Views from the Periphery: Brazilian’s Nineteenth-century Expansionism from a Venezuelan Perspective
By Thayse Leal Lima
The accounts of Venezuelan Francisco Michelena y Rojas is a unique document that expresses a Hispanic perspective on another Latin American country. The self-proclaimed viajero del mundo, traveled to Brazil in 1855 under the title of “Agente Convidencial de Venezuela” with the primary objective to collect information on the borders and on navigation issues in the rivers shared by both countries. In the document resulting from this trip[1], Rojas gathered official documents, letters issued by the ministries of international relations, as well as his own impressions and notes, producing a hybrid of a travelogue and an official report. The richness of both official documents and personal descriptions (with a great degree of subjectivity, as his irritated tone suggests) conforms an important source of information about the foreign relations among South American countries at a moment in history crucial to the development of the region nascent states, as well as offering a Hispanic American views of its giant Brazilian neighbor[JG1] .
Upon his arrival in the Amazon region, Rojas discovered that the Brazilian government had installed military posts advancing into the Venezuelan region. This situation would dominate his preoccupations throughout the trip, even provoking a slight change in his primary function from that of explorer to unofficial diplomat. Michelena describes the Brazilian advancement as a “premeditated plan of provocation and hostility against Venezeula” (plan premeditado de provocación y hostilidad contra Venezuela (664).
The animosity expressed in Roja’s opinion was reinforced by the fact that the two nations diverged about the validity of old treaties establishing borders and free navigation rights. The Venezuelan government requested from the Spanish Crown the recognition of Venezeula’s rights over the Yapurá River as accorded in the Treaty of 1777 between the Portuguese and Spanish Crown. For its turn, the Brazilian government argued that the Treaty had been annuled once the war between the two European countries in 1801 had concluded.
The conflict in the region of La Plata is a recurrent theme in Michelena’s account, and certainly influenced his perceptions on Brazilian international relations with South American countries. The Brazilian ambitions of annexating the Southern Region that culminated in the Argentin-Brazil War (1825-1828), sent a clear message about its expansionist intents. By the time of Michelena’s trip, Brazil had just been concluded another conflict with Argentina (Guerra do Prata) to maintain influence over the region and secure its navigation rights in the Basis of Rio La Plata. Citing the later conflict, Rojas draws attention to the incongruence of Brazilian foreign policy, which uses international law to support its cause in the Rio La Plata but refuses to accept its validity in the case of the dispute with Venezuela. In the same token, Rojas compare the behavior of Brazil towards South American countries with those of the European Colonial Empires for its “abuses of force” (abuso de la fuersa) and for promoting “a violation of its independence” (la violacion de la independencia)” (664).
The imperialist behavior towards the southern region was sufficient reason to justify Michelena’s opinion about Brazil representing a threat to the Hispanic nations. However, the problem becomes even more acute, given that Venezuela at the time, was still struggling to delimit its territory. As historian Manuel Lucena Giraldo had noted, the post-independence, territorial possession played a key role in the construction and consolidation of the Nation State:
The nation-territory relationship out to be realized in complete openess—with international recogition of the borders, with the integration of the space, and with the agreement of the regional powers
“la relación nación-território se debía concretar tanto en un plano externo—con el reconocimiento internacional de las propias fronteras— con la integración el espacio y el pacto con los poderes regionales o su aniquilación” (79).
Brazilian International politics represented not only an obstacle to the new nations stability, but according to Michelena, it was also prejudicial to the good relations amongst the Hispanic American countries:
The most sensible of all is that such a monstrous policy not be revealed to the eyes of Spanish Americans of that region, making them see that this dirty and bastard policy is against their own interests; that she has done it in in order to maintain the divisions of the republics (…). This makes its political existance impossible.
Lo mas sensible de todo es que tan monstruosa política partiendo del Brásil, no haiga abrir los ojos a los Americanos Españoles de aquella parte, haciendoles ver que esta política sucia, bastard, en que el Brásil los a envuelto es contra sus própios intereses, que ella tiene por base mantener divididas las repúblicas (…) el de hacer imposible su existencia política (642)
Another outcome of the Brazilian conflictive interventions and negative image in the region was that Hispanic countries, seeking international support and recognition of its nationhood, reinforced old ties with European powers (especially England), and formed new alliances with the emerging North American power. In order to reinforce his case for international rights over the navigation on the Yapurá Basins, Michelena cites and annexes several official letters that attests the United States’s interest and effective diplomatic intervention in the issue. While Venezuela found in the United States[JG2] an ally, Brazil was working towards an agreement with France, according to which, parts of the Amazon region would be exchanged for support in the case of La Plata. For Michelena this agreement posed a possible threat to the already problematic territorial issues his country was finding in the attempt to determine its borders.
