Memórias imigrantistas: Abrantes, Pérez Rosales e seus escritos – Brasil e Chile – século XIX

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes comparatively the works Memoria sobre os meios de promover a colonisação (1846) e Memoria sobre emigracion, inmigracion i colonizacion (1854) written respectively by the Brazilian politician Visconde de Abrantes and the Chilean politician Vicente Pérez Rosales. The works were written in a close period: the first one, in the year of 1846, and the second one, in the year of 1854. Both focus on immigration and colonization and they are inserted in a context where the great immigrations started to occur. In the middle of the XIX century, Brazil and Chile centered their economic and social policies on the colonization of vacant land for foreign immigrants. However, this period is marked by uncertainties. Brazil and Chile’s images were depreciated in Europe. There were uncertainties by Europeans regarding the weather, laws, employment, citizenship, and the social insertion of immigrants. Based on that, I analyze, initially, the context in which Abrantes and Pérez Rosales were inserted. I establish a dialogue with historiography in order to localize temporally the characters, aiming to understand the political, social, and economic questions that were central to the period. Supporting the considerations on different theoretical and methodological research fields, I reflect about the trajectories of Abrantes and Pérez Rosales understanding that the history of memórias is also the history of their authors. From this working stage on, I localize the context in which memórias was produced. Why did they write their memórias? What can these characters reveal about the immigration and colonization projects occurred in Brazil and Chile in the second half of the eight hundreds? Afterwards, I interpret their ideas based on the initial objectives, demonstrating how they wrote and structured their arguments on immigration and colonization. Based on that, I analyze how the works are aligned to the immigrant discourses of that time and I interpret the radicalized notions that are part of the text. Furthermore, I present the proposals of the authors and I elucidate how they appropriate the ideas of immigration and colonization current in the United States at the time. The research on memórias of Abrantes and Pérez Rosales enabled the comprehension of the cultural background of the writers, their relation with politics, the circulation of ideas worldwide and their perceptions of immigration and colonization in Brazil and Chile.