Roads to Democracy: Miscegenation, US Liberalism, and Race Relations in Brazil

Abstract

This report reflects studies I carried out at the Rockefeller Archive Center in my interest to analyze Ford Foundation records related to the formation of the Black movement in Brazil from the time of the country's transition to liberal democracy in the 1980s. My broader research framework comprises the theory of democracy in the context of the different meanings with which it has been framed in Brazilian history. On the global stage, Brazil was once regarded as a successful example of a democratic race relations country. In the 1950s, it was seen as a country where people of any color or origin could make a living without mounting hatred, discrimination, segregation, or other race-based conflict. Even an authentic, national concept of democracy was taken up in the country's international relations promoting a positive image abroad. However, over the last decades, US foundation-supported social scientists, social movements, and state actors have criticized this democratic concept, defending liberal democracy instead. In the 1990s, growing and increasingly stronger over the last years, a modernization-centered, international antiracism agenda superseded the national model, setting stage for affirmative action aimed at integrating minorities into Brazilian society. In this regard, the questions I wish to look at are: What have these actors stood for? Why has liberal democracy been deemed better than social and ethnic democracy? And how have they branded Brazil's potential for polyarchy before international stakeholders