Thomas E. Skidmore

The Idea of race in Latin America, 1870-1940

Preface 1. Introduction (Richard Graham) 2. Racial Ideas and Social Policy in Brazil, 1870-1940 (Thomas E. Skidmore) 3. Race in Argentina and Cuba, 1880-1930: Theory, Policies, and Popular Reaction (Aline Helg) 4. Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940 (Alan Knight) Bibliography Index

Bi-racial U.S.A. vs. Multi-racial Brazil: Is the Contrast Still Valid?

corollary of a larger conventional wisdom in the study of comparative race relations. The thesis is that systems of race relations in the Western Hemisphere are primarily of two types: bi-racial and multi-racial. The distinction is normally spelled out as follows. The U.S.A. is a prime example of a bi-racial system. In the prevailing logic of the US legal and social structure, individuals have historically been either black or white. In Brazil, on the other hand, there has been a spectrum of racial distinctions. At a minimum, Brazilian social practice has recognised white, black and mulatto. At a maximum, the phenotypical distinctions have become so refined as to defy analysis, or effective application for those who would discriminate.1

Brazil's Persistent Income Inequality: Lessons from History

Official data for the last three decades show that Brazil has one of the worlds most unequal distributions of income. This article examines the relevant data and then explains the causes of this persistent inequality, considering them also in cultural and historical context. It discusses the politics of continuing inequality and possible strategies for reducing it.

Toward a Comparative Analysis of Race Relations Since Abolition in Brazil and the United States

Essays in comparative history are risky ventures. Nowhere has this become more evident than in the literature on slavery. Yet comparisons continue to be made, implicitly if not explicitly. Post-abolition race relations is an area in which comparisons are equally tempting—indeed, virtually unavoidable— and equally difficult to handle. Perhaps by more careful attention to the framework of comparison we can begin to arrive at more testable hypotheses. In this paper an attempt is made to compare certain features of race relations since abolition in the United States and Brazil. The emphasis will be on differences.

Raízes de Gilberto Freyre

The centenary in 2000 of Gilbert Freyres birth occasioned a number of retrospectives on his place in Brazils history. This article focuses on Freyre up to 1933, the year in which Casa Grande & Senzala was published. Emphasis is given to such formative influences as his undergraduate study at Baylor University, his graduate study at Columbia University and his subsequent travels in Europe. In these years Freyre rejected an invitation to stay in the USA and strengthened his resolve to return to Brazil and make his career as a writer. The theme he soon adopted was Brazils viability as a modern nation, notwithstanding its supposed defects of race and climate.

Lévi‐Strauss, Braudel and Brazil: A Case of Mutual Influence

In 1934-1936, French and Brazilian history intersected in a manner that had a memorable effect on both countries.1 More than twenty young French scholars, many later to become world famous, were invited to help launch the newly founded University of S?o Paulo. The two most notable invitees were Claude L?vi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel. Their experiences in Brazil are the central focus of this article.

Ein Institut und sein General: Wilhelm Faupel und das Ibero-Amerikanische Institut in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (review)

Wilhelmine Germany (1871–1918) was noted for its creation of a network of excellent research institutes, including some for the study of overseas cultures and nations. This development resulted from several factors: the rapid rise and increasing sophistication of the German economy, the expansion of Germany’s role in world trade, the creation of first-class universities, and Germany’s well-established expertise in philology and foreign languages. The Ibero-Amerikanische Institut was founded in 1930, near the end of the Weimar Republic. As a scientific areastudies institute, it enjoyed only a few years of independence before being subordinated to the Nazi Gleichschalting (restructuring) that transformed all institutions in the country. The authors of this book are determined to rescue the institute’s good academic name by documenting (and denouncing) its misuse for geopolitical ends. How was the institute exploited by the Nazi government? The agent to this end was army general Wilhelm Faupel, the institute’s director from 1934 to 1945. Not surprisingly, Nazi bureaucrats were anxious to strengthen contacts with Germans living in Latin America in order to mobilize support for German government policies and to lobby for German interests. This was especially true in the mid1930s, when the Nazis profitably manipulated their extensive trade relations with Brazil. Since the institute’s area also included Spain, Faupel used his position to strengthen relations with Franco’s Spain after 1936. Meanwhile, institute intelligence operations centered on shipping and communication in the prewar and war periods. German territorial ambitions in South America, on the other hand, were never a serious goal, despite some early fantasies on Hitler’s part. Ironically enough, the evidence does not demonstrate that the institute made any significant contribution to the Nazi war effort. As the authors show, an obstinate historian is not to be underestimated in his or her ability to set the institutional record straight. Besides, we still have the institute’s library (800,000 volumes)—one of the two or three finest Latin American and Iberian collections in the world. To paraphrase Josef Stalin, Hitlers come and go, but the books remain.

