Abstract: The paper deals with Brazilian national identity, the role of museums and archaeology. It starts by discussion the intellectual contributions to identity building in Brazil. It then turns to museums as identity builders themselves and focuses on a case study: the Paulista Museum. It concludes by pleading for a critical approach and people empowerment. Key words: national identity; museum studies; archaeology; uses of the past.

Resumo: O artigo trata da identidade nacional e do papel dos museus e da Arqueologia. Inicia-se com uma discussão dos pensadores que trataram da construção das identidades no Brasil. Em seguida, o artigo volta-se para os museus como veículo de formação identitária para centrar-se em um estudo de caso: o Museu Paulista. Este museu - com pretensão nacional por excelência - demonstra bem os usos da cultura material para formar identidades elitistas. O artigo conclui por propor uma abordagem que vise à inclusão social na gestão dos museus e da Arqueologia. Palavras chave: identidade nacional; museologia; Arqueologia; usos do passado.










Introduction: national by subtraction
Latin American national identities, since the inception of our polities as independent states in the 19th century, constituted a problem rather than a natural consequence of the independence process. The late colonial signs of political unrest throughout Latin America (Alden 1988:336-343) were characterized by the fact that regions were conspiring against the colonial administration because of economic and political rather than culural tensions (cf. Maxwell 1973). Behind these early autonomic moves by colonial elites there was little room for a truly American identity considering that, on the contrary, the ideologies were imported directly from Europe, mainly Enlightenment ideas (Burns 1964; Viotti da Costa 1975:84-88). It has always been difficult to the early national elites in Latin America to justify the existence of the different independent countries in the continent. In Spanish-speaking Latin America the same Spanish cultural background was clearly in contradiction with the spead of a number of independent states (Ribeiro Jr. 1975). In Portuguese-speaking Brazil, the identity problem was the opposite one: one single language in a huge area was the main cultural asset of the new independent kingdom (Algranti 1987:63). However, during the first years after independence, the Brazilian government faced a series of regional revolts and wars up to the Farrapos Revolt in the mid 1830s (cf. Mota l972). It was the army, not an actual Brazilian identity, the responsible for the maintenance of a unitary state (Simões de Paula 1985:277).

Although Brazilians and Latin Americans are usually considered as separate conceptual entities (Schwartz 1988:69), Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries in the Americas share a common identity challenge: how to cope with the fate of mimicing the elites’ desire to be considered European? (Pereira 1991:50). ”We continually experience a false cultural life”(Schwartz 1988:69). Indians, blacks, Portuguese, and Immigrant ideologies are only a small section of our identity parts, for all these cultural backgorunds have been incorporated by the people through class perceptions in different periods in time. As Renato Ortiz (1985:8) emphasized, ”there is no authentic identity, there is a plurality of identities, contructed by different social classes in different historic periods”. Brazilian intellectuals, almost always ideologically attached to the ruling elites (Maestri 1988:9), have forged different Brazilian identities. It is time to study their ideasand their consequences to the building up of a material basis for a forged identity.



Brazilian social thinkers and their comments on identity
A Brazilian identity would take time to develop even within the ruling intellectual elite. This is not surprising if we consider that the Brazilian Empire was founded by the Portuguese Court. It was only with the tory M.P. José de Alencar that we would have the development of a new, Brazilian, approach to the distinctiveness of the country’s culture. If it was true that the Imperial court was Portuguese, it was also a fact that regional elites, born in Brazil and sometimes of mixed Portuguese/Indian descent, were being incorporated in the new political establishment. Peter the Second, the Enlightened Emperor, completely European in outlook (Funari 1991a:122), could not represent ideologically these regional elites. José de Alencar, a provincial conservative senator and writer, would forge the myth of Brazilian Indian origins. The idealized Indians mixed with whites and constituted the Brazilian people; blacks were absent from this discourse as they were slaves working at the plantations owned by these provincial elites (Sodré‚ 1958:130).

