Biological Discourses on Human Races and Scientific Racism in Brazil (1832-1911).

This paper analyzes biological and scientific discourses about the racial composition of the Brazilian population, between 1832 and 1911. The first of these dates represents Darwin's first arrival in the South-American country during his voyage on H.M.S. Beagle. The study ends in 1911, with the celebration of the First universal Races congress in London, where the Brazilian physical anthropologist J.B. Lacerda predicted the complete extinction of black Brazilians by the year 2012. Contemporary European and North-American racial theories had a profound influence in Brazilian scientific debates on race and miscegenation. These debates also reflected a wider political and cultural concern, shared by most Brazilian scholars, about the future of the Nation. With few known exceptions, Brazilian evolutionists, medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and naturalists, considered that the racial composition of the population was a handicap to the commonly shared nationalistic goal of creating a modern and progressive Brazilian Republic.

A questão racial na obra de Domingos Guedes Cabral / The issue of race in the work of Domingos Guedes Cabral

Resumo Na Bahia de 1875, a medicina e o evolucionismo foram utilizados pelo médico, jornalista e militante republicano Domingos Guedes Cabral como armas ideológicas para propor um programa radical de reformas sociais no país. O programa incluía diversas propostas no campo da educação, controle dos casamentos, assistência médica aos alienados, mudanças no sistema penal etc., tudo com base em conhecimentos científicos da época. Entre as ideias sociais de Guedes Cabral, a questão racial será nosso principal foco de análise. Nesse sentido, Domingos Guedes Cabral constitui um exemplo particularmente significativo para entender como foram os primeiros passos na peculiar aliança estabelecida entre evolucionismo, medicina e racismo científico no Brasil desde a década de 1870, momento de chegada do darwinismo no país.

Abstract In 1875 Bahia, medicine and evolutionism were used by the physician, journalist, and republican militant Domingos Guedes Cabral as ideological weapons to propose a radical program of social reforms in Brazil in the areas of education, marriage control, medical care to the alienated, changes in the penal system, etc., all of which were based on the scientific knowledge of that time. Among the social ideas of Guedes Cabral, the question of race will be the main focus of this analysis. In this sense, Domingos Guedes Cabral is a particularly significant example for understanding the initial steps in the peculiar alliance between evolutionism, medicine, and scientific racism in Brazil since the 1870s, when Darwinism first arrived in the country.

The issue of race in the work of Domingos Guedes Cabral. / A questão racial na obra de Domingos Guedes Cabral.

In 1875 Bahia, medicine and evolutionism were used by the physician, journalist, and republican militant Domingos Guedes Cabral as ideological weapons to propose a radical program of social reforms in Brazil in the areas of education, marriage control, medical care to the alienated, changes in the penal system, etc., all of which were based on the scientific knowledge of that time. Among the social ideas of Guedes Cabral, the question of race will be the main focus of this analysis. In this sense, Domingos Guedes Cabral is a particularly significant example for understanding the initial steps in the peculiar alliance between evolutionism, medicine, and scientific racism in Brazil since the 1870s, when Darwinism first arrived in the country.

[Physical anthropology and human "zoos": the exhibition of natives as a scientific popularization practice on the threshold of the 20th century]. / La antropología física y los "zoológicos humanos": exhibiciones de indígenas como práctica de popularización científica en el umbral del siglo XX.

All along the nineteenth century different anthropological exhibitions were held in many countries, in which people from a number of indigenous communities, especially transported from their homeland for the occasion, were exhibited publicly, both for citizenship's instruction and for specialists's "in vivo" studies on human biology. This paper presents a brief description of some of these scientific shows, and tries to relate them to contemporary human biology theories.

Physical anthropology and the description of the savage in the Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition of 1882 / Antropologia física e a descrição do selvagem na Exposição Antropológica Brasileira de 1882

This paper discusses attempts to popularize scientific knowledge about anthropology through exhibitions of natives in the United States and Brazil from the nineteenth century to the beginnings of the twentieth century. In the First Brazilian Anthropological Exposition (Rio de Janeiro, 1882), a group of Botocudos was characterized in a manner that can be related to the reification of the myth of the savage, an important part of the European culture that played a significant role in the construction of anthropological knowledge in the nineteenth century. From the analyses of such exhibitions, we derive implications for science popularization and education, concerning the ideological undertones of scientific knowledge.

Analisa tentativas de popularizar o conhecimento científico em antropologia por meio da exibição de nativos nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil, no século XX e no começo do XX. Focaliza a Primeira Exposição Antropológica Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1882), em que foi apresentado um grupo de Botocudos, de modo relacionável à reificação do mito do selvagem, importante componente da cultura europeia e mais especificamente da construção do conhecimento antropológico no Oitocentos. As conclusões concernem à popularização da ciência e, por extensão, à educação em ciência, em especial quanto aos valores ideológicos subjacentes ao conhecimento científico.