Survey of Unpublished Sources on the Central Government and Politics of the German Empire, 1871-1918

ONE of the most formidable tasks facing historians engaged in research is the problem of locating unpublished sources. Difficulties at this stage can be all the more frustrating because it is merely a preliminary, albeit an indispensable one, to the research itself. The following survey is designed as an introductory guide for historians interested in the unpublished sources, especially official documents, on the government and politics of the German Empire from I871 to I9I8. It is written from the point of view of the historian rather than the archivist1 and is based primarily on the authors travel and research in West Germany during the academic year I958-I959. The following survey makes no pretense at being exhaustive. It has two limited purposes: to summarize current information about unpublished sources on Bismarckian and Wilhelmian government and politics, with citations of the literature where more detailed information can be found in each area, and to reveal the large volume of sources now available for research. Consideration will be given here only to primary sources that contribute materially to the study of the central German government, including its institutions, personnel, and policies, between I87I and I9I8.2 Prussian as well as imperial government sources are included, since the institutions of the central Prussian government were closely intertwined with those of the Empire. The survey is more complete on sources for domestic than foreign policy, having been based on the conviction that domestic policy offers the greater

Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (review)

visit CIS on the Web HTTP://web.mit.edu/CIS/index.html “The post-Cold War world ended yesterday,” announced Prof. Barry Posen to a standingroom-only crowd. On Sept. 12, Posen, with other CIS experts on security policy, alliance politics, human rights, and nuclear proliferation, addressed the most immediate questions provoked by the September 11 terrorist attacks, “Who? Why? And what now?” at a forum swiftly convened by CIS Director Richard J. Samuels. Samuels organized the panel with the assistance of CIS Public Programs Director Amy Tarr, to help the MIT community begin to understand and cope with the new and frightening world created by the Sept. 11 attacks. MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay and Dean Philip Khoury thought the CIS forums of September 12 and 17 were so helpful to the community (as many as 300 people attended each gathering) that they asked Samuels, Tarr, and MIT Professors Isabelle de Courtivron, Rosalind Williams, Olivier Blanchard, and Henry Jenkins to organize a campus-wide series of ‘teach-ins’ on the crisis.The response was five such events in 30 days focusing on different aspects of the crisis, including media, the perspectives of international students at MIT, technology and terrorism, U.S. policy options, and the economic implications for the post-September 11 world. “The sessions sponsored by the Center greatly helped the MIT community understand the context and meaning of the September 11 terrorist attacks,” said Clay. The panel discussions, which were open to the public, drew hundreds of people from across MIT and from the greater Boston community, including employees of Cambridgebased Akamai Technologies, which lost a company founder (and MIT graduate), Daniel Lewin, on one of the hijacked planes. Each event was broadcast on the web via MIT World, and most received wider press coverage.

Sobral Pinto, "The Conscience of Brazil": Leading the Attack against Vargas (1930-1945) (review)

Non-Brazilianists can be forgiven for not recognizing the name of Heráclito Fontoura Sobral Pinto. This celebrated civil-liberties lawyer and prominent Catholic intellectual played a noteworthy, albeit minor, role in Brazilian political history. He was one of the most consistent and effective voices to speak out against Brazil’s two twentieth-century dictatorships: the Estado Novo of 1937– 45 and the military government of 1964– 85. This work is the first of a projected two-volume biography and covers Sobral Pinto’s career up to 1945. A second volume on the remainder of his career will complete the coverage. Sobral Pinto’s most famous pre-1945 client was Luiz Carlos Prestes, the longtime leader of the Brazilian Communist Party. Prestes was imprisoned in 1936 after the failed Communist rebellion of 1935 until almost the end of Getúlio Vargas’s dictatorship. Sobral Pinto succeeded in maintaining access to Prestes when many other prisoners were forbidden outside contact. In the process, Sobral Pinto cut a courageous figure in his defiance of prison authorities and the secret police. Sobral Pinto’s political background was solidly conservative. His sympathies lay with such figures as Arthur Bernardes, the prominent Mineiro politician who would eventually become president. This created an obvious contradiction between Sobral Pinto’s efforts on behalf of civil liberties and his links to traditional political bosses such as Bernardes who readily resorted to repression. Like many of his fellow Catholic intellectuals, his concern for the working man was more a matter of noblesse oblige than any leftist conviction. In 1945, in the wake of his disappointment over the political realignments following Vargas’s fall, Sobral Pinto wrote, “[W]hat we must do is not rail against the common people who no longer believe in us” (p. 291). His hope was that new judicial institutions would solve the problem of the threat from below. Readers familiar with Dulles’s previous books on Brazilian history will find no surprises in his approach here. His hallmark is fidelity to his sources (is there a letter or article of Sobral Pinto’s that goes uncited?), with minimal attention given to the larger context. For example, the reader learns remarkably little about the legal and constitutional system within which Pinto maneuvered so brilliantly. Nevertheless, this biography will be valuable documentation for students of the Vargas era. Finally, Sobral Pinto comes across as a very difficult, if courageous man. He was hypersensitive, quarrelsome, pugnacious, verbose, and innocent of self-doubt. On the other hand, aren’t these the very qualities we look for in a good defense lawyer?