SHOULD a sentiment for political democracy, or should political democracy itself as an orthodox system of government, be considered fundamental to the cause of better inter-American, relations? Is it desirable that inter-American relationships should be made a political issue in the United States, or in any other American nation, is such a way as to become an object of party ideology and propaganda and an almost mystical or evangelical cause intimately associated with certain political personalities both in the United States and in the other American nations?

I am one of those who consider closer inter-American relations a perfectly natural development in continental life and one highly beneficial to the economic and cultural health of the group of nations established as republics on this continent; but not because such nations republics or political democracies after the model of the United States, the orthodox type of democracy. And I think that as a Brazilian I would never sign a Pan-American declaration in which an identity in the political type of government is considered fundamental to Pan-American. I think Pan-Americanism should not depend upon a uniformity in the political from or the government of the various American nations, and that any intimation of such a dependence implies such a serious restriction of national autonomy as to mean a sacrifice of the healthy individuality of each nation to a conventional and harmful standardization of political forms over the Western Hemisphere.

Now, political forms should vary with differences in social conditions - which are largely cause, as everyone knows, by differences in historical development and in the social and ethnic composition of each national group. And to posit a single continental from of government as something essential to continental solidarity on fundamental issues seems to me as unreasonable as to prescribe the same wearing apparel or the same standard food for groups living in different climates. History, like geography, has its climates.

Better inter-American relations should develop - and their development might be stimulated, no doubt - more as a process of reciprocity than as one of standardization of social and cultural values, ideals and forms. Why should Paraguay become a new Arkansas, or Venezuela a new Oregon, instead of developing themselves as Paraguay and Venezuela according to their peculiarities of social and ethnic composition and their historical growth? Why should Pan-Americanism mean a severe uniformization of political values and forms rather than a new and vigorous combination of the principle of unity with that of variety; a combination of the type of which the organization of the Roman Catholic Church, at once so strong in its unity and so flexible in its variations, is such a splendid example? Over the American continents a general tendency toward social democracy, a cordial disregard for strict and permanent artificial barriers in human relations, makes for unity; it is a continental ideal; it is found everywhere in the history of America; American independence is based upon it in the United States as in Argentina, in Mexico as in Bolivia. But differences in historical development and in the social and ethnic composition of the various American nations make for variety when the problem becomes one of political form or of race relations or of immigration policy. A program of absolute uniformity would be dangerous. It would be as unreasonable for an enlightened Brazilian, for instance - if Brazil were at present a very powerful nation - to pretend that his country should impose upon the South of the United States the immediate adoption of the Brazilian way of dealing with the race problem - which is probably the most democratic, the most Christian and the most American (I mean, of course, American in the continental sense) way of dealing with such a problem - as it would be for an intelligent citizen of the United States to pretend that there should be one, and only one, political form of democracy over all of the two Americas: that of the United States of North America. A mistake was probably made by Brazil when, largely under the pressure of a false ideal of Pan-American solidarity, it became in its political and administrative system a republic rather than a monarchy. Propagandists of the republic, as the form of government that would bring to Brazil a brilliant era of progress and happiness said in their emphatic campaign speeches that the Brazilian Empire was "an exotic plant" in the American continent; that it was a disgrace for Brazil to be such an "exotic plant" - an empire or a monarchy - when every other American nation was a republic. There was also much talk it the effect that Brazil must cease to be an archaic country with an emperor; that it should instead become a vast Switzerland with a president elected by the people.

It happened that during the days of republican propaganda in Brazil an old relation of mine who was devoted to the Emperor - Felix Cavalcanti de Albuquerque Mello - was keeping a diary. That old relation of mine was not a man of extraordinarily brilliant mind but merely an individual with common sense - common sense which he applied to the criticism, in his private diary, of the public events of his day. When the republican form of government was established in Brazil and superficial political observers were overenthusiastic about such a magnificent victory for the cause of democracy in America, old man Felix wrote in his diary that he was not so sure Brazil would be a "new Switzerland" on an "American Switzerland". He asks in his best philosophic mood: "Who assures me that Brazil will be a big Switzerland [uma Suissa grande] and not another Venezuela?" Venezuela was then constantly in political trouble, as were most of the Latin-American Republics, whereas in monarchical Brazil, although material progress was not so rapid as might be desired, there were peace and security, justice and even political and civil liberty, as in no other Latin-American country. Its élite of political leaders were probably the most cultured of the continent. The Emperor himself was a scholarly statesman, a highly public-minded man, and reign has been described by some as a "dictatorship of honesty" and by others as "a crowned democracy".

