Day of Fico: 200 years ago, Brazil disobeyed Portugal | World
“If it’s for the good of all and the general happiness of the nation, I’m ready! Tell the people I’m staying.” Contrary to popular imagination, this phrase was most likely not said by the then Prince Regent Pedro 1º (1798-1834) in the episode known as Dia do Fico. According to historians, this is another layer of the constructions of the Brazilian idea, in the wake of the subsequent independence of Brazil.
But it is undeniable that that day, which took place exactly 200 years ago, on January 9, 1822, in the Chamber of Rio, was the materialization of the arm-wrestling match between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Brazilian colony. And therein lies its historical importance.
“[Na época, o ato de permanecer no Brasil] was seen as cunning, audacious and, above all, risky. It was a question of opposition to the determinations of the power of representation of the Courts of Lisbon, “explains historian Paulo Henrique Martinez, from the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp).
“In Portugal, the gesture was requested by the defenders of a Constitution as an act of arrogance and rebellion, but it was seen with encouragement by the Royal House. Here in Brazil, it was celebrated as a democratic decision and a sober expression of the people’s will, in defense Brazilian interest rate. ”
According to historian Marcelo Cheche Galves, from the State University of Maranhão (Uema), Fico is part of “a set of animosities within the Portuguese world”, at a time when the court sought to “exhaust the power of Rio de Janeiro as a center of authority “- after the royal family decided to return to the Old World in 1821.
“Pedro stayed on as regent and, from then on, he started to deal with decisions of the Courts, such as closing institutions that operated in Rio de Janeiro”, explains Galves. “That’s the point, there’s nothing independent yet.”
The trigger was a royal decree issued in October, which, among other issues, required the Prince Regent’s immediate return to Portugal – nominating a junta to govern Brazil.
Imaginary of national construction
According to Galves, a narrative that placed the episode as an antecedent to the process of political emancipation in Brazil was constructed “throughout the 19th century and part of the 20th century” in an intentional effort to “invent the Brazilian nation”. “That’s why Fico Day became something heroic, the day Brazil began to get rid of Portugal”, he says.
“If it was independence, it was in the sense of more autonomy. Not in the sense of total separation. [de Portugal]”, contextualizes the professor at UEMA.
Martinez agrees: we cannot consider Fico Day a kind of kick for Independence, “at the risk of uncritically repeating the political and ideological construction of the historiography of national political unity, with the Empire and the Casa de Bragança as its promoters and guarantors” .
It is in this sense of building the national state that a famous phrase, probably invented, was registered. “The establishment of the phrase and Fico’s Day as inaugural milestones of the Independence process was undeniably a product of the imagination in the construction of the memory of that ‘Brazilian’ group, in line with the royalists loyal to Dom Pedro 1º and the dynastic continuity of the Braganças in Brazil , under Dom Pedro 1º, “points out the professor from Unesp.
He argues that, since, soon after, it was this same political articulation that promoted the independence and organization of the Empire, 19th century historiography undertook to order “the facts in a narrative of the birth of the national state, later enshrined as a linear, coherent, natural and unavoidable process”.
“It was a later construction of facts that took place under an economic, political and social baton in another political context, that of the consolidation of the Empire of Brazil. The alliance would be contested and, soon, reinvigorated, with new and more characters, to ensure the territorial integrity and continuity of regional and national groups in central power and the preservation of the monarchy until 1889 “, says Martinez.
“That moment [há 200 anos], the idea of nation was not the nationalist idea of the end of the 19th century, but of a set of springs from the same place, people who share the same interests. For them, this Brazilian nation was still thought of within the scope of the United Kingdom [de Portugal]. It did not claim independence, of total separation”, explains Galves.
Affront in Portugal, relief in Brazil
If for the Lisbon Courts the act was an affront, “for a Brazilian elite, for the most part, it was a relief”, comments researcher Paulo Rezzutti, author of, among other books, D. Pedro – the História Não Told. “That’s because it meant, at the same time, the maintenance of the autonomy of Brazil and of the heir to the crown.”
The prince was very well supported in this fight, of course. As Martinez explains, there was a “political, economic and military articulation with the big businessmen and who were part of the production and supply network of foodstuffs for the cutting of Rio de Janeiro”.
This friction, however, would lead to other facts, throughout that year of 1822. Which would only make the differences between the governments of the kingdom and the colony more evident.
“It was a moment of political rupture between Portugal and Brazil. Brazil failed to comply with the order of the prince’s return with his consent and, from then on, decided to self-govern, including calling its own constituent assembly in parallel with Portugal’s. The Portuguese reaction to this insubordination was felt immediately, “comments Rezzutti.
He cites an episode of April 11 of the same year to corroborate this narrative. It is about the uprising of the Auxiliary Division, a Portuguese Army corps in Rio. “The army revolted and wanted to embark by force from the prince and family to Portugal. The Portuguese had weapons, but the powder deposits were in the hands of the Brazilians. Dom Pedro stood with the Brazilians against the Portuguese army, but there was no battle in the end,” he says. The division commander withdrew, then sailed back to Portugal.
And a sentence at all? True, as Rezzutti recalls, is the one recorded in the Rio Chamber book, where the act took place: “Convinced that the presence of my person in Brazil is of interest to the whole Portuguese nation, and known that the will of some provinces so require, I will delay my departure until the Courts and my Augustus Father and Lord decide on this matter, with perfect knowledge of the circumstances.”