Later on, blacks would be introduced as one of three races making up the Brazilian people (Fernandes 1989:13-19). After 1888, the abolition of slavery and the constitution of a new Republican elite would sharpen the contradictions between two Brazilian cultures. Ordinary people were characterized as a mixed race, composed of blacks, Indians and (poor) whites, making up the so-called "crossbreeding ideology" (ideologia de mestiçagem). Racist ideas (Nina Rodrigues 1939; 1945; Viana 1938) imported from Europe were used to study the lazy (Freyre 1943; 1947) and quiet (Buarque de Hollanda 1973) ordinary Brazilian. The elites, on the other hand, continued to think of themselves as unaffected by the mob: Europeans, Brazilian intellectuals always considered more natural to discuss our country roots at the Seine or Thames banks than at the Tietê`s banks. In Laura de Mello e Souza`s (1982:222) words, "considered as no entity, or considered as animals, the poor people remained in oblivion for a long time". It is true that after the Second World War, thanks to a liberal democracy political system (1945-1964), it was possible to develop a whole series of critical approaches to the identity question. Scholars like Roland Corbisier (1958), R. Bastide (1959), Carlos Estevam (1963) and Ferreira Gullar (1968), among other, produced interesting papers on the subject but the military dictatorship (1964-1985) would clamp down on critical cultural activities. "Available evidences indicate - and the National Security ideology confirms - that the Brazilian state turned its attention to the cultural issue since the military coup" (Ortiz 1985:85). The miliary period was characterized thus not only by the persecution of dissent voices but by an active program creating a network of support for conservatism. Although murder squads (Kiernan 1990:93) and overall repression were important moves by the authorities to assert their power, inside academic and cultural institutions also “some of our best professors were summarily dismissed from their posts” (Buarque de Hollanda 1983:13; cf. Honório Rodrigues 1984:226). But the military could not have carried out this clamp down without the use of traditional devises by Brazilian ruling elites: favor, patronage, nepotism (Schwartz 1988:16; Da Matta 1991:4-5; Da Matta 1991:399).

Intellectuals outside the main state network were free from these constraints (Ring 1990:76) but they were also excluded from the mass media and the main prestigious institutional posts. Only recently free discussion of National Identity would flourish unhindered. However, if the discussion on the subject has been developing fast (cf. Coutinho 1990), Brazilian Historical assets continue by and large to play a mixed role in terms of people`s identity. Considering that much more people visit our 895 Museums (Folha 1992:8, 1) in a year than read or have indirect access to intellectual interpretations of our identity, we must deal now with this very popular identity building structures: museums.



Museum: materialized identity and symbolic power
Pierre Bourdieu (1992:113) stressed only recently that "we have spoken too much about consciousness, too much in terms of representation. The social world doesn`t work in terms of consciousness; it works in terms of practices, mechanisms and so forth". It is beyond dispute that people conform or dissent from established views much more through practices than theories, through material than immaterial influences. "In their present structure, museums serve by and large to distance and disenfranchise people from their past. They have an ever-present tendency to commodify and objectify the artifact. The past becomes a succession of pre-interpreted, securely named and labeled objects, aestheticised by means of the museum display" (Tilley 1989:113; cf. Vargas & Sanoja 1990:53; Shanks & Tilley 1987:93). Knowledge is not a property (Tilley 1992:176), despite the pretensions of some aristocratic scholars entrenched in power (Funari 1987-8:260-1): museums, displays, monuments and historical assets, on the other hand, are properties. This means that, if it is true that the control of academic posts is not free of social and political ties (Champion 1991:144), much more political is Museum management and control. André Luiz Jacobus (1991) studied the evidences relating to the management of the Museu Arqueológico do Rio Grande do Sul (MARSUL) during military rule and produced a frightening description of what he described as "the destruction of archaeological assets with the connivance of the public authorities". This was possible thanks to what he called feudal treatment of a public institution (Jacobus 1991:6). As mentioned before, military authorities reinforced and renewed patronage practices in public administration. These feudal or mafia-like structures were established in Museums thanks to the repression of humanist management, the worst case being the expulsion of the Pre-History Institute (IPH-USP) Director, the humanist Paulo Duarte (Funari 1992).

