Gustavo Barroso

Template:Short description Template:Wikidata image Gustavo Adolfo Luiz Dodt da Cunha Barroso (December 29, 1888 – December 3, 1959Template:Sfn) was a Brazilian antisemite lawyer, historian, writer and politician associated with Brazilian Integralism. He was also known by the pseudonym João do Norte.Template:Sfn Being considered a master of Brazilian folklore,Template:Sfn he was the first director of the National Historical Museum and one of the leaders of the Brazilian Integralist Action, being one of its most prominent ideologists.

He is considered the most anti-Semitic Brazilian intellectual, whose ideas were close to those of Nazi theorists.

A significant portion of the historiography emphasizes that Barroso’s antisemitism was framed not in racial terms, but as a moral concern.

There also scholars who affirm that he manifests traditional catholic forms of antisemitism.

Barroso explicitly rejected racial interpretations. He positioned himself as an anti-racist writer fighting what he viewed as jewish racism.

Early life

Template:Integralism Barroso was born in Fortaleza, son of Antônio Filinto Barroso and Ana Dodt Barroso, he studied at day schools São José, Partenon Cearense and Liceu do Ceará. He studied at the Faculty of Law of Ceará linked to the Federal University of Ceará (UFC), graduating in 1911 from the Faculty of Law of Rio de Janeiro, currently the National Faculty of Law of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He was half German by birth, his mother coming from Württemberg.

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Barroso dressed in military uniform when he was 5 years old, 1894

Later years and antisemitism

Barroso made his name as a journalist and was for a time involved with the socialist Clube Maximo Gorki.Template:Sfn However his politics became more conservative after he secured his law degree in Rio de Janeiro in 1910.

He soon became an important figure in Ceará state, serving variously as Secretary of the Interior and Justice, and being elected a Representative in the National Congress. He even formed part of the Brazilian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.Template:Sfn He would later rise to hold such positions as president of the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) and secretary-general of the International Committee of Legal Advisers.Template:Sfn

In 1933, Barroso joined the Brazilian Integralist Action, which had fascist characteristics. He soon became the head of the extreme anti-Jewish faction within the Brazilian Integralist Action.Template:Sfn Noted for his hard-line antisemitism, he took charge of the Brazilian Integralist Action Militia from 1934 to 1936 before being appointed to the party's Supreme Council. An extensive writer, his polemical works at this time included many anti-semitic books and newspaper articles in Fon-Fon and Século XX magazines.Template:Sfn

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Barroso with the Brazilian Integralist Action uniform, 1933

Political differences caused Barroso to be regarded as dangerous by the more constitutionally minded Integralista party's leader, Plínio Salgado, who suspended him from collaborating for six months with the party's newspaper, A Ofensiva.Template:Sfn However Barroso continued to pursue his antisemitic ideals, translating The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Portuguese and even suggesting setting up concentration camps.Template:Sfn

Following the formation of the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas (1938–1945), Barroso was arrested in 1938 after the Brazilian Integralist Action attempted a violent coup d´etat.Template:Sfn However Barroso was never tried due to a lack of evidence of his involvement in the attempted coup. He subsequently left political activism and became largely accepting of Getúlio Vargas later constitutional government (1951–1954), serving as a special ambassador to Uruguay (1952) and Peru (1954). He died in Rio de Janeiro, aged 70.

He was mentioned as a relevant intellectual in a publication that lists extreme-right activists from the whole world.Template:Sfn A museum in Fortaleza, his home town, the Museu Gustavo Barroso, bears his name.

Works

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Brasil Colônia de Banqueiros

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Book

A keen Folklorist, Barroso built up a collection of exhibits relating to Brazil's past at the National Historical Museum (Portuguese: Museu Histórico Nacional) in Rio de Janeiro and produced around 50 non-political books including historical and regional novels, folklore studies and biographies of Brazilian national military heroes such as General Osório and Admiral Tamandaré.

As a novelist, he produced the work "Terra do Sol" (1912), which demonstrated his admiration for the people of northeastern Brazil's rural areas.Template:Sfn Barroso was often linked with the neorealist school of Brazilian literature, although he differed from the neorealism typified by the likes of Erico Verissimo, Amando Fontes and Telmo Vergara by his emphasis on rural rather than urban settings.Template:Sfn Barroso belonged to the regionalist documentary strand of Brazilian neorealism, although, along with Mário Sete, he rejected the inherent modernism in the works of contemporaries in the genre such as Jorge Luis de Rêgo and Jorge Amado.Template:Sfn

He also published a few works on Lampião, besides the aforementioned "Terra do Sol", also "Herois e Bandidos" (1917) and "Alma de Lama e de Aço"(1928).Template:Sfn

As a political writer, his polemical works when joined to the Brazilian Integralist Action included "O Liceu do Ceará", "Brasil: Colônia de Banqueiros" and "História Secreta do Brasil". He also translated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Portuguese.Template:Sfn

As Brazil had relatively few Jews by then, Barroso's anti-semitic writings tended to focus on the international conspiracy theory of Jewish world control, as espoused notably in his book "The Paulista Synagogue".

Bibliography

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