The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (W W Norton & Company; 1998)

THE SOUTH AMERICAN WAY^329

The Portuguese-Brazilian Way

Gilberto Freyre, in his classic study of Brazilian civilization, The
Masters and the Slaves, distinguishes between Spanish and
Portuguese policies of colonial settlement. Where the Spanish
introduced national as well as religious restrictions, the Portuguese
cared only for religion. The immigrant could come from anywhere,
so long as he was Roman Catholic. In certain periods, a friar was sent
abroad every vessel entering a Brazilian port to examine and verify
the conscience and faith of the new arrivals.
Nothing else mattered, because this was the seal of common
identity. "Whereas the Anglo-Saxon regards an individual as being of
his race only when the latter is of the same physical type as himself,
the Portuguese forgets race and regards as his equal the one who
professes the same religion." (Such are the myths of national pride,
as the very title of Freyre's book testifies.) Freyre compares the
"suavity" of these controls favorably with the brusqueness of today's
health inspectors and police functionaries (as though six of one, half
a dozen of the other), and sums up:

The thing that was feared so far as the Catholic immigrant was concerned

was the political enemy who might be capable of shattering or weakening

that solidarity which in Portugal had evolved in unison with the Catholic re­

ligion. This solidarity was splendidly maintained throughout the whole of

our colonial period, serving to unite us against the French Calvinists, the Re­

formed Dutch, the English Protestants. To such an extent that it would, in

truth, be difficult to separate the Brazilian from the Catholic: Catholicism

was in reality the cement of our unity.^32

ccMuero con Mi Patria!"—

I Die with My Country! *

In the annals of development-from-above, of industrialization by fiat,
no case is more poignant and quixotic than that of Paraguay, fastness

• Last words of Francisco Solano Lopez, marshal-president of the republic of
  Paraguay, killed in the final action of the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864-70.