In France, disappointed with the course of the newborn republic, while preparing himself to circumnavigate the African continent, he wrote letters to friends, such as Jos\u00e9 Carlos Rodrigues (1844\u20131923), one of the owners of the Jornal do Commercio <\/em>newspaper. In these letters, the first that appear in his book, the two faces of Rebou\u00e7as are brought together, which also alternate in the messages written to another 25 recipients\u2014the engineer, who reveals his ideas on infrastructure, and the intellectual, sharing his opinion on various aspects of politics.<\/p>\n The title, devised by the publishing company Ch\u00e3o, is the beginning of a series of five books compiling the abolitionist\u2019s intimate written notes, and organized by Mattos \u2014 two of them in partnership with Robert Daibert, a fellow student at UFJF.<\/p>\n Mattos’s first contact with Rebou\u00e7as’s letters in exile was 15 years earlier. During research for her doctoral thesis at Fluminense Federal University, she had studied black intellectuals “who somehow reflected on the memory of slavery,” she mentions. Among these, Ant\u00f4nio Rebou\u00e7as (1798\u20131880), advisor of the Empire, and his son Andr\u00e9. During the research, she took pictures of the letters written by Andr\u00e9 and kept them at the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, in Pernambuco. In the years that followed, however, the philosopher did not get much coverage in the media, except for a few articles. But that was only until the publisher proposed to disclose the letters. “My goal shifted into sharing Andr\u00e9’s work with a larger audience.”<\/p>\n According to Ligia Fonseca Ferreira from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities of the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (EFLCH-UNIFESP), Guarulhos campus, this type of work has not yet been developed much by Brazilian scholars. Hence the importance of granting access to Rebou\u00e7as’s full text \u2014 earlier, the major source of his personal writings was a compendium from 1938. Ferreira talks about his own experience with Luiz Gama’s works (1830\u20131882) \u2014 an abolitionism pioneer whose writings were published in Com a palavra, Luiz Gama<\/em> (With the word, Luiz Gama) (Imprensa Oficial do Estado de S\u00e3o Paulo, 2011) and in Li\u00e7\u00f5es de resist\u00eancia<\/em> (Lessons in resistance) (Edi\u00e7\u00f5es Sesc, 2020).<\/p>\n While Gama, a former slave, was always aware of his Africanness, Ferreira believes the period addressed by Mattos is when Rebou\u00e7as realized his condition as a Black person. In fact, Mattos mentions in the introduction that, in the opening letter of the book, Rebou\u00e7as refers to himself for the first time as “the Black man Andr\u00e9.”<\/p>\n Archives of the Joaquim Nabuco\u2009Foundation \/\u2009Brazilian Ministry of Education<\/span>A letter written by Rebou\u00e7as to his friend Rangel da CostaArchives of the Joaquim Nabuco\u2009Foundation \/\u2009Brazilian Ministry of Education<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n In Mattos’s doctoral thesis, the suppression of the intellectual experience of free Black persons during the nineteenth century was a core theme. In her opinion, it is a “basic point for the way racism was institutionalized as not racism.” “Color is mentioned when one speaks about a slave, a suspect. Trafficking involves Black people. Whenever someone mentions a Black person, a “negro” or a “creole,” they have a slave in mind.” Intellectuals, however, had no color, although, as explained by the author, during the nineteenth century, over 70% of the population were Blacks or browns. Even researchers ignored the racial details when talking about men who today have major streets named after them, such as Andr\u00e9 Rebou\u00e7as, or another engineer, Teodoro Sampaio (1855\u20131937).<\/p>\n This whitening, mentions the author, was reinforced by the black and white photographs that lighten the skin of many of these people \u2014 but not that of Rebou\u00e7as himself, whose skin tone cannot be concealed in portraits. According to Mattos, the sharpness of his color enhances the myth of racial democracy. When speaking of Rebou\u00e7as as an important Black man, one of the most noteworthy aspects, she confirms, was his friendship with the emperor, as if his path as an engineer and entrepreneur tailoring commercial relationships with other men of his industry in several countries, “were a result of a grant” by the monarchy.<\/p>\n Angela Alonso, from the Department of Sociology of the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP) and member of the adjunct panel of the FAPESP Scientific Board, also highlights the “nullity of the racial issue” and how much Rebou\u00e7as was used for that purpose, largely the “spurious association” between himself and the monarchy. Pursuant to that connection, “Rebou\u00e7as has not been praised as a Black hero,” she shares.<\/p>\n For the author of Flores, votos e balas<\/em> (Flowers, votes, and bullets) (Companhia das Letras, 2015), in which abolitionism is addressed as a social movement, among the merits of this work by Mattos is that of recovering the core figure for reasons beyond the abolitionist campaign, “its most important facilitator,” but also “for many essential issues for Brazil,” a contemporary action he undertook with his brother, Ant\u00f4nio (1839\u20131874), also an engineer. Alonso highlights the gaps that have still not been filled in the studies about Andr\u00e9 Rebou\u00e7as, such as him having been such a successful entrepreneur.<\/p>\n Mattos states that the Ch\u00e3o series may help to fill this gap. After Cartas da \u00c1frica<\/em>, the next works expected to be published are: O engenheiro abolicionista: <\/em>Di\u00e1rio, 1882-1885<\/em> (The abolitionist engineer: Diary, 1882\u20131885); A aboli\u00e7\u00e3o incompleta: <\/em>Di\u00e1rio, 1882-1885<\/em> (The incomplete abolition: Diary, 1887\u20131888); O amigo do<\/em><\/p>\n imperador: Registro de correspond\u00eancia, 1889-1891<\/em> (The emperor\u2019s friend: Correspondence records, 1889\u20131891); and Cartas de Funchal: Registro de correspond\u00eancia, 1893-1898<\/em> (Funchal\u2019s letters: Correspondence records, 1893\u20131898).<\/p>\n The publication of Rebou\u00e7as’s writings reveals new themes, such as the author’s “Tolstoism,” discussed in Mattos’s afterword in that issue. The readings of Lev Tolstoi (1863\u20131947), she explains, are an “important inflection of Rebou\u00e7as\u2019s liberalism,” and shaped his social thinking. Advocating for a “rural democracy,” Rebou\u00e7as “remarks on the large financial capital from a rather moral perspective,” similar to that of the Russian author.<\/p>\n The stoic fondness of his convictions, Alonso reminds us, is what prevents Rebou\u00e7as from accepting the bridges his friends tried to build for him to return to Brazil, which never happened. He died in 1898, not under a palm tree as he had dreamt, but at the toe of a cliff by the ocean, at Funchal, on Madeira Island, where he had lived since 1893.<\/p>\n On the left, a letter written by Rebou\u00e7as to his friend Rangel da Costa. On the next page, a canvas painting by Rodolfo Bernardelli, from 1897, based on a portrait of the abolitionist’s upper body, from 1885<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Letters from Africa marks the first of a five-book series of his intimate writings","protected":false},"author":727,"featured_media":487265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241,245],"coauthors":[4328],"class_list":["post-487260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history","tag-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/727"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487269,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487260\/revisions\/487269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487260"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=487260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/1RPF-cartas-Africa-2023-05-site-01-11140.jpg\")