Obra Getuliana Analysis

The effects of this in the Brazilian mentality can be seen in a survey conducted in the years before the Vargas regime, where attitudes towards race and immigration show that “while 97 percent of those queried favored continued immigration of Europeans to Brazil, preferably Italians, Germans, and Portuguese, only 45 percent would permit Asiatics to enter” (Levine 21) and that “although virtually all respondents paid homage to the value of the Negro’s services rendered as slave and free laborer, only 18 percent declared their willingness to permit black immigration.” (Levine 21, 22) This demonstrates how other races were not only marginalized and excluded from political and social participation, but the state under Vargas also attempted to eradicate the country of their presence.

This can also be seen in the “…undercurrent of xenophobia and anti-Semitism [that] rose to the surface in the early 1930s, particularly among those members of the

intellectual elite…” (Levine 21) that echoed Lucio Costas thoughts on selective immigration. Additionally, although government officials and people in power agreed with this train of thought, most “… [remained] silent on the issue publicly, but [attacked] Jewish activities in their private correspondence.” (Levine 21) Which demonstrates that although the members of the elite knew that they were not acting ethically, they were still willing to carry out their plan of perfecting the Brazilian Caucasian race by eliminating those other races which would contaminate their purity.

Thus, an analysis of the Obra Getuliana will describe the socially hygienic utopia that this “white” elite envisioned and attempted to create through the employment of eugenic techniques (López-Durán), which later culminated in the construction of the new capital, Brasilia, during Juscelino Kubitschek’s presidency (Alexander).

The 1933-1934 Constituent Assembly was dominated by Xenophobic thought, which allowed for “physician Miguel Couto, armed with extensive pseudo-scientific data, [to condemn] non-European immigration, particularly Japanese.” (Levine 21) “and set a quota for Japanese immigrants at 2,711 persons annually, a reduction of 82 percent from” the previous decade’s (Levine 26). This exemplifies the way the science of eugenics was used to effectively marginalize the non-white Brazilian sector of society (López-Durán) and target the other races in the country, even those that were not biological entities, but rather socio-political categories established in the country as a result of social relationships of

power.