineers of imperial Brazil and a prominent figure in the abolitionist struggle, personifies the promises of a Brazil for everyone that the Republic would not keep. His trajectory, marked by technological innovation and deep social engagement, contrasts sharply with his fate after the Proclamation of the Republic. An engineer of his stature becomes irrelevant in the new order. Though qualified as an engineer at the Military Academy of Praia Vermelha along with his brother Antônio Rebouças, his diplomas and his works lost their value. Both had received scholarships from the Emperor and specialised in France. Antônio Rebouças died in 1874 and did not see the Republic. André had diplomas, but he had no party.

Beyond his technical genius, André Rebouças was a fervent abolitionist, a friend of Pedro II, and an advocate of deep social reform, including land reform. Joaquim Nabuco, a personal friend, described him as a mathematical genius, a sage, an industrialist, a bold engineer, a botanist, an astronomer, a moralist, a hygienist, a philanthropist, a poet and a philosopher. His influence and standing were undeniable, showing that even under a slave regime merit and talent could open paths, great as the obstacles imposed by racism were. His values, and what he meant for the national culture, did not pass through the republican gate.

4.4 Invisible after 1894

More sharply after the consolidation of oligarchic power in 1894, the star of André Rebouças went out. His vision of a more just and equal Brazil did not align with the interests of the new regime, dominated by the paulista coffee planters. His ostracism is owed to the absence of political affiliation with the new owners of power, and to the devaluation of his technical capital in favour of juridical and political capital, in a system that prized party loyalty above individual competence and was incapable of absorbing talented, independent and critical figures.

4.5 Buried by the Republic

The voluntary exile of André Rebouças and his death in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, were not mere biographical accidents. His fate represents what happened to many others who did not fit the narrow moulds of the new regime: silencing, marginalisation and, in many cases, oblivion. His disappearance is a testimony to the closing of spaces and to the loss of an inestimable human, intellectual and technical potential for Brazil. His body was found in the sea, at the foot of a precipice — a probable suicide. It was not a natural death. His remains were brought back to Brazil in 1898.

4.6 Other forgotten black intellectuals

Lima Barreto, the persecuted genius. Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto, who lived from 1881 to 1922, is perhaps the most emblematic case of talent denied by the Republic. The son of a public servant, formally educated and admitted to the Polytechnic School, Lima Barreto was a writer of genius, author of masterpieces such as The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma. And yet his social and racial condition, his biting social and political criticism, and his refusal to bow to the dominant aesthetic standards condemned him to exclusion. He was never recognised by the official literary circles, such as the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His life was marked by confinement in asylums, by alcoholism and by deep bitterness. He died in poverty and oblivion. His work would only be fully valued decades after his death.

José do Patrocínio, an abolitionist journalist erased. José do Patrocínio, who lived from 1853 to 1905, was one of the most powerful and influential voices of the abolitionist movement. A fervent journalist and active political militant, he used his oratory and his pen to fight slavery and to defend the Republic. His voice during abolition made him a central figure in the country's political transition. And yet, with the Proclamation of the Republic and the end of slavery, Patrocínio was marginalised. The new Republic no longer needed the black voices that had fought for freedom. His influence diminished drastically. He died forgotten, in contrast with the glory he had enjoyed years before. He illustrates how the new regime, having used black voices for its own ends — the fall of the Empire and abolition — discarded them, choosing silence over the continuation of a struggle for real equality.

Maria Firmina dos Reis, the invisible novelist. Maria Firmina dos Reis, who lived from 1825 to 1917, is a poignant example of a double invisibility: for being a woman and for being black. Considered the first Brazilian novelist, her Úrsula, of 1859, is a landmark of anti-slavery literature, earlier than many canonical authors. Besides being a writer she was a teacher and an abolitionist, devoting her life to education and to the fight against slavery. And yet her contribution was completely erased from official literary history for decades, and rediscovered only in modern times. Her work, which ought to be a pillar of the national literature, was consigned to oblivion.

