The Literary Roots of the Purposeful Inferiorization of the Bumpkin in Brazil from a Post-Colonial Perspective

by Jayane Maia

Reviewed by Matheus Lucas Hebling

Foreign travelers who arrived in Brazil at the end of the 19th century described the natives of the land as poor, miserable, and ugly people. In contrast, the elite was outnumbered and did not see themselves as a part of the national culture (Naxara, 1991). The Brazilian heterogeneity imposed an impasse: who could be called as the Brazilian people? 

Between the 19th and 20th centuries, literature was the main way to diffuse the idea of the nation that was intended to be built and, therefore, of what the foreign gaze understood as a nation: people with homogeneous characteristics and capable of meeting progress and the ideal of civilization based on the European and American models.

In Brazil, the bumpkin has always been seen in opposition to the settler. Native people were not prepared in the elite’s view for the transition to progress. The solution was the immigrant worker, the settler, who, in addition, to serve as a labor force, would also meet the elite’s interests of identity construction, since they were white. The idea was that progress would be made through work. At that time, slavery had already been abolished and there was an attempt to dissociate the word ‘work’ from the figure of slaves so that working would be an action associated with achieving dignity and social and economic ascension. 

The truth is that it was aimed for an ideal of a Brazilian nation that, being based on a Eurocentric vision, did not fit reality and therefore could not be imposed. As a result, the effort for this imposition culminated in pessimistic theories about the Brazilian people. At that moment, the bumpkin appears as a synonym for backwardness and what the nation should not be: the opposite of the elite and progress. It was the enlightened elite versus the poor, ignorant bumpkin; the hardworking white versus the vagrant bumpkin; the urban versus the rural. 

In Os Sertões (initially published in 1902; titled Backlands in English), Euclides da Cunha, a former army lieutenant, civil engineer, and journalist, deals with a “simple bumpkin” who, according to him, does not have the “organic capacity” to belong to the highest situation and lets himself be carried away “by the most absurd superstitions”. Giving that these characteristics do not meet the criteria for progress and civilization, the bumpkin would soon be extinguished from the Brazilian scene in da Cunha’s view.

Likewise, according to Silvio Romero, in O Brasil Social (initially published in 1907), whilst the bumpkin is capable of manual labor, he has no idea what continuous and persistent work is. In his view, Brazilians lack the “masculinity of the will”. Although Romero had recognized the importance of the bumpkin and his ramifications for the country, he considered the lack of social hierarchy or “chaining of classes” as a problem in Brazil. 

In Monteiro Lobato’s work, the bumpkin got a name: Jeca Tatu. In Urupês (1918), Lobato contrasts the simplicity of Jeca – the “stubble” – with the wealth of its neighbor – the “good corn stalk”. In Lobato’s descriptions, laziness and lack of action are impregnated in Jeca. When his house is destined to fall (because he is not ready to make the required repairs), Jeca simply leaves it and observes the effectiveness of the prop, believing that the house “does not dare to fall”. 

The thought that underestimates the native found in the 20th-century Brazilian literature an effective way of propagation. The bumpkin over the years walked between the extremes of idealization and total denial so that he was never conceived as an example to be followed by the Brazilian nation. He was a man of lesser value when compared to men who lived in cities, being the urban environment synonymous with modernization, progress, and civility. The bumpkin was ignorant. The townsman was enlightened. 

If, inside Brazil, laziness and innocence were characteristics of the bumpkin, outside the country these were the characteristics of Brazilian people. Within Brazil, the stigmas of laziness, vagrancy, stupidity, ingenuity, and lack of initiative were widespread for the rural population. Outside Brazil, the reach of this image was even broader: laziness and innocence were characteristics of Brazilians. Over time, the lazy one became dependent, which was an excuse for foreign assistance and interference. 

