Not only the indigenous peoples were victims of the language policies of the Portuguese and Brazilian states: also the immigrants – arrived mainly from Europe after 1824 – and their descendants, four thousand kilometers further south than the above-mentioned Nheengatu speakers in the Amazon Region, went through violent linguistic and cultural repression.
This “colonial” society of immigrants was formed by the settlement of large regions with settlers speaking the same language, in the beginning German languages speakers; then, in a separated geography, Italian speakers, and finally, after 1890, also Polish, Ukrainian, Russian speakers, among others.
In these vast regions, a partially autarchic society was developed, with original institutions such as communitarian schools and churches. In these settlements, the German speakers have not received Brazilian citizenship until 70 years after the colonizing process has started. Likewise, they were also isolated from their homeland, whose institutions did not look for contact or act in favour of the settlements until the beginning of the 20th century.
In Rio Grande do Sul, and… Santa Catarina, the small property regimen and the economy based upon polyculture made the Sinos, Caí, Taquari, Pardo, Jacuí rivers valleys, the area of Missões, the high Uruguai, a distinct landscape. The land was divided always according to the same plan. A river, a stream, a hill or an elevation helped to align the plots. A trail in the beginning, a way and many times a road at the end allowed the circulation of people, animals and products. The dwelling places were near the road, each one on its respective plot. In the center of such a geographical compartment, the church, the school, the shop, and the grave yard occupied their specific space. This way, one can have a fairly good idea of the physical-geographic scenario of the German-Brazilian community unit [Rambo 2003, p. 65]/
The Estado Novo (1937–1945), a fascist dictatorial regime established by Getúlio Vargas, marks the high point of repression of the alocthone languages, ie. Immigration languages, through a government program known as “Process of Nationalization of Education” that intended to seal the fate of immigration languages in Brazil.
This was particularly the case of German and Italian in the ‘colonial’ region of the Southern states Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul. In regions of these two states, where the minifundia structure and homogeneous colonization ensured adequate conditions for the reproduction of languages, linguistic repression, through the legal concept of “Linguistic Crime”, created by the Estado Novo, reached its strongest impact.
During the Estado Novo, especially between 1941 and 1945, the government occupied community schools[6] and dispossessed them, closed newspapers in German and Italian, persecuted, arrested, and tortured people for speaking their mother tongues in public or even privately inside their homes. An atmosphere of terror and shame was created that made the reproduction of these languages impossible, which, by the number of speakers, were already much more important than the indigenous languages at the same time: in a total national population estimated at 50 million inhabitants, 644,458 people, mostly Brazilian citizens born in the country, spoke German daily at home, and 458,054 spoke Italian, from the IBGE census of 1940[7] [Mortara 1950]. These languages lost their written form and their place in the cities, and their speakers used them only orally and more and more in the rural areas, in increasingly restricted communication environments.
The state of Santa Catarina, in the administration of the governor and later the interventor Nereu Ramos, set up concentration camps, euphemistically called “confinement areas”, for descendants of Germans who insisted on speaking their language, among other reasons [Dall’Alba 1986]. One of these fields worked within what is now the campus of the Federal University of Santa Catarina, more specifically the University City Hall. The list with the names of the prisoners confined in this field was published by Perazzo (1999, 239–244).
As a result of the upsurge of the process, in 1942, prisons increased, for instance, in the municipality of Blumenau, in State Santa Catarina, for example, from 282 prisons in 1941, mostly due to common occurrences (such as drunkenness or fights at dances), to 861 in the following year, of which 271, or 31.5%, for the sole reason of having spoken a “foreign language”.
This meant imprisonment of 1.5% of the entire population of the municipality during that year and led to the silencing of the population. In the same year the Brazilian Army, more specifically the 32nd Hunters Battalion, composed mainly of soldiers transferred from the Northeast, the most monolingual region in Brazil, who were sent to Blumenau to “teach the people of Santa Catarina to be Brazilian”, stamped all the correspondence to the Itajaí Valley with the phrase of the ex -governador and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Lauro Müller: “Who is born in Brazil is either Brazilian or a traitor”.
