RACE AND CITIZENSHIP IN 1800'S BRAZIL

Abstract

The establishment of a relationship between race and citizenship was recurrent in the Brazilian nineteenth century, especially in its last years. The construction of this relationship through a case study is the center of the proposed discussion. The case in point is Raymundo Nina Rodrigues's The Human Races and Criminal Responsibility in Brazil (1894) where it is possible to locate the attempt of a local theory of association between race and citizenship. This text was produced at a time of intense changes in Brazilian society. In the late nineteenth century, Brazil underwent some changes, at least in formal terms, quite relevant. The 1881 Electoral Reform enshrined the exclusion of most of the population from political citizenship with regard to the right to vote - a situation ratified by the Republican Constitution of 1891. Althought the end of the Monarchy and the establishment of the Republic in 1889 are equally important events, within the scenario of changes that Brazil underwent in the late eighties, the most significant change took place a year earlier. In 1888, slavery was extinguished in Brazil. At the legal level, all people would be formally equal - even in political rights, but in the politically discussion the debates were about how to politically exclude those newly integrated people. Such debates now link the relationship between race and citizenship. The Brazilian intellectual elite dedicated many pages to this theme. It may not be possible to infer that there was a theory, in the strict sense, in this direction, but there have been some attempts. One of them was developed by Raymundo Nina Rodrigues in the book Human Races and Criminal Responsibility in Brazil and it is the attitude of this intellectual that will be discussed in this article.