Celebrating and Reinventing Brazil: Monarchy and Nation in the Works of Afonso Arinos, 1897–1900

Abstract

This chapter analyses how a Brazilian intellectual, Afonso Arinos, associated national values with the extinct Brazilian monarchy. After the Republican coup, in 1889, the emperor went into exile and the army took upon itself the role of the nation’s guardian. The lawyer and journalist Afonso Arinos was supported by Eduardo Prado, a prestigious royalist writer from a rich family of coffee planters. Both shared the concept of an Iberian culture founded on spiritual roots and gentlemanly traditions, and argued that only a monarchy in line with these origins would ensure the unity of the Brazilian nation.

For most Brazilian writers at the end of the nineteenth century, the monarchy was an obstacle to progress, as well as responsible for a poor and superstitious people. In contrast, Arinos believed that a Catholic monarchy would provide institutions with symbolic resources for assimilating the poor of the countryside to civilization. He argued that the tragedy of the civil war between the Republican government and the rebel Canudos community resulted from a Republican secularism incompatible with the Iberian spiritual heritage of the people. He advocated combining liberal institutions with paternalistic dynastic centralization. Arinos’ works inspired nationalist artists and civic celebrations into the twentieth century.