Under a rigid censorship of the press, which provided for the immediate arrest of the head of the newspaper who published any restriction on the [nationalization] campaign, the military began to command the municipalities of the immigration zones, taking over new boards in schools and recreational societies Jahn in Canoinhas), changing the denomination of known cultural centers (the Musician Theatre Frohsinn, in Blumenau, became Theatre Carlos Gomes), and interfering in the most varied aspects of daily life. His zeal was such that in Jaraguá do Sul the appointed mayor even forbade tombstones and mausoleums from the local cemetery to contain written in “foreign language” (a measure that would later be extended to the whole state), not accepting even the adopted file by an individual named Godofredo Guitherm Lutz, who had covered the inscriptions of the family’s grave with a bronze plaque. And to support actions like this, an army battalion was specially created and sent to Blumenau, where it stayed camped in the former Shooting Society. The 32nd Hunters Bataillon arrived on a rainy day, being welcomed by authorities, scouts and delegations of major industries, while two military aircraft released confetti in the colors of the Brazilian flag. Marking their arrival, the soldiers engaged in a conflict with civilians during a ball in the Buerger Hall, and days later their commander issued a edict abolishing “the use of any foreign language in public acts” (‘The Gazette’, 24 and 25 of May 1939) (FALCÃO, 2000, 171 and 200).
The Military Police, 9 in Santa Catarina and in other states, arrested and tortured and forced people to leave their homes in certain “national security zones.” More serious than all this: the “nationalization” school encouraged children to denounce parents who spoke German or Italian at home, creating unsurpassed psychological sequels to those citizens who, for the most part, were and considered themselves Brazilian, even if speaking German.
One of the most tragic facts, however, is that we find in our history very few voices that opposed the overwhelming process of homogenization, even among Brazilian intellectuals. “It is disconcerting,” say Simon Schwartzman and others, “the fact that there has never been, on the part of the various political currents of some significance in Brazilian history, who defended for the country the constitution of a culturally pluralistic society.” [Schwartzman et al. 1984]
For the Brazilian linguistics, as it is structured in our universities today, the study of linguistic diversity, that is, of multilingualism, has only a modest place in research efforts, and even then only in the last 20 years. When speaking of linguistic diversity, many think only of the internal diversity of the Portuguese language itself [8]. But this interest is increasing, and this movement can help the diverse linguistic communities of Brazil to maintain and to develop their languages.
Traditionally, it was even less important for most of Brazilian linguists to contribute to guaranteeing their linguistic rights to non-Portuguese speakers[9], through, for example, interventions in LPP − Language Policies and Planning, that is to say decisions taken on languages, their status, their circulation, their equipment for new and specific tasks, among other aspects. In this sense, we do not have a very different picture for Brazil than Dora Pellicer [Pellicer 1993, 36-7] affirms about Mexican linguistics in a text entitled “It was then that the indigenous languages passed from the hands of the missionaries to the hands of the scholars”:
However, the work of Mexican scholars in the academic world had no effect on the legitimacy of the use of these [indigenous] languages in the context of the independent nation. Several reasons can be argued for this to happen. But a main determinant is that apparently there was not, on the part of this guild, so interested in descriptions, comparisons and dialectal studies, the purpose of achieving, through their accumulated knowledge, the vindication of the use of these languages. For the newly constituted Mexican intelligentsia – whose members, profuse in erudition – kept abreast of modern philology – the native languages were an exciting object of study, but nothing more. In the ideological field all of them shared, without subjecting it to deep discussion, the national ideal of a common language.
History shows us that we could be today a lot more plurilingual country, were it not for the repeated assaults of the State against cultural and linguistic diversity. This same History shows us, however, that Brazil not only was a multicultural and multilingual country, but Brazil is a multicultural and multilingual country, either because of the diversity of languages spoken in the territory, or because the great internal diversity of the Portuguese language spoken in the country, obscured by another prejudice of the same nature: that Brazilian Portuguese is a language without dialects.
Finally still, Brazil is plurilingual because of the emergence of a ‘new mutlilingualism’, triggered by the international immigration, due to the formation of regional economic blocs such as the MERCOSUR (1992, 1996) and the influx of specialized workers or refugees (Haitians, Syrians, etc.). Although Brazil is not a major recipient of international immigration, and has only the modest number of 770 000 immigrants, the concentration of people from few countries makes the linguistic impact relevant, and makes it possible for new languages to establish permanently in Brazil. This is the case of the Creole of Haiti, spoken in Brazil by 440 000 Haitians, the largest group of foreigners today, or Quechua, spoken by many of more than 150 000 resident Bolivians, especially in São Paulo.
Another aspect of this new multilingualism is related to the fact that Brazil not only receives immigrants, as it did until the 1980s, but sent more than 3.5 million Brazilians to the diaspora abroad, who learn and bring to the country new languages and new language arrangements. This is the case of half a million Brazilians in Paraguay, the Brasiguaios, who live between Portuguese, Guarani and Spanish, or the nearly 300,000 Brazilians in Japan, the Dekassegui, or the more than 100,000 Brazilians in the Bekaa Valley, in Lebanon, in its pendular life between Arabic and Portuguese.
