German Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss

33 The Nationalization Campaign and the Rewriting of History: The Case of Blumenau

THIRTY-THREE The Nationalization Campaign and the Rewriting of History The Case of Blumenau
Méri Frotscher Kramer 419 419 During the Estado Novo (“New State,” 1937–45), the Brazilian government practised an authoritarian nationalization policy to forge a greater sense of national unity. The government undertook many measures against different populations in order to homogenize them. This was intensified with Brazil’s entry into World War ii in 1942. Blumenau, located in the state of Santa Catarina, known in Brazil and Germany as the most successful of the German colonies in Brazil, was a focal point of the nationalization campaign and of the repression of Germans and their descendants . These facts influenced not only Blumenau’s political, economical, and cultural life, but also the regional historiography. The change of the historical discourse is the subject of this chapter. Blumenau’s Past The colony of Blumenau,founded in 1850 by Dr.Hermann Blumenau and mainly populated by German-speaking immigrants from middle and eastern Europe, soon became known as the most successful colony in Brazil. When, in 1917, Brazil declared war on Germany, the state intervened for the first time directly in German settlements: the press was nationalized and censored, and German schools were closed.1 Although the situation normalized after World War i, fears of intervention persisted . From 1937, under Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo, the state intervened throughout Brazil in order to integrate the regions, intervention 420 MÉRI FROTSCHER KRAMER becoming severe oppression in the case of Blumenau when Brazil declared war again on Germany in 1942. Even before Vargas’s dictatorship, the government had used nationalization to fight regionalism. With the revolution of 1930, Blumenau suffered greatly as the Republican Party, whose members were from the Itaja í valley and mostly German Brazilians, lost to the Liberal Party, whose core came from the highlands. In 1934, the Liberals increased their presence in Santa Catarina’s state government, reducing the territory of Blumenau to 1,650 square kilometres (just 16 percent of its former size and now consisting only of its old districts of Blumenau-sede and Massaranduba). The prefect of Santa Catarina, Aristiliano Ramos, justified this as rationalization of the administration and as part of the nationalization process. Obviously, these measures were meant to weaken further the old elites who stood for carrying on the legacy of Dr. Blumenau. The municipal elections in 1936 were another sign of political change.The Integralist Party (Aliança Integralista Brasileira—founded in October 1932 and a rightwing movement inspired by European fascism) won in Blumenau and in other municipalities, indicating the rise to power of a new middle class. Vargas’s putsch in 1937 resulted in the strengthening of the executive, centralization of administration, economic intervention, and the founding of an umbrella labour organization controlled by the state. This nationalization policy affected all of Brazil as it also involved propaganda, censorship , and the control of the press. The pressures to nationalize became stronger for Blumenau’s people, who were attracted to Nazi Germany and its ideology; increasingly, German and Nazism became synonymous in Brazil. When Blumenau’s nsdap group was affected by the ban of foreign parties and conflict arose because of this, the demand for Gleichschaltung of the various German associations as a response did not take place because the old and new elites were not interested in power sharing.2 The Vargas government had many commercial relations with Germany, and indeed was quite sympathetic to Hitler’s Germany and to the German Brazilians, and some Brazilian military and civil elites had a strong affinity for Nazism. But the idea that Germans in Brazil could become a parallel power within Brazil was one of their greatest fears.3 Until 1941, the Brazilian government fought Nazism internally,but Vargas preferred a policy that alternated between favouring the United States and Germany. In the end, however, against the background of strong economic interests, Vargas sided increasingly with the United States. Visiting Blumenau in 1940,4 Vargas spoke about Blumenau’s economic importance and the necessity of discipline and diligence to modernize Brazil, indirectly praising the German Brazilian colonists.5 On another occasion he emphasized that his sympathies did not mean that the state would tolerate foreign influences and that his goal was “to create only one Brazilian race with one language and culture.”6 Nationalization was one of the main characteristics of...