Certainly, inferiorization is a good strategy for those who want to dominate others. According to Drislane and Parkinson (2002), inferiorization “refers to the process of imposing a stigmatized or inferiorized identity on a group of people”[1]. On the one hand, “the people stigmatized tend to adopt a sense of inferiority that leads to a sapping of confidence and ability, inhibits political organization and results in a host of personal and collective social problems” (Drislane and Parkinson, 2002). On the other hand, the belief in inferiority sets a precedent for accusers/oppressors to feel more powerful and use this power to take advantage of those they diminish. 

Syed Hussein Alatas (1977), an Indonesian-born writer, defines these strategies as inferiorization which makes domination easier as the “myth of the lazy native”. According to Alatas, the propagation of the negative image of the natives and their society would place the conquest and domination by the colonizer as a justified and rational action, which would lead to civilization and economic progress. For domination and exploitation to take place, the extinction of the natives’ cultural references is necessary.

As in political imperialism, the first strategy is to destroy the self-confidence of the subjugated people. Hereafter the conditioning prepares them to accept the subjugation. Intellectual imperialism does the same thing. Just as the acceptance of imperialism may derive from unconscious conditioning, so the attempt at domination may not be perceived as imperialism (Alatas, 2000: 33). 

Francis Nyamnjoh (2012), professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, argues that the values ​​acquired during the colonial era in Africa, which have spread the superiority of the colonizer, inhibited local knowledge, making it irrelevant for benefit of a narrow set of values. According to Nyamnjoh, there was, therefore, a devaluation of African local creativity and its value systems as well as the existence of an internalized sense of inadequacy. 

Similarly, Boaventura de Souza Santos, in his book Epistemologies of the South (2009), argues that Western colonialism has deeply marginalized knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. He points out that a dominant epistemology from the West was possible due to the strength of the political, economic, and military intervention upon non-Western ones. In turn, there was what the authors call “epistemicide”, that is, the extermination of any form of knowledge that was contrary to dominant interests. As a result, local knowledge lost a genuine self-reference.

Unfortunately, the depreciation of the bumpkin in Brazil is a manifestation of a broader purposeful prejudice suffered by people from the global South, in which not only Brazil but all Latin American and African countries are included. Usually, the culture produced in any country part of the global South is exotic and less valuable than the North. The notable Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez has brilliantly described this prejudice or mistrust against Latin America as “The Solitude of Latin America”[2]. In his words:

It is only natural that they insist on measuring us with the yardstick that they use for themselves, forgetting that the ravages of life are not the same for all and that the quest of our own identity is just as arduous and bloody for us as it was for them. The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

Jayane Maia is a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and a doctoral student at the University of Hamburg. She holds a scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). Email: jayane.maia@giga-hamburg.de.

 

References

Alatas, Syed H. 1977. The Myth of Lazy Native – A study of the image of the Malays, Filipinos, and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th century and its function in the ideology of colonial capitalism. England, London: Frank Cass and Company Limited.  

Alatas, Syed H. 2000. “Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits and Problems”. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Sciences 28(1), 23-45. 

Cunha, Euclides da. 2009. Os Sertões. 3ª Ed. São Paulo: Ediouro.

Drislane, Robert and Gary Parkinson, G. 2002. (Concept of) Inferiorization. Online dictionary of the social sciences. Athabasca University and ICAAP. 

Monteiro, Lobato. 2012. Urupês. São Paulo: Ed. Globo.

Naxara, Marcia Regina C. 1991. Estrangeiro em sua própria terra: representações do trabalhador nacional (1870/1920). Campinas: Unicamp. 

Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2012. “Potted plants in greenhouses: A critical reflection on the resilience of colonial education in Africa” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47(2), 129-154.   

Romero, Silvio. 2001. O Brasil social e outros estudos sociológicos. Brasília: Senado Federal, Conselho Editorial.

 

 [1] See https://bitbucket.icaap.org/dict.pl. 

[2] “The Solitude of Latin America” was the title of Márquez’s speech when he was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1982/marquez/lecture/.