Just as language communities resisted the processes of homogenization in the colonial era, communities continue to resist the monolinguistic language policies of the government and majorities, either by organized indigenous movements or by other groups, speakers of the languages of immigration, sign languages or discriminated varieties of Portuguese.
Proof of this is that the 1988 Constitution recognizes the right of indigenous peoples to their languages, at least in the school apparatus, in two articles (210 and 231), a fact that was regulated by the new Law on the Guidelines and Bases of National Education of 1996, also in two articles (78 and 79). This is a very new fact in the history of Brazilian legislation, so eager to “integrate the Indian,” that is, to make him cease to be what he was, to transform himself into something else: labor in large estates or in the outskirts of big cities. It should be noted in passing that these rights were anchored in the Constitution by the active participation of the indigenous movement in the constituent process.
To conceive an identity between the ‘Portuguese language’ and the ‘Brazilian nation’ has always been a way of excluding important ethnic and linguistic groups from nationality and of circumscribing their political and economic rights; or of reducing these groups, often by force, to the ‘Luso-Brazilian’ format.
It would have been much more interesting and rich to the country to extend the concept of nationality, making it plural and open to diversity: it would have been more democratic and culturally more enriching, less violent and discretionary, and would allow the citizens to relate more honestly to the country’s history. The great physical and symbolic violence unleashed by the State against indigenous peoples, against the more than 4 million African slaves who built the country between 1576 and 1888, and to a lesser extent against the immigrants who have been searching since the nineteenth century for a new life in Brazil is hidden in the official history of the country.
It is this erasure that also brings to the conscience of the citizens the ignorance about the linguistic pluralism of Brazil and leads so many to believe that only Portuguese is spoken.
Darcy Loss Luzzato, for example, expressed in the passage below his view that it is possible to reverse this trend, and ensure that many of the Brazilian languages continue to be spoken in the future. He an author devoted to write in his native tongue, the Talian (or Brazilian Venetian) – widely spoken in the regions of italian colonization in South Brazil – and to fight for its maintenance, in a legal framework that does not give the languages of immigration not even the same and few rights that are recognized to the Indians. He narrates, in this passage, a dream he had, and with which he manifests his support for Brazilian multilingualism:
Che bel insònio che go buo l’altra sera. Me go insonià che in tuto el Sud del Brasile tuti parléino almanco due léngue: fra de noantri, ogni uno el parleva talian e portoghese; i dissendenti dei tedeschi i se feva intender tanto in tedesco come in brasilian; i polachi i parleva tanto in polaco come in portoghese; i giaponesi i dopereva co la medésima fassilità el brasilian e el giaponese; vissin a le frontiere col Uruguay e la Argentina, tanto se sentiva che i parleva in brasilian come in spagnolo. E ghen’era de quei che i era franchi in tre o quatro léngue! Quando me son desmissià ala matina, pensàndoghe sora, me go incorto che sto bel insònio el podaria esser stato vero: bastaria che gavéssimo buo Governi invesse de governi. Bastaria che invesse de polìticoburòcrati gavéssimo buo la fortuna de esser governadi par òmini de vision, stadisti, e nò gente de vista curta e storta. Ma, noantri, podemo cambiar la stòria. Me nono, el diseva che tuto l’è scominsiar! Alora, scominsiemo noantri taliani, che semo stati sempre vanguardieri. Dedrio de noantri, dopo verta la strada, i vegnarà i altri. Son sicuro!12 [Tonial 1995, capa].
“What a beautiful dream I had another night. I dreamed that in all the south of Brazil we all spoke at least two languages: between us, Talian and Portuguese were spoken; the descendants of Germans made themselves understood both in German and in Brazilian; the Poles spoke in both Polish and Portuguese; the Japanese operated with the same facility the Brazilian and the Japanese; near the border with Uruguay and Argentina, it was heard that if one spoke in Brazilian as in Spanish. And there were those who were fluent in three or four languages! When I woke up in the morning thinking about it, I realized that this beautiful dream might have been true: it would have been enough if we had had Governments instead of governments. It would be enough if instead of bureaucratic politicians we would have been fortunate to be governed by men of vision, statesmen, not people of short and crooked sight. But we can change the story. My grandfather told me that everything is to begin! So let’s start with talians, who have always been avant-garde. After us, once the road is opened, the others will come. I’m sure!
References
Almeida (1997) − Almeida, R.H. de. O Diretório dos índios: um projeto de “civilização” no Brasil do século XVIII. Brasília: UnB. (Com fac-símile do Diretório dos Índios em apêndice)
Bessa Freire (1983) − Bessa Freire, J. Da “fala boa” ao português na Amazônia brasileira. Ameríndia, no. 8.
