Days of National Festivity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1823–1889 by Hendrik Kraay

Author:Hendrik Kraay [Kraay, Hendrik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Latin America, South America
ISBN: 9780804786102
Google: DpUeZSNP3K4C
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-05-29T22:23:50+00:00

FIGURE 9.1. The constitution saved by Dr. Semana, 25 March 1872.

Source: Semana Illustrada, 31 March 1872.

Such risqué light criticism followed no clear party lines, but for Liberals (especially when they were in opposition) and republicans, the charter was hopelessly “corrupted in its origins.” The closing of the 1823 constituent assembly was a “great attack on national sovereignty,” and no constitution granted by a monarch—even if under popular pressure—could be legitimate. For A República, the only solution was for Brazil to throw off the monarchy and join “America’s common destiny.”99 In 1886, a conservative party organ acknowledged the constitution’s questionable origins (an important concession to the Liberal and republican criticisms) but argued that it “has become historically legitimated by the benefits that it has brought us.” Two years earlier, Brasil likewise noted the charter’s durability and took a jibe at Lafaiete, now president of the council of ministers. The erstwhile republican had made a successful political career “under the very constitution that he wanted to subvert and replace. Sad republic, not to mention sad republicans.” In 1881, Foreign Minister Pedro Luís Pereira de Souza, another “republican convert to the moral order,” came in for similar criticisms.100 Time had sanctioned the charter, and even republicans fell under its sway, or so its defenders argued.

At about this time—the mid-1880s—debate about the constitution on 25 March ceased. Slavery’s abolition in the province of Ceará on 25 March 1884, a measure apparently timed to coincide with the constitution’s anniversary, turned the day into an abolitionist festival. Until 1888, newspaper coverage and commentary on that day of national festivity focused on abolition, to which we turn in Chapter Ten, and paid almost no attention to the constitution. On 25 March 1889, the only celebration of the 1824 constitution after slavery’s end, the Jornal do Comércio returned to traditional themes and stressed the “flexibility of our institutions, which accommodate all of the demands of progress and civilization and satisfy the povo’s legitimate interests, securely guaranteeing liberty and binding [the povo] with a chain of love to the supreme magistrate, stable like the nation in his independence and integrity.”101 Likewise, the Liberal Party organ praised the charter’s “extremely liberal principles” but called for reforms to perfect them.102

Editorials on 7 September brought together the issues posed by 25 March and 2 December in their discussions of the Brazilian nation-state’s origins. The Jornal do Comércio’s editorialists hopefully declared in 1881 that 7 September was “a national day par excellence” that all could celebrate, regardless of their political views: “From the palace to the most humble abode, wherever a Brazilian lives, 7 September will evoke noble sentiments and fond memories.”103 Such a declaration was, of course, a clear political statement, one that implied general satisfaction with the form of government established in the early 1820s, Brazil’s development over the course of the previous six decades, and the existing administration. Many failed to muster the same enthusiasm for the imperial regime implicit in this declaration, and 7 September editorials served as a forum to debate contemporary political questions and to draw lessons from the past.

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