As a Solution to Widespread Corruption, Right-Wing Catholics Preach Brazil’s Return to Monarchy
By Julio Severo
“The Proclamation of the Brazilian
Republic, on November 15, 1889, was a ‘coup’ that sank Brazil into corruption.
The solution? Restore the monarchy and the Moderating Power and hand them over
with a crown to Prince Luiz of Orléans-Braganza, great-grandson of Princess
Isabel. This is the opinion of Brazilians from different backgrounds and
professions who devote part of their lives defending the return of monarchy to
the country,” said the Brazilian news site UOL.
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| Descendants of U.S. Protestant Confederates in Brazil |
In fact, the image of a conservative
monarchy has been advanced in such a way that Luiz of Orléans-Braganza was
leveraged as one of the main speakers at CPAC
Brazil 2019, considered the largest “conservative” event in Brazil,
although it was admittedly politicized and, contrary to all conservative
values, was
fully funded by tax money. That is, the organizers and
participants, including Braganza, did not fund the event with the money of
their own pockets. It was with the money from the pockets of Brazilian
taxpayers.
Using money from the pockets of Brazilian
taxpayers is nothing new to monarchists. Since 1889, when the Republic was
established in Brazil, the former capital of the Brazilian Empire, Petrópolis,
has been punished with the Laudemio tax, where powerless citizens of that city
are required to pay a tax to the descendants of the monarchical family.
Although slavery was abolished in Brazil in the nineteenth century, the
citizens of Petrópolis are eternally slaves to the monarchical family, and no
descendant of this family complains that this tax goes against conservative
values.
However, if you think this is too much
corruption, this tax is a small problem when history shows that corruption was
not a small but endemic problem in the Brazilian monarchy, also known as the
Brazilian Empire.
Almost 200 years ago British author and
naturalist Charles Darwin visited Brazil and other Latin American nations to
study them.
In his now famous travel journal from the
1830s, Darwin commented on the omnipresence of corruption in South America,
speaking about its debilitating effects on democratic principles: “Nearly every
public officer can be bribed. The head man in the post-office sold forged
government franks.” Darwin’s travel writings implied that these forms of
corruption were particular to Latin America and were epidemic.
About Brazil in the time of its monarchy,
Darwin remarked,
“The Brazilians, as far as I am able to
judge, possess but a small share of those qualities which give dignity to
mankind. Ignorant, cowardly, and indolent in the extreme.”
Darwin witnessed that corruption was
common in the Brazilian monarchy. More than that, he witnessed the effects of
systemic corruption on the Brazilian people affected by the monarchy. After 200
years, what has changed? Corruption in Brazil is so common that there is the
famous “Brazilian way of doing things,” where for centuries
Brazilians have known how to circumvent the corruption of courts and high taxes.
Who can blame Brazilians? The inhabitants
of the monarchical Brazil lived only to pay taxes and sustain the luxury of the
monarchical family.
A tax-burdened people lose their spirits
and creativity. Incidentally, a report in DailyMail
said the great historical creativity of the American people is closely linked
to Protestantism and its historically conservative and capitalist values.
Under conservative Protestant values, U.S.
laws have always criminalized sodomy (homosexuality), although these laws were
abolished, under pressure from gay activists, in the 1990s by interestingly a
majority of Catholic judges in the U.S. Supreme Court. But in Brazil it was the
monarchy, whose rulers were all Catholic, that decriminalized sodomy in 1830. All
references to sodomy were removed in the new Criminal Code of the Empire of
Brazil, signed by Dom Pedro I. No pressure was necessary from any homosexual
group, which did not even exist at the time.
Death penalty, a punishment needed to
punish dangerous criminals, was abolished in the Brazilian monarchy in the 19th
century because it killed many innocent people. The ubiquitous corruption in the
monarchical Brazil was not absent from court decisions, including death penalty
decisions. But in the U.S., under conservative culture, death penalty is in
effect today.
Latin America and Brazil that Darwin
visited had not only ubiquitous corruption. They also had ubiquitous
Catholicism. A Catholicism that did not tolerate Protestantism, its creativity
and aversion to high taxes.
It is true that Brazilian Emperor Dom
Pedro II opened the door for German and American Protestant immigrants. After
visiting the U.S. in the 1860s, he was so fascinated with American Protestant
creativity — a creativity so absent in Catholic monarchical Brazil — that he
invited defeated Confederates to immigrate to Brazil. He really wanted to
import American creativity. About 10,000 Americans accepted his invitation.
The Confederates brought what Brazil did
not have: capitalism, evangelicalism, creativity, work ethic, and aversion to
corruption.
They founded schools for all the children
in their families. Literacy, a standard practice among evangelical Americans,
was a striking contrast in the monarchical Brazil, where much of the population
was illiterate — so illiterate that when the military abolished the monarchy
and proclaimed the Republic in 1889, the Brazilian population did not know or
understand what had happened.
Protestant Americans and Germans who
immigrated to Brazil were forced to live in towns founded by them under
monarchical protection so that the hostile Brazilian Catholic population, who
saw them as heretics and Satanists, did not destroy them, even though the
Brazilian monarchy had invited Americans not to help them, but to help Brazil
get out of its lack of progress.
