South America

Portugal and Africa

Since Brazil is a child of Portugal and Africa its relations with both parents have interest. The situation has recently been complicated by the nationalist revolts in Angola and the other Portuguese territories in Africa. Brazil cannot easily have it both ways, much as it would like to. If it associates itself too closely to Portugal it sacrifices the sympathy of renascent nationalist Africa with its new profound influence on world affairs—also vice versa. To be pro-African is to be anti-Portuguese. On the whole links between Brazil and Portugal have not been strong in recent years; few Brazilians have much feeling for Portugal nowadays except in a vestigial sentimental way. They have outgrown it. They are the dog, Portugal is the tail. Not a single city in Brazil has ever been named for Lisbon. On the other hand nobody wants to affront the Portuguese needlessly. The Salazar government in Lisbon, on its side, wants the best possible relations with Brazil, and tries to encourage Brazilian support for its African policy. Lisbon makes yearning pronouncements about a future "Lusitanian confederacy," consisting of Portugal, Brazil, Angola, and the other Portuguese realms in Africa like Mozambique: this bloc would number more than a hundred million people, be "a world power in the South Atlantic," and would dramatically reinforce the Portuguese position in Africa where it has been so hard-pressed.

Portugal some years ago offered Brazil a treaty of friendship and consultation which the Brazilians refused because it excluded Africa. Now the Salazar government has made Brazil a new offer of free ports in mainland Portugal and other considerations as a bait for joining a confederation, but with no result so far.

Brazil has, of course, been through the years a substantial contributor to Portugal—to Angola as well. Brazilians helped wrest both Angola and their own northeast from Dutch invaders, and, a little-known fact, the governors of Angola were Brazilian, not Portuguese, for a period in the seventeenth century. Not only did Africans come to Brazil: Brazilians went to Africa. But as of today it should be kept in mind that plenty of Brazilians do not like to be reminded of their African heritage or be committed by it.