Credit, Centro Cultural São Paulo
Months after Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deceived his own wife, circumvented medical recommendations and got out of bed — where he had spent the early morning of that feverish 15th of November — to proclaim the Brazilian Republic, the country already experienced the first articulated criticism of the process that had removed the monarchy from power in 1889.
Written by São Paulo lawyer Eduardo Prado, the book Fastos da Ditadura Militar no Brasil, from 1890, argued that the Proclamation of the Republic in Brazil — celebrated as a holiday on November 15 — had been a copy of the United States model applied to a social context and to a people with distinct characteristics.
The monarchy, according to him, was still the most appropriate model for the society that existed in the country. Prado was also the first author to consider the Proclamation of the Republic an "illegitimate coup d'état" carried out by the military.
Today, almost a century and a half later, the topic still raises debates: while several historians point out the importance of the arrival of the Republic in Brazil, despite its inconsistencies and difficulties, a movement that has gained strength in recent years — mainly on social media — still contests it.
"The proclamation was a coup by a slaveholding minority allied with large landowners, the military, segments of the Church and Freemasonry. What is well known is that it was an illegitimate coup," businessman Luiz Philippe de Orleans e Bragança, great-great-grandson of D. Pedro 2º, the last Brazilian emperor, and activist of the right-wing movement Acorda Brasil, told BBC News Brasil.
In 2018, he received 118,457 votes in the State of São Paulo and was elected federal deputy for the PSL, then the party of Jair Bolsonaro, also elected president that year.
Credit, National Historical Museum
"When there is illegitimacy in the proclamation of any model of government, authority cannot be established and, therefore, there is no order. That is exactly what happened in the Republic: they removed the monarch and, in the next moment, it was chaos", added Orleans and Bragança, justifying the recent bumps in Brazilian democracy from history.
The impeachment process of President Dilma Rousseff (PT), in 2016, gave new momentum to the pro-monarchy movement, driven by the internet and the presence of monarchist groups in demonstrations against the PT government, between 2015 and 2016 — many of them, waving Brazilian Empire flags.
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A movement of elites
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The idea that the Proclamation of the Republic was a "coup" is reinforced by historian José Murilo de Carvalho, who wrote a book about Brazil's monarchical and republican periods, O Pecado Original da República.
One of the most respected intellectuals in the country, Murilo also admits that it is possible to discuss the legitimacy of the process, as current monarchists claim.
"To sustain [the proclamation's claim to legitimacy], it would have to assume that the republican minority, predominantly made up of graduates, journalists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, students from higher education schools, in addition to coffee farmers from São Paulo, represented the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population or the entire country. A bit complicated", he assesses.
Still according to Murilo, not only was it a coup, but it did not count on popular participation, which strengthens the argument of illegitimacy presented by current monarchists. For him, the distance of the largest segment of the population from political decisions is a problem that continues to this day.
"Although the propagandists spoke of democracy, the sin was the absence of people, not only in the proclamation, but at least until the end of the First Republic. Fully incorporating the people into the political system is still a problem for our Republic today. It can be said that the country's conditions did not allow for any other solution and that the propagandists were dreamers. Many really were", he says.
Credit, Reuters
Monarchy as a political regime option?
A specialist in the period, journalist and historian Laurentino Gomes, author of the trilogy 1808, 1822 and 1889, agrees with the "coup" reading. For him, however, the debate about the legitimacy of the Republic is about "who legitimizes what", which is linked to the process of consolidation of any political regime.
"The term 'legitimacy' is very relative. It depends on what is considered the legitimizing instrument of our Republic. If it is the vote, it is not legitimate, because the Republican Party never had support at the polls. Now, if we consider this instrument to be force of arms, it was a legitimate movement, because it was through them that the Army consolidated the regime", he says.
For Laurentino, the issue involves the fight for the right to name the historical events that, in the case of the Republicans, managed to promote the idea of a "proclamation" and not a "coup".
"What happened in 1889, in 1930 and in 1964 is the same thing: Army in the streets doing politics. It depends on who legitimizes what. The 1964 movement was not legitimized by society, but the 1930 revolution was legitimized both by the unions and by the changes promoted by Getúlio Vargas. The proclamation is told today by those who won", he argues.
For historian Marcos Napolitano, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo (USP), it is indeed possible to speak of a coup in the founding of the Republic. Now questioning its legitimacy, as Orleans and Bragança do, would be a historical revisionism that he considers unacceptable.
"If we think that the monarchy was a regime historically linked to slavery (which is indeed an illegitimate institution, in any respect), I personally think that the founding of the Republic was a legitimate political process that, unfortunately, was not accompanied by democratizing and inclusive reforms", he explains.
According to José Murilo de Carvalho, it is possible to affirm that the proclamation was almost entirely the work of the military, as journalist Laurentino Gomes says in his book 1889.
“It was only a few days before the coup that civil leaders were involved,” explains Murilo. For professor Marcos Napolitano, however, the fact that it was a minority responsible for overthrowing the monarchy does not deprive the movement of its legitimacy.
"Any political process is linked to the ability of active minorities to gain the support of majorities, active or passive, and neutralize other groups that are against them. A political process that begins with an active minority does not always result in a lack of democracy", explains Napolitano.
"This is the measure of legitimacy of a political process. Many democratizing political processes, which changed world history, began this way. This does not exempt them from being often traumatic and conflictive processes", he adds.
Orleans and Bragança expresses an alternative that has existed for some time among a restricted group of historians. The most militant of them is professor Armando Alexandre dos Santos, from the University of Southern Santa Catarina (Unisul).
Often invited by the Royal House for lectures and events, he has been a personal friend of D. Luiz Gastão de Orleans e Bragança — who would be the country's emperor if Brazil were a monarchy — since the 1980s.
For Santos, the Republic represented the establishment of a dictatorship never seen before in Brazil.
"It was a barracks of a rebellious minority of military men who had no popular support. The proclamation itself was a show of indecision: Deodoro da Fonseca, for example, only decided to proclaim it because he was pressured by the members of his small group who needed a senior military man to represent them. It was, above all, a fad, a slavish imitation of the USA", he argues.
Santos, however, does not find support for his thesis in most academia. For historians interviewed by BBC News Brasil, a return to the monarchy is not on the country's political horizon.
"The 1993 plebiscite (to determine the country's form of government) showed that there is a solid majority in favor of the Republic, despite the regime's mistakes. Outside of Carnival, the predominant image of the monarchy is still that of a retrograde regime", states José Murilo de Carvalho, followed by Gomes.
"In a moment of discussion about national identity, whether we are violent or peaceful, corrupt or transparent, we look for founding myths. One of them is D. Pedro, who was a cultured and respected man. This current monarchical movement is Freudian. It is the search for a father who can solve everything without us worrying", he concludes.
*This report was originally published on November 15, 2017.
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