The National Museum ’ s physical anthropology archive : sources on the history of eugenics in Brazil

The article presents a set of documental sources that are part of the physical anthropology archive administered by the National Museum’s biological anthropology sector (UFRJ). The archive holds important documentation on the First Brazilian Congress of Eugenics, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1929, in celebration of the National Academy of Medicine centennial. In addition to the originals of papers presented at the event (some unpublished), the archive also contains a series of documents compiled by the congress organizers, including announcements of the event, attendee registrations, correspondence, newspaper and magazine clippings of articles on eugenics, as well as motions, reports, and final minutes, all of which makes this collection invaluable in understanding the history of eugenics in Brazil.

The National Museum's physical anthropology archive written by eugenicists from other countries.The bulk consists of documentation gathered together for the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress (Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Eugenia), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1929.All records produced by the Congress were entrusted to the National Museum, whose then-director, anthropologist Edgard Roquette-Pinto, presided over the event.In addition to part of the originals of papers presented at the event (some unpublished), the archives also hold a series of documents compiled by the Congress secretariat, such as announcements of the event, registration forms, names of those registered, correspondence of participants, motions, reports, and final minutes.These sources are invaluable to our understanding of the history of eugenics in Brazil, since the event was a landmark in the eugenics movement.
It must of course be said that the material on eugenics accounts for only some of the documents in the custody of the Physical Anthropology Archives, which encompasses over ten thousand records vital to our knowledge of the history of anthropology (particularly physical anthropology) in Brazil from the nineteenth century through the 1960s.The archives also include a variety of documents on related areas, like social anthropology, ethnology, and archeology.It comprises textual documents like clippings from newspapers and scientific magazines or journals, correspondence, administrative documents, and a gamut of scientific texts, as well as iconographic and cartographic documents like photographs, maps, posters, and drawings.It is all organized in series and subseries, which relies on some of the nomenclature from the archives' original folder tabs and divisions.Under a technical cooperation agreement between the Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences (Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins, known by the acronym Mast) and the National Museum, staff members from both institutions are assessing each record's state of conservation, and material from the archives is then duly preserved and housed.This work is being carried out at Mast's Laboratory for the Conservation and Restoration of Paper (Laboratório de Conservação e Restauração de Papel, or Lapel), with guidance from a specialist from the National Museum's Biological Anthropology Sector.These records are available for consultation, with access restricted in the case of those in a poor state of conservation or awaiting restoration.
Although the entire archival collection at the Physical Anthropology Archives is of note, here we highlight only those holdings related to the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress, along with other records directly pertinent to the issue at hand.This material merits a more thoroughgoing description, considering the importance of the Congress both for the eugenics movement and for Brazil's intellectual history.Some of the topics on the agenda of this scientific event had significant impact throughout the 1930s; the discussions on immigration, for example, formed a reference point for a broad debate on immigration policies under the 1934 Constitution (Geraldo, 2007).