According to “Political Aspects of the
Early Implantation of Protestantism in Brazil” (2018), by Bruno Gonçalves Rosi:
A large number of liberals…
enthusiastically received the Confederates, believing that this group would be
the solution to Brazil’s problems of backwardness and the key to the progress
they so longed.
In 1876 George Nash Morton observed that,
from liberal Brazilians, the Catholic Church, with its conservatism, was “a
barrier to the progress of Brazil,” especially by curbing the immigration of
Protestants (Vieira, 1980, 239). This Catholic opposition to the immigration of
confederates can be observed in January 1868, when the Archbishop of Bahia,
Manuel Joaquim da Silveira, wrote a long letter to Counselor José Joaquim
Fernandes Torres, Minister of the Empire, complaining about the government’s
disregard for the “Protestant threat” that materialized in Brazil with the
arrival of the missionaries. In the letter, the Archbishop also referred to his
theory that the United States intended to seize the lands of Brazil.
The Confederates faced many difficulties
that they did not see in the U.S., including the fact that they were forbidden
to bury their dead in Brazilian cemeteries. Rosi said:
Despite all the promises made by [the
empire], the liberalization of Brazilian religious legislation has slow and
unsatisfactory steps for immigrant evangelicals… Every time foreign
evangelicals asked why they were forced to bury their dead “like dogs in the
woods,” they replied that it was because they “had the religion of the devil.”
The Confederates, who were all
Protestants, suffered much religious persecution in Brazil. Not unlike what had
happened before. The Dutch presence in Brazil in the seventeenth century was
marked by a Protestant Dutch population full of creativity and religious
tolerance, rejected without delay by a Brazil full of Catholicism and
Inquisition.
The persecution continued in the monarchical
Brazil. Luiz A. Giraldi, who headed the Bible Society of Brazil from 1984 to
2005, said:
“Until the end of Brazilian Empire, the
Catholic Church was the official state religion and Protestants were
discriminated against and persecuted in the country. From the proclamation of
the Republic on November 15, 1889, driven by religious freedom, Protestant
denominations operating in Brazil — Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, and
Episcopalians — grew rapidly. The same happened with Baptists… who began their
activities in Brazil in the late 19th century. In 1910 and 1911, the first
Pentecostal denominations came… and with this reinforcement, the evangelical
community further accelerated their growth in the country.”
Giraldi added,
“The Brazilian constitution of 1891
determined the separation of church and state, established full freedom of
worship, and allowed the spread of the Bible… All this contributed to the fact
that, in the first 30 years of the Republic of Brazil, the evangelical
population jumped from 145,00 to 500,000 and the annual distribution of
Scriptures from 25 to 150,000.”
The Brazilian monarchy may have been good
for Catholics because only they were free to hold public office. But it was not
good for evangelicals, who were forbidden to hold any public office.
During the Brazilian monarchy, only U.S. diplomats
were concerned with giving some help and protection to evangelicals. In fact,
the first Sunday school in Brazil was given at the American diplomatic
representation. According to “Political Aspects of the Early Implantation of
Protestantism in Brazil”:
The implantation of Protestantism in
Brazil in the 19th century was favored by some factors. First, US officials
offered legal protection to missionaries from North America. Although the
missionaries sought to distinguish their work from bilateral relations between
Brazil and the United States, the fact is that US diplomats cooperated at some
level with the deployment of Protestantism in Brazil.
It is generally accepted that the oldest
Brazilian evangelical church was established by the medical missionary Robert
Reid Kalley. Ordained minister by the Free Church of Scotland in 1839, but
acting independently, Kalley arrived in Brazil in 1855. After a brief passage
through Rio de Janeiro, he decided to settle in the city of Petrópolis (Rocha,
1941, 31). Shortly after his arrival, Mr. Webb, an American diplomat, gave him
space to hold the first Sunday School class in Brazil (Rocha, 1941, 251, 267).
The presence of the Scottish missionary at first was well accepted. From his
arrival in Petropolis, he sought to relate to the civil authorities, including
the Emperor, of whom he became a friend (Rocha, 1941, 9, 115-116).
Nevertheless, Kalley tried to be cautious by seeking to remain judiciously
within the limits imposed by the Brazilian law (Reily, 1993, 103). All this
caution, however, did not prevent the beginning of persecution.
Although he avoided openly preaching to
the Brazilians, Kalley did not shy away from baptizing two high-ranking women,
Gabriela Augusta Carneiro Leão and her daughter Henriqueta Soares do Couto. The
baptisms took place in Petrópolis on January 7, 1859. Dona Gabriela was a
sister of the Marquis of Paraná, one of the most prominent Brazilian
politicians at the time (Rocha, 1941, 7, 82-83, 360). The baptism of two
Brazilian ladies contributed to the unleashing of persecutions against the
Scottish missionary. Under pressure from the nuncio, the imperial government
issued a statement to the British Legation with complaints against Kalley,
including accusations of propaganda against the state religion and attempted
conversion of Catholics to the Protestant faith (Rocha, 1941, 93-94).