Beside this direct repressive role Museums played during the hardest army rule period, there is a more subtle and pervasive aspect of Museum relationship with the public which goes beyond the boundaries of the military period: its inner disciplinary function (Foucault 1979). Disciplinary not in the sense of a military enforcement but as a symbolic domination which "tends to take the form of a more effective, and in this sense more brutal, means of oppression" (Bourdieu 1992:115). Symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1977) means that "the Museum manipulates relations, suppressing contradiction, fixing the past as a reflection of the appearance of the present. The present recognizes itself and is justified. The museum as ideological institution suppresses difference and heterogeneity in advertisements for the world through its duplication in the artifactual past. The Museum suppresses temporality and agency" (Shanks & Tilley 1987:97). People are compelled to conform to non explicit manipulations of the past through material displays: people obey, collude or positively accept their own inferior social position, oppression or exploitation and ultimately become oblivious to their own subordination (Miller, Rowlands & Tilley 1988:15). This symbolic control surpasses the concept of surveillance as a “direct supervision as control of the activities of subordinates by superiors in a particular organization or range of social settings" (Giddens 1987:174, referring to Foucault`s concepts) as it implies an unconscious pliancy to the order.

However, there are always limits to dominance (Miller 1988). Excluded pasts (MacKenzie & Stone 1990) and a critical approach to them enable us to challenge current museum practices. Indigenous, minority or oppressed groups can rescue their own memory through a critical archaeology and through a social engagement of people dealing with material culture, archaeologists and museum management alike. As knowledge does not exist in a social vacuum (Champion 1991:144), only this ethical commitment to the people will enable the challenge of "present ideology, made to seem a timeless, matter of fact ... examine how the past is constructed and used by others" (Handsman & Leone 1989:119; 134). Considering the political importance of Museums and their management, this ethical approach is always difficult, and more so in Latin America (cf. Vargas & Sanoja 1990:53), where humanism has been often victim of open repression, thanks to its defense of basic human rights. Unfortunately, Archaeology and museum management have been used as a "repressive weapon", in Lumbrera`s (1981:6) words. Even though it is not easy to challenge conventional material discourses about the past as presented in our Museums, it is nevertheless a task ordinary people are imposing on us.

This social commitment implies the "assumption that archaeology for the public as information, education or critical awareness is justified through the theory that the present is a large source of knowledge of the past" (Leone 1983:38) and is at the very root of all contemporary discourses on the past. Perhaps more than reading different authors on Brazilian national identity we should try to read this identity as a material discourse (Tilley 1990:332-339) which "plays a highly active role, creating society and creating continual change" (Hodder 1986:74). All museums are huge discursive artifacts aiming at present goals, but Historical Museums represent the most directly political and manipulative ones. This is the result of the fact that archaeology "becomes increasingly historical in orientation" (Trigger 1984:295) and that historical archaeology deals with contemporary issues as racism, perception, symbolism, social relations and cultural persistence among others (Orser 1990:6).

At this point, it is interesting to note that the best way to disguise the political implications of contemporary manipulation of the past is to transform specific interests of heritage management - that is class, state or group interests - in "citizenry" interests. Thus, the relationship between cultural identity and archaeology has been interpreted as a so-called political task, but considering "politics" as "referring to polis, the city governed by its citizens" (Meneses 1987:189). As the city (or country, Brazil) is not governed directly by the citizens but, on the contrary, by people in power, this masks the main question: who control the past? Who controls Museums? Are these huge institutions under the control of the people and are Museum managers elected or chosen to govern them? If during the military rule it was easy to say that directors in charge, as successors to expelled scholars, were not representative of the citizenry, today it is not difficult to understand the continuity of the same managers in the same or different Museums claiming to this kind of legitimacy. For people in power, especially people controlling Museums, it may be fashionable to talk about people`s appropriation of its memory, about the importance of people`s feeling of belonging to something (Meneses 1987:188) and, at the same time, no to talk about the control of the past, about social interests involved in material culture and ultimately, considering that Museum managers claim to have a scientific knowledge which ordinary people (and students and scholars) do not have as they are silly pilgrims going to civic cathedrals run by these managers! (Meneses 1991:5).

