published on 21.08.2022 06:00

(credit: Waldo Virgo)

Who knows where the Rua D. Pedro I in Rio de Janeiro, the city that welcomed the young prince in exile in 1808, wins the pastel de Belen and made him the first emperor of Brazil on the eve of his 24th birthday. September 7, 1822. Pedro de Alcantara Francisco António João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascual Cipriano Seraphim de Braganza i Bourbon was the heir to the Portuguese royal house, the son of King João VI, regent of Portugal, and a Spanish princess. Carlota Joaquina, who became King and Queen of Portugal in 1816 after the death of Queen Mary I.

His political role in the rise of Brazil as a nation cannot be ignored during the celebrations of the bicentenary of independence. To this end, the heart of D. Pedro I will arrive in Brazil tomorrow and will be displayed at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia at the climax of the official celebration of the bicentenary of independence.

The big date will also serve to host major demonstrations in support of President Jair Bolsonaro and his re-election project; the national unity and social cohesion of our country is out of the question. This form of memory deserves critical reflection because it symbolizes the theft of national identity and our future by President Jair Bolsonaro for electoral and regressive purposes.

Almost a ready-made joke, the painfulness of programming reinforces the idea that we live in a time of “necropolitics”. Negotiations to lease the heart lasted about four months, involving the Portuguese government, the Chamber of Porto and representatives of Irmandade da Lapa, the religious organization that guards the relic. Stored in a glass pot, immersed in a golden substance, the heart of D. Pedro will be received at the Planalto Palace with honors of the head of state, cannon volleys and accompanied by the Dragons of Independence; after that, it will be put on public display in the Itamaraty Palace.

Until the beginning of 1821, D. Juan VI kept D. Pedro from politics. After the liberal revolution in Porto, he was forced to return to Lisbon and left him as Prince Regent of Brazil. This action caused him to assume political leadership, becoming the leader of the Independence in opposition to the Portuguese courts, which demanded his return to the country. On January 9, 1822, D. Pedro announced his stay in Brazil, and this event became known as Dia do Fico.

Since then, the process of rupture has accelerated, and the hostility between Brazil and Portugal has intensified. On September 7, 1822, Don Pedro was on a trip to São Paulo, and on his way from Santos to São Paulo, near the Ipiranga stream, he received a letter signed by his wife and José Bonifacio, his personal adviser, with new orders sent by Portugal . D. Pedro took advantage of the situation to declare independence. December 1, 1822 D. Pedro was crowned emperor.

Slavery

Unlike all other countries in the Americas that became republican after independence—with the exception of Mexico, which had three very short empires—Brazil chose a monarchy that bequeathed to us a historical state and our territorial integrity, although the nation was still a project under construction. . The meaning of the existence of our monarchy was more connected with the preservation of slavery and the project of reunification of the Portuguese colonial empire, the personification of which was to be D. Pedro I himself.

His authoritarianism and intransigence led to a series of crises that marked the First Reign. D. Pedro closed the Constituent Assembly of 1823, tore up the so-called cassava constitution, and gave us the liberal constitution of 1924, in which the right to private property was introduced for the express purpose of protecting slavery.

The dissatisfaction was enormous. In the northeast, this gave rise to a separatist rebellion, the Confederation of Ecuador. D. Pedro I decided to declare war on the United Provinces because of the ongoing rebellion in Cisplatina. The war affected the Brazilian economy and led to the independence of Uruguay. The defeat crippled the popularity of D. Pedro, who lost support from the military and the poor. The murder of the hardline Italian journalist Libero Badaro in São Paulo in November 1930 made the situation unacceptable.

D. Pedro I was accused of defending the murderers of a journalist, and in March 1831 a confrontation broke out on the streets of Rio de Janeiro between his supporters and critics. Noite das Garrafadas forced him to step down on April 7, 1831. so that his son, Pedro de Alcantara, could take over when he turned 18.

In 1831, D. Pedro I moved to Portugal in order to participate in the civil war in Portugal and protect the right of his daughter, D. Maria II, to the throne of the country. He fought against his brother D. Miguel for the throne and won this conflict. Maria was restored to the throne of Portugal in 1834, and D. Miguel fled into exile. During the war, D. Pedro I fell ill with tuberculosis, the disease worsened and led to his death on September 24, 1834.

However, in Brazil, the turbulent period of regency that followed the abdication of D. Pedro I and up to the coup of the majority of D. Pedro II in 1940 was of fundamental importance for the consolidation of the Union and for the seeds of our federalism to be fixed in the Brazilian Parliament and in it, on the other hand , the culture of reconciliation of our elites. D. Pedro never regained his popularity.