From Degeneration to Meeting Point

Historical Views on Race, Mixture, and the Biological Diversity of the Brazilian Population

Ricardo Ventura Santos, Michael Kent, and Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto

Let any one who doubts the evil of the mixture of races, and is inclined, from a mistaken philanthropy, to break down all barriers between them, come to Brazil. He cannot deny the deterioration consequent upon an amalgamation of races, more widespread here than in any other country in the world, and which is rapidly effacing the best qualities of the white man, the negro, and the Indian, leaving a mongrel nondescript type, deficient in physical and mental energy.

–Louis Agassiz and Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil

None of the different types within the Brazilian population presents any stigma of anthropological degeneration. To the contrary, characteristics from all of them are the best that could be desired.

–Edgard Roquette-Pinto, "Nota sobre os typos anthropologicos do Brasil"

If ... we contemplate the structure of our population, we can see that Brazil represents a true MEETING POINT.... Brazilians probably constitute the most genetically diverse group of human beings on our planet and are far beyond any attempt at synthesis. What we intend is simply to describe and celebrate diversity.

–Sérgio D. J. Pena, Homo brasilis

The three epigraph quotations, written during different periods over the last 150 years, reveal the long road traveled by physical anthropologists and geneticists in their interpretations of race, mixture, and biological diversity in Brazil: from an outright rejection of mixture as a source of degeneration to its effusive celebration. In consonance with dominant racial thinking of the time, Swiss naturalist and Harvard University professor Louis Agassiz drew on his travels to Brazil in 1865–1866 to offer an extremely negative view of the racial-biological composition of this country, as well as of its consequences for the future viability of its population. These views strongly influenced Brazilian intellectuals and politicians of the time. The second citation, from Brazilian physician and anthropologist Edgard Roquette-Pinto, represents the biological diversity resulting from the process of racial mixture in rather more positive terms. It stems from the 1920s, a period of marked nationalism in Brazil, during which physical anthropologists contributed significantly to the development of more positive interpretations of the Brazilian population that strongly opposed the earlier thesis of degeneration. Finally, the third and most recent citation, by molecular geneticist Sérgio Pena, celebrates the biological diversity of the Brazilian population as unique within a global context. Genetic arguments developed by Pena on the nonexistence of race and the inherently mixed character of all Brazilians have in the past decade played a prominent role in the heated public debates on affirmative action policies targeted at the mixed and black population in Brazil.

The main objective of this chapter is to analyze from a historical-anthropological perspective the trajectory of studies in the fields of physical anthropology and human population genetics on race, mixture, and human biological diversity in Brazil from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. It does so by focusing on three key periods in the development of scientific thought about race and mixture in Brazil, as well as its articulation with debates about national identity: approximately 1870–1915, 1910–1930, and 2000–present. In particular, we analyze the work of three key scientists that are representative of each respective period: João Baptista de Lacerda, Edgard Roquette-Pinto (both affiliated with the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro), and Sérgio Pena (Federal University of Minas Gerais). We consider these scholars representative both through their central position within academia and national debates, and through the alignment of their ideas with dominant thinking in their scientific fields at the time. Although this chapter reveals profound differences between these authors in terms of the methodology they employed, the content of their ideas, and the values attached to mixture, it also brings to the fore a number of continuities that run across the different historical periods analyzed here. These shared elements concern, in particular, the centrality of the question of racial mixture in defining the research agenda of physical anthropology and/or human population genetics in Brazil, as well as the often important role of knowledge generated by these scientific fields in the dynamics of the construction of a Brazilian national identity.

As argued throughout this book, the development of scientific thought on race and mixture does not stand on its own. It is intimately articulated with wider social processes, as well as public debates on race and national identity, both at a national level and within Latin America as a whole. Thus, an additional objective of this chapter is to place such scientific thought within this wider context. It does so, in particular, by exploring the significant correlations between the different periods identified here and the timeline of elite discourses on race in Latin America established by Appelbaum, Macpherson, and Rosemblatt (2003a).

Racial Degeneration and Whitening: João Baptista de Lacerda, 1870–1915

The first period analyzed here covers a moment when many Latin American countries were...