Brepohl de Magalhães (1998) − Brepohl de Magalhães, 1998, p. 48.
Dall’Alba (1986) – Dall’Alba, J.L. Colonos e mineiros na grande Orleáns. Orleáns: Edição do Autor e do Instituto São José.
Holanda (2003) – Holanda, S.B. de, ed., História Geral da Civilização Brasileira. Tomo I – A época colonial. 10ª ed., Rio de Janeiro, Bertrand Brasil.
Mortara (1950) – Mortara, G. Estudo sobre as línguas estrangeiras e aborígines faladas no Brasil, n. 2. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Estatística Cultural.
Rambo (2003) – Rambo, A.B. (2003). O teuto-brasileiro e sua identidade. Em Fiori, N.A., Etnia e Educação: a escola “alemã” do Brasil e estudos congêneres. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC; Tubarão: Editora da Unisul.
Rodrigues A. (1993 – Rodrigues, A.D. ’I. Línguas indígenas: 500 anos de descobertas e perdas. In Ciência Hoje, vol. 16, no. 95, nov. 1993.
Rodrigues H. (1985) – Rodrigues J.H. A vitória da língua portuguesa no Brasil colonial. In História Viva. São Paulo: Global Universitária. (Série História)
Schwartzman S. et al. (1984) – Schwartzman, S. et al. Tempos de Capanema. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra; São Paulo: Edusp, 1984.
Tonial (1995) – Tonial, H. Adesso Imparemo. Porto Alegre: Sagra D.C. Luzzatto Editores, 1995.
Сведения об авторе:
Мюллер де Оливейра Жилван, Федеральный университет штата Санта Катарина, Флорианополис, Бразилия
Information about the author:
Müller de Oliveira Gilvan, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil
УДК 378: 339.564
DOI: 10.28995/2658-7041-2019-2-108-123
[1] Other grammarians of the time affirmed this same relation between language and domination, as Antonio de Nebrija (1492), the first grammarian of Spanish: «language always accompanied domination, so that together they began, together they grew, together they flourished, and after all their fall was common».
[2] The Brazilian Demographic Census (IBGE, 2010), which gave the indigenous population the chance to declare their language, reached the number of 274 indigenous languages spoken in Brazil. It should be noted, however, that this survey is based on self-declaration and not infrequently speakers declare the name of a variant of the language as their mother tongue, amplifying the number of languages declared. It should also be noted that only the indigenous can declare the language spoken, which erases from the official data of the country the languages most spoken after Portuguese, which are the languages of immigration.
[3] Short name of the «'Directory to be observed in the Hamlets of the Indians of Pará and Maranhão inasmuch as His Majesty does not command the opposite», published in fac-similar edition by Almeida [Almeida 1997].
[4] «To the peoples of the Upper Rio Negro. My Brothers: Professor Aloysio Nogueira is a state deputy candidate. He is a nice guy. He is our friend and relative. As a state deputy, Professor Aloysio Nogueira will be our brave warrior. He will be the voice of the peoples of the Upper Rio Negro in the Legislative Assembly. I hold you, my relatives. Professor Auxiliomar Silva Ugarte». (The text and the translation were kindly given me by Aloysio Nogueira himself in São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas State, Brazil.
[5] The concept of 'war of languages' [Calvet, 1999] enables us to understand that languages (ie the various language communities) do not coexist peacefully, but use linguistic differences in their identity struggles. Nelde´s Law (1984) formulates this idea of conflict as follows: “There can be no language contact without language conflict”.
[6] Beginning in 1932, a series of measures against the use of the German language in the Brazilian schools began. This is explained, on the one hand, as a response to the demands of nationalist politicians and intellectuals who would support the Estado Novo Dictatorship in 1937 and, on the other hand, the recommendations of liberal politicians who saw the use of a single language throughout the country, as a sine qua non condition for the exercise of citizenship [Brepohl de Magalhães 1998, p. 48].
[7]Of all the Brazilian censuses, begun in 1872, only the 1940s and 1950s were interested in asking which language the Brazilians used at home for the entire population, and if they knew how to speak Portuguese. The 2010 census resumed the questioning about spoken languages, but only for those who before declared themselves indigenous.
[8] This can be verified in a reference work of great quality, elaborated by an important group of Brazilian linguists: The Linguistic Atlas of Brazil, published in 2015. In fact, the Atlas is only about Brazilian Portuguese and would have to have a name correspondent, was not this almost automatic ideological correspondence between ‘Brazil’ and ‘Portuguese Language’.
[9] See the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996) published in Brazil only in 2009 by Mercado das Letras Publishing House, the Brazilian Reading Association (ALB) and the Institute for Research and Development in Language Policy (IPOL).