Despite this there were some fanatical adherents of democratic orthodoxy and of republican formalism, both in Brazil and in other American countries, who considered the preservation of such an exotic type of government as the Brazilian monarchical system an insult to the political dignity of the continent. But the fact is that there was nothing essentially un-American in that system; it was based on the principle of equalization of opportunity - which is fundamental both to Americanism as a continental ideal, or as a continental characteristic, and to democracy in its most modern and most human expression. Under the monarchical regime any Brazilian, no matter what his origin, race, color, could become a Prime Minister and lead the country; Negroes or Mulattoes like Rebouças and Saldanha Marinho, though of humble birth, became prominent in political life. Rebouças was nor only respected by Caucasian Brazilians for his personal virtues, his honesty and his intelligence; he became one of the closest friends of the Emperor himself. It was Rebouças who once said that the numerous Brazilian Mulattoes had special reasons for standing behind the monarchy since it gave them an "equality of political rights" (the other rights rested on a Portuguese tradition independent of political forms) that was not to be found in every republic of the continent.

I do not bring up this point here because, from the point of view of a social anthropologist, it is particularly interesting to me as a student of race relations in Brazil, but because it is connected with the problem of continental solidarity or identity in the political forms of democracy. The late Joaquim Nabuco, for some time ambassador to Washington and for years after the establishment of the republic in Brazil a loyal and sincere monarchist, was asked once (he had been in his youth a leading abolicionist and a champion of equality of civil rights for all Brazilians) if he thought it would be possible to harmonize the feeling for equality, so strong among Americans of mixed race", with devotion to the monarchical form of government. Nabuco, who was not a Brazilian of mixed blood, so far as African blood is concerned, but very white and the descendant of an old and aristocratic family of Pernambuco, did not hesitate to analyze the connection between "a feeling of equality" (said to be characteristic of Americans) and the political form of government. He brought the point that the monarchy in Brazil had been a regime granting equal political and social rights to all, differences in race or color being entirely, or almost entirely, disregarded in that "crowned democracy". But what about the United States of American? There, he aptly pointed out, even if the Negro was a Frederick Douglas he was subject to a series of humiliating restrictions.

The fact is that Brazil has developed into a social democracy in which there is practically no restriction laid on a man on account of birth or his blood; and that such a development took place under a monarchical form of government whose tradition has not lost its essential value for thoughtful and sensible Brazilians. But this I do not mean that those Brazilians who are thoughtful and sensible are monarchists today or that they wish to have a throne reestablished in Rio de Janeiro, with a descendant of Dom Pedro II as king or emperor; but that they are skeptical about the mere form of government as something vital to social well-being and as a guarantee of individual liberty in their country.

The fact that Brazil after the so-called revolution of 1930 changed its republican constitution, up to that time an almost literal copy of the constitution of the United States, has little significance for the position Brazil has held on the American continents as a nation devoted, as no other of its neighbors with problems similar to its own, to the principle of equalization of opportunity to all its citizens - white, brown or black, rich or poor, descendants of old families or the sons of recent immigrants from Europe. It was perfectly natural for Brazilians to see, a few years ago, Nilo Peçanha, a Mulatto of very humble origin, follow Lauro Muller, the blue-eyed and purely Aryan son of a poor German colonist of Santa Catharina (Southern Brazil) as Secretary of State. Such an expression of genuine democracy would be even more natural at present - after the so-called revolution of 1930 - when a fresher group of political idealists, aiming at a still larger democratization of Brazilian life, came to political power.

And what I have said of the first change in the Brazilian constitution after 1930 (that is, of the 1934"Constitution") might be said of the newest Brazilian constitution, that of 1937, which is a copy of the Polish and the Portuguese constitutions. Though the constitution of Brazil is no longer modelled on that of the United States this fact has little bearing on Brazil's position in continental America. Because the new constitution was inspired by those of Poland and Portugal some fanatical believer in complete Americanism might think it maliciously affected by European totalitarianism. And affected by it, it is; but not is such a way as to injure, deeply or permanently, the essential social democracy that is now a deep-seated Brazilian tradition. The present constitution of Brazil is flexible enough to adjust itself to national social conditions, especially in a period when this country has as its President one of the most sagacious political realists who ever lived - Getulio Dornellas Vargas - whose insight into and knowledge of Brazilian conditions and the character, the virtues and the weaknesses of his fellow countrymen is simply amazing. In many respects the present Brazilian constitution is an intelligent attempt to be genuinely Brazilian; an effort to harmonize a strong central government with a mechanism for attending to local or regional needs, so diverse in such a vast country as Brazil; an effort, also, to harmonize authority with liberty. But since it was written in a few days, and in an atmosphere of political pressure in which social conditions were only remotely taken thought of, its deficiencies are many and of the most serious nature. It should be carefully revised, criticized and rewritten, not by a single scholar under the influence of political or personal interests but by a group of well-established Brazilian authorities on political, legal, economic and social problems; not by a somewhat bookish though very clever jurist but by a committee of economists, anthropologists, sociologists and geographers who know Brazil well and who have done scientific field work in various regions. Then it might become the genuine Brazilian constitution it aims to be.