Museums, however, should not be considered only as repressive for both practical and theoretical reasons. Brian Durrans (personal communication) emphasizes that "the issue is not whether museums or exhibitions are "repressive" in themselves but whether the arguments which they put forward suggest that social conditions are permanent and unalterable or, on the contrary, variable and changeable”. Museum displays can thus serve to empower people, if this aim is at the heart of the exhibition. "Museums should be motivations for the development of human thought, pointing out peculiarities, dissimilarities, similarities, and connections between the historical processes of different peoples. They should be didactic tools enabling people to connect facts, objects and pictures to real life. They should provide incentives for reflection and for the private study of history" as Vargas and Sanoja (1990:53) stress. The potential of Museums to educate and enlighten depends on the links that their managements is able and willing to establish with social classes and movements, with the public in general. Durrans (personal communication) reminds us that ordinary people should be at heart of museum management attentions: "nothing could more dramatically highlight the gulf between academic and everyday experience, between the elite who pride themselves on their powers of thinking, and the majority of people who think at least as much as they but make less fuss about it".

This brings us to a second important point: in the actual Museum management we should not underestimate the importance of accessible, understandable displays and exhibitions. It is often too easy to set up a revolutionary exhibition, with up to date philosophical labels. However, it is not difficult to understand that arcane terminology and postmodern subtleties can lead to misunderstandings and outright rejection by ordinary people. "Seeking to make specialized work of archaeologists politically relevant presupposes a degree of social integration of their subject and practices" (Durrans 1989:67). Academics must be prepared to accept leadership from those whose social (rather than academic) experience qualifies them for this responsibility (Durrans, personal communication). That is the reason why teachers and other people directly in touch with the so-called real world have been so important in the discussion of material culture use (Funari 1991b:15-16).



Paulista Museum: material identity and elite designs
The Museu Paulista da Universidade de Sao Paulo (known as Museu do Ipiranga) was made up of private collections offered to the São Paulo State Government August 28th, l892. The Museu do Estado (State Museum) changed name to Paulista Museum and received a huge independence memorial building as its seat. At September the seventh, 1895, commemorating the 63rd anniversary of the proclamation of Independence at the neighborhoods of its seat, at the Ipiranga Brooklet, it was officially inaugurated. The main building was designed by the Italian Thomaso Gaudenzio Bezzi in Italian Renaissance style. The Historical section is composed of more than six thousand artifacts (pictures, furniture, coaches, clothing, religious objects, stone-ware and so forth). From its inception, the Paulista Museum was planned as a huge São Paulo State elite eulogy and as a material discourse on the state`s pretensions of domination of the country as a whole. The birth of the independent Brazilian Nation is located at São Paulo (Ipiranga) and as a consequence, all previous and later developments are read through this specific standpoint. The colonial period in Brazil is interpreted as a brave adventure of Paulista founding fathers discovering the backlands (sertão), settling throughout the Portuguese colony and conquering the huge areas beyond Portuguese lawful colony: Brazil was not a Portuguese colony but rather a huge country conquered by Bandeirantes, as the people from São Paulo was known. This conquest was carried out not only through the fight against Indians in the West but also against Spaniards (towards the South and West) and against rebelling blacks in the North (Moura 1981). There was no other unifying principle in the colony: without Bandeirantes there would not be any Brazil. Portuguese settlements could have developed as in Spanish America as a series of independent regional countries. If there is any Brazilian identity, opposing so clearly this country to the Spanish-speaking Latin America, it is the result of a Bandeirante project.

