Gossip, Scandal And Popular Culture In Golden Age Brazil

Journal of Social History, Summer, 2000 by Donald Ramos

I. Introduction

God forgive me

If it is a sin or a crime

But that is how I am

fado "Que Deus Me Perdoe" [1]

In the classic fado, "Que Deus Me Perdoe," the Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues laments the distinction between the abstract concept of sin and the concreteness of human frailty and hopes for divine forgiveness. This lament is a modern version of a colonial Brazilian reality. The distinction between sin as defined by the Catholic Church and reiterated by the Portuguese state and the behavior of a large part of the Brazilian popular culture offers the opportunity to explore a series of issues critical to our understanding of that time and culture.

This essay focuses on demonstrating the existence of local standards as recognized entities having an almost institutional role in secular and ecclesiastical juridical systems. In critical areas such as morality, social policies, and local justice, a system evolved in colonial Brazil which both implicitly and, more importantly, explicitly recognized the values of local societies--even when these values and behaviors violated basic precepts of church and state. To the degree that this happened, we see an inversion of the image of a top-down authoritarian system and are reminded once again of the power of local traditions, systems of thought and behaviors.

This essay explores the evolution of this system in the captaincy of Minas Gerais, the core of the far-flung Portuguese empire in the eighteenth century. This system was formally recognized in Portuguese law and in Brazilian practice but its existence largely has been ignored. Perhaps more importantly, during the eighteenth century it played a key role in the life of the residents of Minas Gerais. Mineiros, as these residents were called, and inhabitants of other captaincies were able to carve out a series of accommodations with both the civil and ecclesiastical establishments--accommodations which institutionally recognized local practices. Essentially the system was built around the idea that in many areas of community life, local values and behaviors took precedence over royal or church doctrine, law or rules. These values and behaviors were based in the community and often cut across class, ethnic, gender, or status lines. They were shared values and behaviors, recognizable by a broad range of community residents even if they did not always agree with them. They were held in contradistinction to the values of the "authorities"--the state, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and a preponderance of the Luso-Brazilian elite.

These community values and behaviors were manifested through the existence of a body of recognized public opinion. This body of generally held opinion was called the "people's voice"--the voz popular--and the process of forming and disseminating that opinion was called "murmurac[bar{a}]o"--a delightfully alliterative word referring to murmurings or gossip. Violations of this body of opinion were described as scandals. But more than causing mere social embarrassment, the concept of scandal was at the very heart of this complex constellation of social values. Not simply a social act, the concept of scandal had a religious underpinning. An author of an early 19th century manual of moral philosophy described this underpinning very forcefully: "The sin of scandal is the greatest enemy of God and of the Church of God because it most directly and effectively seeks to disfigure the Church and destroy all the works of God." [2] The inter-relationship of the voz popular, gossip, and scandal can be used to explore a se t of realities which illustrate the role of the local community/communities in the shaping of the historical process and in defining the socio-cultural world in which the majority of Brazilians lived.

II. Focus of Study: Public Opinion

The study of colonial Brazil has, until recently, revolved around the study of elites or institutions--those elements of colonial society which were literate and produced the great bulk of our historical sources. These sources embrace published works including ecclesiastical material such as sermons, confessional manuals and baptismal guides, travelers' accounts, and medical treatises as well as the vast body of governmental archival material which has survived. Such sources often blind us to the existence of a popular culture--this heterogeneous culture involving to varying degrees the vast bulk of colonial society. Even such sources as the cases of the Inquisition often have been used for institutional or attitudinal histories rather than as material for the study of the lives of victims of the Inquisition.

The last two decades have produced a healthy change as these same sources, generated by the dominant culture, are being used by historians as "hidden transcripts" in the felicitous expression of James Scott to look at the history of non-elites. But often this group, generally non-whites, is seen as outside the mainstream culture in as much as elite culture is generally seen as synonymous with colonial culture. The issue is described very effectively in theoretical terms by Raymond Williams when he defined elite culture as "effective dominant culture" and the very process of confusing it with "the" culture in general, "selective tradition." This effective dominant culture is constantly being modified by educational processes, social training, and the organization of work. Thus rather than seeing the dominant culture simply as imposed ideology, Williams posits a more fluid situation. [3] Those elements outside the effective dominant culture are described as either alternative or oppositional. The distinction b etween them is that the former has no desire to impose its values on the general society while the latter does. [4] In this sense, it is appropriate to see in colonial Brazil an effective dominant culture counterpoised to an alternative popular culture. I suggest in this essay that the relationship between them in specific areas can be characterized as one of mutual accommodation. There is little effort by the popular culture in Minas Gerais to impose its views on the dominant value system. Instead there is a desire to coexist, or better, to be left alone. [5] In very significant, indeed surprising, areas of life, the dominant culture does just that.