The present political regime in Brazil might be criticized from various points of view. I myself have serious objections of an ethical character to level against the way in which it was established, the theorists who gave an ideological expression to it and some of the politicians who are practicing it according to their narrow interests. I know that political changes should be considered, when triumphant, as natural processes rather than ethical events. I acknowledge also that the political changes which occurred in Brazil several years ago were, in many ways, natural so far as its constitution is concerned, and that the new regime is a move in the direction of adapting political form to national peculiarities. Nevertheless I insist on making objections of an ethical character to a regime that ethically does not seem to me to be perfectly legitimate. But ethically, I say; sociologically it is probably more legitimate than the 1930 one.

It would be inadequate to describe Brazil's new political form as undemocratic, in the sense of labelling it as particularly favorable to the practice of the mortal sins of disregard for the human personality, and for equal opportunities for all citizens, which we commonly associate with the modern totalitarian regimes. The fact that Congress has been abolished in Brazil is not to be taken as a serious violation of the democratic traditions of that country; for mere political representation vaguely based on political geography had lost its significance for thoughtful Brazilians. What Brazil needs is a new type of representation, regional as well as based on economic activity; and that new type of representation might be established under a political form the present one. To go back to the first republican constitution - that of 1889, copied from the constitution of the United States - would be a mistake for Brazil. Those who ask for such a regression on the ground that it would bring Brazil into harmony with the democratic political forms of the Americas, especially with that of the United States, are ideologists of a most dangerous kind. They would place an ideal, universal or continental, of political uniformity above local, regional or national peculiarities in social conditions and in the political forms realistically adapted to them.

The nations of the American continents have much in common and their real similarities as well as their opportunities for a larger and more intense reciprocity, both economical and cultural, are so vital and numerous that there is no need to promote or stimulate such artificial similarities or standardizations as that of constitution and form of government. In healthy Pan-Americanism, as I conceive it, there should be room for even a constitutional monarchy or a constitutional proletarian republic, provided such a monarchy or proletarian republic did not attempt to impose its peculiar political system upon its neighbors.

Real Pan-Americanism should follow the technique of modern scientific town-planning. It should be a sort of continental planning; and its aim the combining of the general principles, traditions and aims common to all the nations of the Americas (including, of course, the general tendency toward an equalization of social and political opportunity for all men) with the particular conditions and needs of every nation or even of every region. Through combined continental action in ought of course to maintain and strengthen whatever is good for the Western Hemisphere as a whole, including its safety and its defense, against any attempt, direct or disguised, at the political recolonization of any American country or region by European or Asiatic imperialistic powers. More than that, it must not only preserve and respect the individuality of each nation but emphasize those characteristics which give it interest and charm. As to social and cultural relations with European countries, many American nations and regions still need European colonists, and the Western Hemisphere as a whole can hardly be said to be in a phase of needing no further cultural stimulus from Europe, particularly from Spain and Portugal. No sane Pan-Americanism will separate Spanish and Portuguese America form a process of ethnic and cultural post-colonization by Spain and Portugal. For this kind of colonization (I use cultural in the broad anthropological sense of the word; not in the narrow literary one) works to the benefit of the Americans as a whole.

A Pan-Americanism aimed at molding each of the American countries into a standard shape would lead to a melancholy monotony as well as a failure to stimulate and develop national creativeness and regional originality throughout the Americas. They would become the most uninteresting of all continents. Political form should be, to a considerable extent, a strictly private matter for each American nation to work out in the light of its own needs. Pressure should not be exerted to make even republicanism a standard political form. The likelihood of a regression to a constitutional monarchy in Brazil, Mexico or Haiti is so remote as to be negligible. Nevertheless the right so to regress should be maintained as an active political principle.

For the problems of each American country require separate treatment, including separate political treatment. Continental planning for America would take this into consideration. It would attempt to harmonize the differing national approaches to particular conditions with the adoption, by the various nations, of principles which have already proved their value over the entire hemisphere. Social and political democracy is probably one of those principles; but the measure of its success will rest largely on its diverse application to meet distinctive national traits and particular needs.

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. Social and political democracy in America. The American scholar. New York, v. 9, n. 2, p. 228-236, spring 1940.