These are only some examples of the sectarianism of the new regime. Machado de Assis is the exception that confirms the rule. Just as the Port of Torres project was abandoned in favour of oligarchic and regional interests, the intellectual and cultural wealth represented by these individuals was sacrificed on the altar of a Republic that chose sectarianism and parochialism over democratisation, diversity and the inclusion of the broad national spectrum.

4.7 Political affiliation: Pereira Passos

The trajectory of Rebouças may be contrasted with that of Pereira Passos, another engineer, who rose under the Republic. While Rebouças, with his vast knowledge, experience and notable works, was marginalised, Pereira Passos, adhering to the project of the dominant oligarchy, became mayor of Rio de Janeiro and carried out radical urban reforms. Technical cultural capital was not, by itself, enough in the Republic to translate into power and influence. The disappearance of Rebouças symbolises the end of alternative trajectories, the end of the channels of opening that had existed under the Empire, and the imposition of a single model of ascent: to ally oneself with the projects of the government.

4.8 Expertise and the monopoly of knowledge

The exaltation of the diploma led to the rise of formal expertise as the only source of legitimation for knowledge. Only credentialled specialists could act. Pereira Passos, with his engineering training and his experience of European urbanism, represented the ideal of the technical doctor in the service of modernisation. His appointment as mayor of Rio de Janeiro, then the federal capital, symbolised the republican faith in science and technique as the engines of progress — provided they were aligned with power. That expertise was not neutral; it was intrinsically tied to the interests of the elites who sought to turn Rio into a Paris of the tropics, a sanitised and ordered space, free of the disorder and unhealthiness associated with the poorer population. The human rubble that had to be swept under the carpet.

4.9 The bankruptcy of social policy

The mass demolition of the tenements, which housed a great part of the black, mixed and poor population of Rio de Janeiro, was the centrepiece of Pereira Passos's reforms. To combat disease and modernise the city, thousands of people were evicted without any compensation or alternative housing. The mask of progress concealed what the Republic needed to hide: a sectarian regime, distributing privileges to its own. A Brazil for the English to see was coming into being.

But what the Republic gave with one hand it took away with the other. The tenements vanished, and the favelas appeared. Favela is a plant of the backlands, which covered the hill where the soldiers camped at Canudos. When they came back to Rio after the great massacre carried out at the order of Prudente de Morais, they received neither pay nor housing. They settled on a hill that came to be known as Morro da Favela. The population of the destroyed tenements was pushed up to the Favela alongside the soldiers the government had abandoned. The shop window of progress that tried to erase the marks of poverty could not conceal its violent origin. The Morro da Favela was constituted as a true debris of war, firmly established for the coming centuries in the Marvellous City. Pereira Passos carried out his knock it down, and the dispossessed raised their monument to republican barbarism.

4.10 Technique and progress, the perfect camouflage

Scientific hygiene and modern urbanism were the languages used to justify the Passos reforms. All of that was welcome, but a social infrastructure was never articulated. The engineer's technical expertise lent an aura of objectivity and inevitability to his actions, making public contestation difficult. Who could question a doctor speaking in the name of science and public health? Political choices were camouflaged in the technical language of progress and of propaganda. The strategy is similar to the original episode of the Port of Torres: only the advantages of the owners of power counted. The State grew stronger and marginalised both society and country. Brazil wanted to be Europe, and was drawing its calling card. The people as a nation was cut through by avenues and buried under monuments.

4.11 Urban reforms in other cities

Pereira Passos's reforms in Rio de Janeiro were not an isolated case. Similar projects of urban modernisation and sanitation, disregarding social infrastructure, took place in other Brazilian and Latin American cities, reflecting a global tendency to use technical expertise to reorder urban space for the benefit of dominant groups. The governing elite needed reforms of architectural impact, attesting to its role as bearer of modernity and progress — while under that mantle it hid the human contingent it had neglected.