Caio Barbiere, “UnB: arquitetos contestam monumentos ligados à violência. Lista tem até JK,” Metrópoles, June 10, 2020, ➝.
There are many cases that could be mentioned. For example, various episodes of extreme-right hackers invading digital environments of public university classes have been reported in Brazil. Usually they aim at disturbing classes by flooding the digital environment with hate speech messages accusing teachers of left-wing indoctrination, ➝. President Jair Bolsonaro’s intelligence service produced a secret dossier about hundreds of public servants identified as members of “anti-fascist movements,” including renowned public university professors like Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro of the University of São Paulo, who holds an international reputation as a human rights defender and presided the Brazilian National Truth Commission, ➝. There have been cases of public university teachers that had to leave the country because of death threats, such as feminist anthropologist professor Débora Diniz of the University of Brasília, internationally known for her research and activism on women’s reproductive rights, ➝.
Paulo Tavares, “A capital colonial,” Zum, July 28, 2020, ➝.
Brasília no. 5, May 1957, ➝.
“March to the West” was the official name of the state program of frontier expansionism implemented by the dictatorial regime of Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945).
Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte (On the concept of history),” 1940. Published in Walter Benjamin zum Gedächtnis, eds. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (Los Angeles: Institute for Social Research, 1942).
A significant example of the cross-airplane metaphor-metamorphosis—that is, of the colonialism-modernism symbolic link—is articulated by art critic Mario Pedrosa in this way: “Lúcio Costa’s wisdom consisted in accepting the incongruity inherent in the program, and, avoiding any mid-way or eclectic solution, resolutely deciding on the inexorable side, given the immediate objective conditions: the full recognition that the only possible solution was still at the basis of the colonial experience, that is, a taking over of Cabraline fashion, carving on earth the sign of the cross, or, in a more ‘modern’ and optimistic evocation, making the shape of an airplane to land sweetly on its surface.” Mario Pedrosa, “Reflexões em torno da nova capital (Reflections on the new capital),” Revista Brasil: Arquitetura Contemporânea no. 10, 1957.
Ibid.
The “pacification” and “integration” of indigenous population is a policy whose origins are grounded in colonialism, particularly in the colonial practices of religious orders such as the Jesuits. Such practices developed more fully as state policies under the liberal paradigms of nineteenth-century discourses of civilization, and continued to be employed until the late twentieth-century by state agencies. See: João Pacheco de Oliveira, O nascimento do Brasil e outros ensaios: “pacificação,” regime tutelar e formação de alteridades (Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa. 2016). “Integration” has a similar genealogy, and was particularly instrumental during the military dictatorship (1964–1984). Bolsonaro’s government is currently resorting to the same ideologies of “integration” elaborated by the military.
Christopher J. Tavener, “Introduction to the Karajá and the Brazilian Frontier,” in Peoples and Cultures of Native South America, ed. Daniel R. Gross ((Garden City: Natural History Press for The American Museum of Natural History, 1973).
“Violações de direitos humanos dos povos indígenas,” Volume 2, Text 5, in Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade (Brasília: Comissão Nacional da Verdade, 2014), ➝.
Andrew McClellan, “The Life and Death of a Royal Monument: Bouchardon's Louis XV,” Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 2 (2000): 3–27.
Noticiário Nacional de 1975, “Derrube estátua de Mouzinho de Albuquerque,” aired May 21, 1975, on RTP 1, ➝.
Adriana Farias, “Filho de Brecheret vê ligação entre pichação e último debate eleitoral,” Veja São Paulo, June 1, 2017, ➝.
Marcos Tupã, “Monumento à resistência do povo guarani,” Ybirupa Comissão Guarani, October 2013.
Brasília’s American mirror is, in many different ways, Chicago: both are midwest frontier modern-colonial cities constructed upon the dispossession of indigenous lands and class-racial segregation whose identity is defined by modernist architecture—modernist architecture being instrumentalized as an ideological veil to legitimate and silence the colonial-racial structures upon which modernism and modernity were built.
Contemporary activisms that challenge monuments and memorials are associated with the broad agenda of historical reparations. They should be contextualized in relation to other debates that seek to problematize the role of colonial-racism in the field of arts, architecture and heritage, as for example in the recent discussions on the restitution of objects that were systematically looted from Africa and the Americas to be exposed in European museums.
Conceição Freitas, “Brasília, uma cidade para brancos construída pelos pretos,” Metrópoles, October 27, 2019, ➝.
Débora Brito, “Quilombo a 50 km de Brasília luta para manter território e identidade,” Agência Brasil, June 16, 2018, ➝.
Simone Kafruni, “MPF apura desmatamento do território quilombola Kalunga em Cavalcante,” Correio Braziliense, June 12, 2020, ➝.
Caroline Oliveira, “Povo Guarani impede ação de construtora que quer fazer 5 prédios no Pico do Jaraguá,” Brasil de Fato, February 6, 2020, ➝.