Brazil’s view of Portugal

Masters, slaves and a sovereign debt crisis: speculation this week over whether Brazil would buy Portugal’s bonds has proved to be an unusual case study in postcolonial theory.

During a visit to Portugal on Tuesday, Dilma said it was possible Brazil could help out the struggling European country. But on Thursday, Finance Minister Guido Mantega played down those expectations. When asked if Brazil would buy Portuguese debt, he simply responded: “I don’t think so”.

Meanwhile, international commentators have delighted in the irony of the situation, reminding their audience that Portugal is Brazil’s former colonial master, and prophesising about the inversion of a grand world order.

The response from the Brazilians, however, has been much more reticent. Aside from the quotation of lofty comments by politicians about a “shared economic history”, there has been little mention of colonialism and certainly no gloating.

There could be some simple reasons for this:

Firstly, Brazilians are well aware that their country used to be ruled by Portugal and, unlike foreign journalists, have no need to dole out history lessons during every sub clause.

Secondly, the comments by Mr Mantega were made on the run between meetings, which instantly makes local journalists reluctant to draw any conclusions. The finance minister has developed a penchant of late for these impromptu press conferences, during which he has sometimes given contrary statements on future policy decisions or just simply basked in the media spotlight.

However, there are also some possible fundamental explanations for the difference in the approach used by the Brazilian and the international press:

The definition of colonialism and slavery often becomes a little murky when you wade into the realities of Brazilian life. Slavery was officially abolished more than a century ago, but alleged cases of slave labour still emerge on a regular basis. Only this week, the Amazonian state of Pará announced it was suing the country’s biggest bank for lending money to farmers who have trapped workers in camps and subjected them to terrible conditions.

In many senses, Brazil is now both a practising coloniser as well as a colonised.

Postcolonial theorists might go even further. They would say that the tendency to label Brazil as either a “colony” or a “former colony” is in itself an imperialist mindset as it classes the country only in terms of the power structure invented by the coloniser. Colonialism will therefore always fascinate “gringos” more than it interests the Brazilians themselves.

In fact, ask someone in São Paulo about Portugal, and the economist will probably grumble about the euro zone crisis while the man on the street will just speak fondly of his grandmother or the bottle of port he has back at home.