This is the colonial Brazil as interpreted by Paulista elite and which became the standard historical standpoint from the late 19th century thanks to the economic development of São Paulo State which lead to its political hegemony. Paulista Museum as a building was planned as a direct challenge to Rio de Janeiro`s ambition to continue to dominate the political life of the country after the proclamation of the Republic in 1889. It was the São Paulo State material reaction to the large number of buildings the capital city of Rio de Janeiro had and which were at the heart of the Imperial ideology. It is not difficult to understand that the Paulista Museum was a direct challenge to the National Museum at Rio de Janeiro, transferred to the Quinta da Boa Vista, the former nice São Cristóvão Palace official Imperial family Mansion (1892). Colonial Brazil, as a Bandeirante creation, was a backlands conquest and it not surprising to note that the political alliance between São Paulo and Minas Gerais States, the so-called "white coffee" alliance between coffee producing São Paulo and milk producing Minas Gerais, was a direct political and ideological challenge to the former coastal Rio de Janeiro hegemony of the country. The political alliance of São Paulo and Minas Gerais up to 1930 was based on an ideological Bandeirantes bias: mineiros or people from Minas Gerais were originally Paulista settlers at the mining areas at the backlands. This was the backbone of the country, this huge central area of the country (São Paulo-Minas Gerais), which since the early colonial period served also as the main defender of the national identity and unity against foreigners (Spaniards), against Indian or Black rebels in the North or in the South and against separatist movements anywhere in the country. Affonso de Escragnolle Taunay, director of the Paulista Museum from 1917, preparing the 1922 independence centenary, supplied the material basis for the São Paulo political slogan: non ducor, duco, Bandeirante destiny was to rule, not to be ruled (Mota 1990:22).

Taunay tried to set up a full collection of artifacts on Bandeirante activities. Two pictures are particularly charming: São Vicente founding and The Monsoon departure. São Vicente was the first town founded in Brazil (at São Paulo) at 1532 and the real settlement inception of the country could not be elsewhere: the first Brazilian town was a Bandeirante achievement. The oil painting by Benedito Calixto shows the founding of the village at the moment when settlement transforms the whole landscape, as the Portuguese became Bandeirante and the Indians became ordinary servants of Bandeirantes. Ideologically, Indians are represented converting to Catholicism thanks to a priest and the Bandeirante destiny as a backlands settler is shown in the opposition between the sea and ships in the background and the core of dignitaries at the centre of the picture looking at the continent as if figuring out the way to conquer it. The "Monsoon departure" picture by Almeida Júnior deals with another symbolic bandeirante activity: the departure of settlers from Araritaguaba harbor (nowadays Porto Feliz) in the Tietê river in direction of the Cuib mines. These expeditions were called "monsoons" in analogy with the Indian monsoons and the departure as represented in the painting shows the brave Bandeirantes being blessed by a catholic priest and served by ordinary subordinates; particularly a black slave is shown carrying a trunk. Once again, the elite Bandeirante is represented as a conqueror while the ordinary people are represented as kind servants.

The famous painting by Pedro Américo at the main room (salão nobre), "Independence or Death", was painted in Europe in 1888. Following a scheme by Meissonier in his "Friedland battle" (1807), Peter is shown as the Independence proclaimer followed by his party. As in Almeida Júnior`s picture, the river, this time the Ipiranga booklet, is a Bandeirante reference, and the ordinary servants are both the passer-byes at the left of the picture and all the observers of the painting, all of us, servants to this important elite move: independence from above, independence in São Paulo and under the aegis of Bandeirantes. All the three pictures, as the other artifacts in the Museum, reflect clearly São Paulo elite ideology. Bandeirante elite "were relatively impenetrable to women, non whites, and immigrants and were narrowly recruited among a small pool highly educated men who, more often than not, were property owners" (Love & Barickman 1986:764).

Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz (1992) has published recently a paper on the creation of the Bandeirante mythology and the spreading of their identifications as "our lares". It is interesting though that the huge Bandeirante material world, represented not only by the Paulista Museum but also by hundreds of large and small buildings, statues and other material items, is still by and large unexplored. The critical analysis of the material bandeirante presence is necessary if intellectual criticisms are to have social enlightening consequences.

Love and Barickman (1986:765) noted that "the economic leadership, phasing into dominance, that São Paulo established in the period (1889-1930) still persists today". Ideologically, the Paulista Museum continued to play a special role in maintaining this Bandeirante mythology. That is the reason why this Museum should be the first to be challenged. The control of this Museum was carried out through a political intervention in its management: directors have been politically indicated and they have established a whole administrative network to maintain this "civic cathedral". It is interesting to note that fascist ideology and policies, always concerned with the cult of the elites (Visser 1992), were imported to São Paulo and while in Italy the elite hegemony was assimilated to the ancient Roman military dictatorship, in Brazil the Bandeirante men were interpreted as "our Roman soldiers". During military rule (1964-1985), Paulista Museum continued to play this ideological role unchallenged. Recently, despite the emergence of counter-discourses and freedom in the country, Paulista Museum continued to be managed by people appointed thanks to political criteria. Its main task continues to be to protect elite tradition. Although the 1990 catalogue commemorating its centenary includes statements asking for a less partial and conservative reading of the past, with the inclusion of counter-discursive displays (notably Mota 1990:22), its rooms, artifacts and displays continue as before. After all, "the allegory set up by this civic cathedral is still effective" (Meneses 1990:21): indeed, it is effective in masking relations, in glorifying elite ideology and in maintaining people in power (including Museum management).

Popular demand could challenge this manipulation only if the management were in any way dependent on the public. This is not the case, though, as a patronal system precludes any kind of accountability. Marketing is thus probably not an option, as there is no need of profits and visitors approval for managers to continue in power. The challenge must thus be the result of social awareness movements and of larger changes in the social life. Brian Durrans (personal communication) stresses the importance of the fact that "millions of people vote with their feet" but unfortunately that is not the case of Brazil for two main reasons: few people go to Museums (if we compare the relative figures with those of developed countries) and managers do not depend on the public to continue as officials. Again, it is only through social changes, empowering ordinary people, transforming some 80% of the population and enabling them to become citizens and consumers, that it will be possible to democratize museum displays.



Conclusion: “why it is not just paranoia” (Cary 1992:25)
People challenging current ideas as presented by authorities and ruling elites are usually attacked by those in power as "paranoiac". That is, the exclusion of Blacks, Indians and ordinary people of a national identity scheme is to be considered as a natural, given fact (physei): if not, elite ideology will try to destroy the challenge, sometimes literally, as the Paulo Duarte example shows beyond dispute, sometimes trying to isolate the critical and creative (Williams 1965:19) approach as "radical", "unscientific" or "autobiographical". Terry Eagleton (1992) and Pierre Bourdieu (1992) reminded us recently that within academia autobiography is inevitable and always meaningful. It is easy to understand that first-generation intellectuals try to unmask the exclusion mechanisms which enable the academic elite to rule. The same applies to intellectuals in power, that is, intellectuals forging a national identity through political power. In Brazil, Ministers, Secretaries, Museum Directors and other bureaucratic intellectuals continue to think that the country is made up of twenty million citizens and one hundred and thirty million inhabitants (non citizens). This radical exclusion of ordinary people of official identity concerns explains why Paulista Museum continues as excluding and elite oriented as a century ago, and explains why Brazilian identity, as forged by the elite to the ignorant mob, continues to be a Bandeirante one. Brazilian identity is still an elite Bandeirante project. The task of challenging this one-sided identity is just beginning.