Lady Maria Callcott who visited Brazil in 1821-3 found the Negroes and mulattoes of Brazil very industrious. She said that they had strong motives “to exertion of every kind and succeed in what they undertake accordingly. They are the best artificers and artists. The orchestra of the opera house is composed of at least one-third mulattoes… . All decorative painting, carving and inlaying is done by them, in short, they excel in all ingenious mechanical arts.”31 She had not a similar good opinion of the Portuguese and the white creoles.
Southern Brazil, which because of the influx of German, English, and Italian immigrants, is now predominantly white, was then also largely Negro and mixed blood. Robertson, who visited that region in the 1830’s, wrote, “The mass of the population claiming to be white, is descended from the original Portuguese settlers and from African and Indian women. The Ethiopian blood in the course of centuries, has got somewhat attenuated; so that the man who has not curly hair, however dark may be his hue, boasts that he is of ‘sangre’ noble, or noble blood.
“Light hair and a ruddy complexion are held to be indisputable and enviable marks of a nobility… . The highest and most aristocratic class is descended from the original invaders, who took over with them, European mistresses or wives. The next grade, or caste, is that descended from mixed Portuguese and Indian or African ancestors; then comes a sort of dubious race claiming descent from a European male parent, but with very equivocal pretensions to it; your mulatto of decidedly African caste following next and last of all comes poor Sambo, himself, from the Congo.”32
Freedom in miscegenation continued into the 1900’s. Georges Clemenceau, late Premier of France, wrote, “The Portuguese woman and the Negro seem to get along well together as is evidenced by the innumerable half-breeds to be seen in their serene bronze nudity at the doors of the cabins.”33
J. A. Zahm, who accompanied Theodore Roosevelt on his Brazilian expedition said, similarly, “To such an extent has miscegenation prevailed in some of the seaboard countries between Bahia and Para that full-blooded whites, Negroes, and Indians are rather the exception than the rule… . Whites, Indians, and Negroes associate together in a way which would be quite impossible with us, and which an old Virginia planter would condemn as an abomination unutterable. Some of the highest government and municipal offices in Bahia as in other parts of Brazil are held by Negroes and half-castes, and they attend public functions on a footing of absolute equality with the whites who have preserved their racial purity intact. One of the leading members of the reception committee which came to greet our party was a prominent government official who was a Negro. He took a conspicuous part in the entertainments that were prepared for us during our visits and was treated with the same respect and deference as if he had been a Filho de Reino—a native of Portugal… .
“Some of the most distinguished men the country has produced have had a strain of Negro blood in their veins. This is evidenced by the long list of literary men, artists, poets, historians, juriconsults, men of science, novelists and politicians in which the amalgamation of the white and black has been most pronounced.” Referring to the three Dumas’s of France, he says, “Brazil can show countless instances of this kind in every department of intellectual activity.”34
Lord Bryce, author of “The American Commonwealth” was of the same opinion. Writing in 1914, he said, “In the United States everyone who is not white is classed as colored however slight the trace. In Spanish America everyone who is not wholly Indian is classified as white. An infusion of Negro blood sometimes met with in the coast towns of Peru is regarded with less favor than a like infusion of Indian blood, for while the first Negro ancestor must have been a slave, the Indian ancestor may have been an Inca. Thus, the mixed population which in the United States swells the Negro element is in Spanish America a part of the white nation, and helps to give that element its preponderance. And a further difference appears in the fact that whereas in the United States the man of color is discriminated against for social purposes, irrespective of his wealth, education or personal qualities, in Spanish countries race counts for so little that when he emerges out of the poverty and ignorance which marks the Indian, his equality with the white is admitted… . The Brazilian lower class marries freely with the black people and the Brazilian middle class intermarries with mulattoes and quadroons… . The white man does not lynch or maltreat the Negro, indeed, I have never heard of a lynching anywhere in South America, except occasionally as part of a political convulsion.”35
Dr. Thomas J. Watkins of the American College of Physicians and Surgeons, who went to Brazil and other South American countries with a number of other doctors, wrote similarly: “The Negroes of South America of whom there are many, were very interesting to us, as there is no color-line although slavery was abolished later than with us, as late as 1888 in Brazil. Negroes are numerous in Peru and Brazil, much less so in the other countries we visited. South America should be an everlasting joy to the race as there is no evidence of color prejudice. Some of the Negroes are very well-educated, industrious and prosperous. For example, the superintendent of the insane asylum of Rio de Janeiro with 1400 patients is a Negro of high intelligence, culture, and ability. He is generally considered one of the representative men of Brazil. He has a very keen and intelligent knowledge and interest in the individual inmates of the institution. He has been the state representative to many countries and to congresses in psychiatry. He has a very large library and speaks fluently in five languages, French, Spanish. Portuguese, German and English. He speaks English so fluently he would easily be taken for a native of England and the States. He is an exceptional man but well illustrates the possibilities of the Negro in South America. We were informed in Sao Paulo that tuberculosis and interrelation with the whites solves the Negro problem. A Sao Paulon said that the white men were very partial to the Negro women and a Rio de Janeiro doctor volunteered the information that the Negro was much desired by the German peasant women.”36
The Negro psychiatrist mentioned is Dr. Juliano Moreira, a native of Bahia, who died a few years ago and “was one of the great pioneers in the treatment of insanity in Brazil.” He was “enormously productive” and his prestige extended to Europe. In several of his short studies he challenged those who asserted that the Negro and the mulatto were inferior.37
DISTINGUISHED BRAZILIANS.
XV. 1. Jose do Patrocinio, abolition leader. 2. Baron de Cotegipe, Prime Minister of Dom Pedro II. 3. Jose White, noted violinst, born in Cuba. 4. Carlos Gomes, author of “II Guarany.”
The same general democracy exists in the matter of employment. Frank Bennett, a white American who lived many years in Brazil and was there before the abolition of slavery and the fall of the monarchy, wrote: “In 1731, the King of Portugal issued a decree declaring that color should not constitute a bar to the holding of public office under the crown. And under the reign of Dom Pedro II several Brazilians of African origin received decorations and titles of nobility.” Among the latter was the Viscount Jequitonhonha, who was sent by Dom Pedro II as Minister to the United States, and was refused at all the hotels and so generally snubbed that he returned to Brazil. Kidder and Fletcher said of this nobleman “as a politician, diplomatist, and lawyer, he ranks among the first men of the Empire.”38 Another was John Mauricio Wanderley, Baron de Cotegipe, Prime Minister under Dom Pedro II. Bennett says that Cotegipe was “highly respected for his sound judgment and for other eminent qualities which inspired confidence in so marked a degree that it was a noteworthy fact that whenever he was at the head of the government the rate of exchange was always higher than under the administration of any other political leader.” Baron Cotegipe, who died in 1889, poor, stood “head and shoulders above his countrymen, regardless of color.”39
Hale, another American, said similarly, “One of the presidents of Brazil, a man respected for his deeds as well as for his ambition, confesses with a frank pride that he has Negro blood in his veins and that his nation as a whole resents any imputation