Michelena also associated the alignmentment of Brazil with the old imperial powers as connected to Brazilian inclination towards monarchism, a despotic institution that remained tied with the colonial condition. Maria L. Coelho Prado, examining the Argentine Press during the Argentina-Brazil War, reports that the conflict was commonly portrayed as a struggle between old monarchic system and the republican one. Given that the later converged the ideals of freedom and sovereignty embraced by the Hispanic American nations, Brazilian adoption of the European model was considered anti-American (Prado, 5).
In Michelena’ travelogue, monarchism was also associated with the lack of freedom in Brazil, a situation epitomized in the preservation of the inhumane slavery institution. In several passages Michelena makes reference to the practice of slavery as a demonstration of the barbarian condition of Brazilian society. Despite his disapproval of slavery as an attempt against civilization, Michelena still maintained a Eurocentric and hierarchical perspective that differentiated superior and inferior races. He explains Brazilian interest in annexing the Southern area, for example, in terms of a natural desire to better its status, being the Hispanic South clearly superior in terms of “clima, raza de habitantes y produciones” (Michelena, 640). Therefore, from Michelena’s point of view Brazil occupied an inferior position not only in relation to the “naciones ricas y cultas” (i.e. Europe and the United States), but also in comparison to the Hispanic nations. Revising the colonial history of the country, he describes Brazilian independence with much disregard for not being a consequence of the nation’s own efforts, “but rather for [that] of its neighbors (sino por lo de sus vecinos) ” (Michelena, 553). He reaches the conclusion that a nation born out of the exploitation of slave work and the usurpation of territory, cannot become the leader of Southern American nations.
On Brazilian Cities:
On his trip throughout Brazil, Michelena met some unexpected surprises. Traveling from the Amazon region all the way to the capital, Rio de Janeiro, Michelena passed through less advantaged provinces (in terms of economy and urban development) such as Ceará and Paraíba, but he also went through more developed ones, such as Pernambuco and Bahia, which impressed the traveler.
In Pernambuco, Michelena found for the first time cities that offered some degree of conformability and ‘civilization’. It was in Bahia, though, with its numerous scientific, public, and cultural institutions that Michelena found for the first time the traces of what he called, an “advanced civilization”.
However, to contradict the apparent signs of ‘cultural development’, he also draws attention to the importance that slavery assumes in the capital. He describes with horror the suffering of slave workers as they were transferred to other cities, a situation witnessed during his journey to Rio de Janeiro. Finally reaching the capital of the Empire, Michelena arranged to meet the Emperor D. Pedro II, described as an agreeable figure, considered by his subjects an illustrated and capable leader and in who Michelena sees “un verdadero padre del pueblo” (667 ).
Francisco Michelena y Rojas, as a member of the “elite letrada”, a distant son of the Enlightenment, uses a discourse much influenced by European ideologies of modernity and civilization. His perceptions of Brazil reveals, however, a contradictory depiction of an emerging Southern American power. On the one hand he recognizes Brazilian’ supremacy, posing it as a threat to the unity and consolidation of other Hispanic Nations, while on the other, he dismisses Brazilian’s ability to lead the region. To construct his arguments Michelena resorts not only to political and historical facts against Brazilian expansionism, but also to the colonialist legacy that created a divide between center and periphery, superior and inferior nations.
Works Cited:
Michelena y Rojas, Francisco. Exploración oficial por la primera vez desde el norte de la America del Sur siempre por rios, entrando por las bocas de Orinóco, de los valles de este mismo y del Meta, Casiquiare, Rio-Negro ó Guaynia y Amazónas, hasta Nauta en el alto Marañon ó Amazónas, arriba de las bocas del Ucayali bajada del Amazonas hasta el Atlántico. 1867. The Internet Archives. Web. 17 Feb 2010.
Giraldo, Manuel Lucena. “El Espejo Roto: Una Polémica sobre la Obra de Alejandro Humboldt en La Venezuela del Siglo XIX”. Dynamis (2008): 73-78. Web. 17 Feb 2010.
Prado, Maria Ligia Coelho. “O Brasil e a distante América do Sul“. Revista de História (2001). n. pag. Web. 17 Feb 2010.