Native and National in Brazil: Indigeneity after Independence

2. On Cannibals and Christians: The Violent Displacements of Nation Building

63 2 ON CANNIBALS AND CHRISTIANS The Violent Displacements of Nation Building When Il guarany opened on 19 March 1870 at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, the Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes could hardly have imagined that he was destined to become a national icon, or that the overture to his third European opera—a tale of Indians as cannibals and Christians —would one day be hailed as Brazil’s second national anthem.1 The Italian-written libretto had been based on José de Alencar’s successful novel, O guarany (1859), and though presented in simplified form, the tale remained largely the same:2 In 1560, a clever Guarani warrior named Peri foils a Spanish conspiracy to kill the Portuguese fidalgo,3 Antônio de Mariz, and in so doing, befriends the nobleman’s chaste and beautiful daughter, Cecília. When “Ceci” is captured by Aimoré cannibals seeking retaliation for the death of one of their women, Peri saves her just in the nick of time. A happy ending seems assured until the man-eaters, together with the plotting Spaniards, lay siege to Dom Antônio’s castle. Facing this gruesome fate, Dom Antônio entrusts his daughter to Peri’s care on the condition that the Indian renounce idolatry, accept a Christian baptism, and deliver the young woman safely to Rio de Janeiro. As the Aimoré move in, Peri escapes with Ceci through an open window while ignoring her desperate pleas to die alongside her father. The old Don Antônio, however, will not be an easy victim. Before falling to his enemies, he detonates the castle and everyone in it while the young couple observes his Pyrrhic victory from a hilltop in the distance. Thus freed from the double bind of European patriarchy and native savagery, they depart into Frontispiece of the copy of Il guarany given to Dom Pedro II by Antônio Carlos Gomes, 1870. Courtesy of the Acervo da Fundação Biblioteca Nacional—Brasil. On Cannibals and Christians / 65 the wilderness, united by love and faith in God to found the harmonious, mixed-race Brazil of national and nationalist myth.4 The celebration of Gomes’s Indianist nationalism would culminate seven decades later on the centenary of his birth, hailed in 1936 by National Institute of Music director Guilherme Fontainha as the “grandest event of all time in the world of Brazilian music” and thus deserving of its own national holiday.5 Planned months in advance, the commemoration inspired schoolroom productions, a special meeting of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, an international conference sponsored by the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro,6 and a monument to honor the composer in his hometown of Campinas. Attendants at a much-touted commemorative concert held in the capital included not only ministers of state, the federal diplomatic corps, high-ranking officials from the armed services, “select circles” of socialites and artists, and key representatives of the national press corps, but also President Getúlio Vargas and primeira dama Darcy Sarmanho Vargas.7 The New York Times reported the next day that similar events had been staged in France and Germany, and that favorite sections of Il guarany had been transmitted live from Milan to Carlos Gomes’s adoring compatriots on the other side of the Atlantic. As one enthusiastic reporter observed from Rio de Janeiro, “all of Brazil, in a manifestation of spiritual solidarity and civil exaltation to the memory of her most preeminent figures, pulsated and throbbed on that day of glorification.”8 Hence a loyal monarchist who had declined a presidential invitation to pen the anthem of the First Republic became an unlikely hero of Brazilian cultural nationalism on the eve of the Estado Novo.9 Over a lifetime spent between Campinas, Rio de Janeiro, Milan, and (briefly) Belém,10 Carlos Gomes had no contact with the Native peoples of his country, and most of his work had nothing to do with Indians. But it was precisely for their representation, and Il guarany, in particular, that he would be (and continues to be) most remembered and celebrated. The 500-page Revista Brasileira de Música that was dedicated to his work by the National Institute of Music in observance of the centenary offers not a word from or about indigenous peoples but is adorned throughout with “ornamental motifs” of the Guarani and other índios brasileiros whom the organizers judged...