The monarchy may have been good for
Catholics, who dominated all spheres of monarchical government and oppressed
the illiterate Brazilian people with high taxes and much corruption. But Brazil
could have been much better if it had followed the great example of American
evangelicals who immigrated to Brazil with widespread schooling, Bible reading,
and a capitalist evangelical work ethic that rejected corruption.
About the date of November 15, 1889 of the
proclamation of the Brazilian Republic, Luiz of Orléans-Braganza, who is a
federal representative, said: “When today’s date weighs as a burden on the
national conscience, it will be the day when we will have something to
celebrate.”
It may be a burden to him and right-wing
Catholics, who miss a monarchical Brazil where Brazilians were slaves to
illiteracy and high taxes, a monarchical problem that still prevails today in
Brazil.
It may be a burden to him and right-wing
Catholics, who miss a monarchical Brazil that was the first country on the
American continent to legalize sodomy.
It may be a burden to him and right-wing
Catholics, who miss a monarchical Brazil whose state religion was Catholicism
and conversion to Protestantism was a crime.
It may be a burden to him and right-wing
Catholics, who miss a monarchical Brazil that drastically restricted the
freedom of American and Brazilian evangelicals.
It may be a burden to him and right-wing
Catholics, who miss a monarchical Brazil that had abundant ignorance, cowardice
and indolence and no creativity.
Yet, for evangelicals, who had nothing to
celebrate in the Brazilian monarchy, at least in the Republic they gained a
freedom that they did not have in the monarchy: Freedom to preach the Gospel
and distribute Bibles.
The Bible is the main source of true
conservatism and creativity. And there was no freedom to spread and distribute
Bibles in the Brazilian monarchy.
A correct political culture does not
eliminate corruption. The factor that most minimizes corruption is a correct
Christian culture based on the Bible. The United States is an example of this
in its past history.
Even an incorrect Christian culture favors
corruption. In Latin America Catholicism is ubiquitous, and so is the ubiquity
of corruption, which has been around for centuries. But the historically
Catholic ubiquitous culture has never supported the spreading and reading of the
Bible.
Without widespread dissemination and
reading of the Bible, it is impossible to eliminate corruption. Bible-centered
schooling is essential to generate creativity and hatred of corruption.
Monarchical Brazil was averse to freedom of dissemination and reading of the
Bible.
I am only shocked, as a conservative
evangelical who has been battling socialism in Brazil for decades, that CPAC
allowed their “conservative” event in Brazil in 2019 to be fully politicized.
Rightly to suit the historical and endemic corruption in Brazil, CPAC Brazil
allowed over one million Reals of Brazilian tax money to be used to hold their
event. Liking or not, CPAC Brazil entered Brazil’s history of corruption.
Although evangelicals
are recognized as Brazil’s largest conservative force,
no prominent evangelical leader, nor Silas Malafaia — who is Brazil’s most
prominent Pentecostal televangelist — was a speaker at CPAC. But Luiz of
Orléans-Braganza, who represents a monarchical Brazil that persecuted
evangelicals and had widespread corruption, was one of the keynote speakers.
And to complete the tragedy, Olavo
de Carvalho, who is a syncretic Catholic and the most prominent Brazilian
revisionist of the Inquisition, was exalted by the politicized CPAC Brazil.
The Catholic Inquisition tortured and killed multitudes of Jews and Protestants,
but revisionists, including Carvalho, preach that all of this is a lie and that
the Inquisition has brought human rights.
Right-wing Catholics want the return of a
monarchical Brazil, or a monarchical Catholicism — perhaps with pinches of the Catholic
Inquisition against evangelicals and Jews.
A stark contrast to the U.S., historically
full of Protestantism, creativity, love of the Jews, and hatred of the
Inquisition.
While the Brazilian monarchy was far away
from the U.S. and its Protestantism, Brazil’s evangelicals are historically
very close to the U.S. — so close that the first protection that American
evangelical immigrants in Brazil received in the nineteenth century was not
from the Brazilian monarchy and its Catholic authorities. It was from U.S.
diplomats.
If even Americans freed themselves from
the British monarchy, which was vastly more prosperous and educated than the
Brazilian monarchy, to become a republic, why should Brazil regress to
monarchy?
What will “conservative” Luiz of Orléans-Braganza
achieve with the return of monarchy in Brazil?
If a monarchical Brazil 200 years ago
pioneered the legalization of sodomy, what will a new monarchical Brazil do as
a pioneering attack on conservatism?
CPAC Brazil shot itself, with cannon fire,
in its own foot by accepting as a major conservative speaker a monarchist activist
who has nothing to do with U.S. conservatism and has everything to do with
Brazil’s historical, moral, spiritual and economic corruption.
How did CPAC, instead of valuing
evangelicals and their conservatism, value the representative of a monarchy
whose system of state Catholic religion limited the freedom of their fellow
Americans who immigrated to Brazil in the nineteenth century to bring some
measure of progress, capitalism and creativity that monarchical Brazil did not
have?
Portuguese version of this article: Como
solução para a corrupção generalizada, católicos direitistas pregam a volta da
monarquia
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