Stringing Together a Nation: Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon and the Construction of a Modern Brazil, 1906–1930 (review)

In his second monograph, Todd Diacon has produced an entertaining and carefully argued treatment of one of the central figures of Brazil's nationalist pantheon. Running through the book is an appreciation of the power that symbolic characters like Marshall Rondon can wield in nation building even when in the most immediate, pragmatic sense they do achieve their ostensible goals. Rondon, after all, became famous in Brazil—and remains so today—although his dogged efforts did not lead to greatly expanded communication between coastal cities and the northwestern interior, much less spur the rapid development of the latter region. In fact, as Diacon notes, the telegraph built under Rondon's command never carried many messages and was technologically out of date before it was even completed. Diacon's adept treatment of the nationalist canonization of Rondon, in spite of the limited successes of his most celebrated project, opens up some of the major issues in the twentieth-century consolidation of the Brazilian nation.

This is not to say that Diacon neglects the details of Rondon's life or the actions of the Commission he headed. If Diacon's interests were strictly biographical, the reader might want more in-depth examination of Rondon's early years and the influences that made him the driven, dogmatic leader that he became. His focus, however, is on Rondon's world, on the meanings that Rondon's actions took on as a succession of Brazilian regimes sought to consolidate state control over more of the country's resources and populace. Even with this broader vision, Diacon admirably grounds the production of those meanings in the concrete conditions in which Rondon, his men, his allies, and his opponents lived and worked. Indeed, although Diacon shoots down some of the more extravagant claims made in mythic portrayals of Rondon, he conveys a clear appreciation of the bold and, it must be said, heroic efforts of Rondon's men in their exploration of a wide swath of the interior of the country and their establishment of a telegraph line from the coast to some of the most remote regions of Brazil. In lively but never overblown prose, Diacon describes the initial expeditions that Rondon oversaw, including the one that included former U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit, as well as later maintenance of the "lonely line." As he does so, he lays out the obstacles that Rondon faced, from disease and injury to persistent flight by his men. He also tells the story from the "bottom up," devoting a chapter to the harsh conditions that the Marshall's subordinates—most of them forced into service—confronted even before they made their way into the interior. Necessarily grim at times—and unromantic about both leader and the led—Diacon provides us with a vivid account of the Rondon Commission.

Some of the most novel elements of this book come with Diacon's depiction of the Positivism that drove Rondon and the propagandistic initiatives—many of them of Rondon's own doing—by which his Commission gained renown as a nationalistic triumph. Like many of his fellow Positivists, Rondon comes across as something of a flat character here. Diacon tells us of his determination, his willingness to resort to violence to achieve his goals, his special affection for his dogs and other animals; still, Rondon displays a remarkable ideological uniformity across his life, well past the time when Positivism had held sway among many political figures in Brazil. This may tell us something about the types of people drawn to rigid forms of Comte's "scientific" thought, or, conversely, it might hint at the effects of prolonged dogmatism on individual personality. Whatever the case may be, Diacon's demonstration of the Comtean foundation of Rondon's attitudes toward national development, the role of the military, and the state...