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Gilberto Freyre | |
|---|---|
 Gilberto Freyrec. 1956 | |
| Born | Gilberto de Mello Freyre (1900-03-15)March 15, 1900 Recife,Pernambuco, Brazil |
| Died | July 18, 1987(1987-07-18) (aged 87) Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil |
| Alma mater | Baylor University Columbia University |
| Known for | Casa-Grande & Senzala, concept ofracial democracy |
| Awards | Prêmio Machado de Assis,Prêmio Jabuti |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Sociology, Historian, Anthropology, Writer |
| Signature | |
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Gilberto de Mello Freyre (March 15, 1900 – July 18, 1987) was a Braziliansociologist,anthropologist, historian, writer, painter, journalist andcongressman born inRecife. Considered one of the most important sociologists of the 20th century, his best-known work is a sociological treatise namedCasa-Grande & Senzala (literally, "The main house and the slave quarters", usually translated into English asThe Masters and the Slaves).
Freyre had an internationalist academic career, having studied atBaylor University, Texas from the age of eighteen and then atColumbia University, where he got his master's degree under the tutelage of William Shepperd.[1] At Columbia, Freyre was a student of the anthropologistFranz Boas.[2] After coming back to Recife in 1923, Freyre spearheaded a handful of writers in a Brazilian regionalist movement. After working extensively as a journalist, he was made head of cabinet of theGovernor of the State of Pernambuco,Estácio Coimbra. With the 1930 revolution and the rise ofGetúlio Vargas, both Coimbra and Freyre went into exile. Freyre went first toPortugal and then to the US, where he worked as visiting professor atStanford.[3] By 1932, Freyre had returned to Brazil. In 1933, Freyre's best-known work,The Masters and the Slaves was published and was well received.[citation needed] In 1946, Freyre was elected to the federal Congress.[4] At various times, Freyre also served as director of the newspapersA Província andDiário de Pernambuco.[5]
In 1962, Freyre was awarded thePrêmio Machado de Assis by theBrazilian Academy of Letters, one of the most prestigious awards in the field of Brazilian literature.[6] That same year, he was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[7] Over the course of his long career, Freyre received numerous other awards, honorary degrees, and other honors both in Brazil and internationally. Examples include admission to L'ordre des Arts et Lettres (France), investiture as Grand Officier de La Légion d'Honneur (France), the Gran-Cruz of the Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique (Portugal), and honorary doctorates at Columbia University and the Sorbonne.[8]
Freyre's most widely known work isThe Masters and the Slaves (1933). At the time, this was a revolutionary work for the study of races and cultures in Brazil. As Lucia Lippi Oliveira notes, "In the 1930s and 1940s, Freyre was praised as being the creator of a new, positive self-image of Brazil, one that overcame the racism present in authors likeSílvio Romero,Euclides da Cunha, andOliveira Viana."[9] The book misrepresents slavery in Brazil as a mild form of servitude and has served to consolidate the Brazilian myth of racial democracy. Freyre’s romanticization of racial mixture and disavowal of his society’s racism is comparable to the approach of other Latin American eugenicists, such asFernando Ortiz in Cuba (Contrapunteo Cubano de Tobacco y Azúcar, 1940), andJosé Vasconcelos in Mexico (La Raza Cosmica, 1926).[10][11] Since its publication and initial reception, this work has also been criticized for how its "focus on a single identity in modern Brazil resulted not only in factual inaccuracies and distortions of reality but also in a larger societal refusal to acknowledge racism in modern Brazil,"[12] for example.
The Masters and the Slaves is the first of a series of three books, which also includedThe Mansions and the Shanties: The Making of Modern Brazil (1938) andOrder and Progress: Brazil from Monarchy to Republic (1957). The trilogy is generally considered a classic of modern cultural anthropology and social history. Other very important contributions of Freyre's wereThe Northeast (1937) andThe English in Brazil (1948).
The actions of Freyre as a public intellectual are rather controversial. Labeled as a communist in the 1930s, he later moved to the political Right. He supported Portugal'sSalazar government in the 1950s, and after 1964, defended the military dictatorship of Brazil'sHumberto Castelo Branco. Freyre is considered to be the "father" oflusotropicalism: the theory wherebymiscegenation had been a positive force in Brazil. "Miscegenation" at that time tended to be viewed in a negative way, as in the theories ofEugen Fischer andCharles Davenport.[13]
Freyre was acclaimed for his literary style.[citation needed] Of his poem "Bahia of all saints and of almost all sins," Brazilian poetManuel Bandeira wrote: "Your poem, Gilberto, will be an eternal source of jealousy to me"(cf.Manuel Bandeira,Poesia e Prosa. Rio de Janeiro: Aguilar, 1958, v. II: Prose, p. 1398).[14] Freyre wrote this long poem inspired by his first visit toSalvador.[citation needed]
Freyre died on July 18, 1987, in Recife.