Eugenics in Brazil in the early decades of the twentieth century
Discussions of eugenics in Brazil date to the post-World War I period, a time of major changes on the national scene.The turn of the 1910s to the 1920s was marked not only by a process of urbanization and industrialization and the arrival of new immigrants but likewise by an expansion of nationalism and a feeling that Brazil's modernization would depend upon broad social reforms, particularly in public health, education, and the racial make-up of Brazilian society (Skidmore, 1976;Schwarcz, 1993;Carrara, 1996;Stepan, 2004).Nourished by these ideals, the country's intellectual and political elite sought to build a new identity for Brazilian man, transforming the figure of the lazy, sickly 'Jeca' portrayed by writer Monteiro Lobato into a valiant, hard-working 'Jeca' (Lima, Hochman, 1996;Lima, 1999).So when eugenic ideas were introduced to Brazil in the early twentieth century, their proponents quickly adopted this reformist vision, acclaiming how eugenics would contribute to the regeneration of the Brazilian population.
In the literature of the day, the term 'eugenics' always appeared as a symbol of cultural modernity and was understood as scientific knowledge that expressed much of what was most up-to-date in modern science.Speaking about eugenics was an allusion to evolution, progress, and civilization, terms that were part of the nationalist imaginary shared by a good slice of the Brazilian elites.Eugenics was often interpreted as "mankind's new religion" or as "the science of the future", which would be responsible for the physical and mental regeneration of the Brazilian population (Souza, 2006, p.19). As Nancy Stepan (1991, p.40) has argued, the very history of eugenics in Brazil should be seen as an "endorsement of science" that had become the "rallying cry for the modern, secular elite".According to this author, in the early decades of the twentieth century, Brazil's intellectuals embraced science, especially medicine and eugenics, as a progressive form of knowledge that made it possible to contemplate an alternative to Brazil's 'backwardness'.
Unlike the model of eugenics developed especially in the United States and Germany, where scientific racism had gained firm footing, Brazilian eugenics was characterized by a 'gentler' discourse, informed by neo-Lamarckian conceptions and by a belief in the heritability of acquired characters (Stepan, 2004(Stepan, , 2005)).Although the ideas defended by some members of the eugenics movement extended to more radical measures associated with 'negative eugenics', most Brazilian eugenicists were concerned about regenerating the country's population through social reforms, be it through urban and rural sanitation, combating the country's principal diseases, expanding mother-infant care, or promoting hygiene and sex education (Marques, 1994;Stepan, 2004;Souza, 2006).
Eugenic ideas were further shaped by the country's racial reality, since the large population of African, indigenous, or mestizo origin was seen as a problem that needed to be addressed by Brazilian authorities.By and large, Brazilian eugenicists sought an alternative path that would steer clear of the negative, deterministic stereotype of alleged racial instability in Brazil, as constructed by foreign scientists and travelers.By controlling immigration policy and the process of miscegenation, Brazilian eugenicists hoped to homogenize the 'national race' through a process of 'whitening' -an option that Brazil's elites had found attractive since the nineteenth century -or by recognizing a mestizo identity, as advocated by a group of intellectuals led by Roquette-Pinto, Gilberto Freyre, and Manoel Bomfim.As historiography has made clear, rearticulations concerning the concept of race and racial classifications dominated Brazilian social thought during this period, heavily characterized by ambivalence between acceptance and rejection of scientific racism (Skidmore, 1976;Schwarcz, 1993;Maio, Santos, 1996;Cunha, 2002;Carrara, 2004).

The First Brazilian Eugenics Congress
Reaching Brazil in the late 1920s thanks to persistent propaganda by a group of physicians and eugenicists, led chiefly by Renato Kehl, eugenicist ideas managed to win over a good number of the country's intellectuals, scientists, and political authorities.Proponents and sympathizers could be found at a number of scientific institutions, where they exalted the reformative capacity of "Galton's new science", which, they contended, could not only advance the process of regenerating and shaping nationality but likewise accelerate the modernization of Brazilian science.It should be pointed out that the São Paulo Eugenics Society, Pro-Sanitation League of Brazil (Liga Pró-Saneamento do Brasil), and Brazilian Mental Hygiene League (Liga Brasileira de Higiene Mental), were not alone in promoting eugenic ideas; other associations, academies, and medical magazines also embraced these within their scientific programs.Furthermore, in January 1929, Renato Kehl founded the Boletim de Eugenia with the purpose of bringing knowledge of eugenics to the broader population (Souza, 2006, p.131-132).
In tune with this growth of the eugenics movement, the National Academy of Medicine -then headed by Miguel Couto -began announcing the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress as an integral part of the centennial celebration of the institution's founding in 1829.The fact that the Academy, as one of Brazil's top medical institutions of the day, would publicize the Congress contributed to reaffirming interest in and solidifying eugenics as one of the central themes addressed by Brazilian intellectuals and, moreover, to defining the new directions the eugenics movement was to take in the 1930s.
Held at Rio de Janeiro's School of Medicine (Faculdade de Medicina do Rio de Janeiro) in July 1929, the Congress was attended by over one hundred intellectuals, including delegates from other South American countries.Among those present were physicians, educators, jurists, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians, including key early twentieth-century intellectual leaders like Miguel Couto, Roquette-Pinto, Belisário Penna, Affonso de Taunay, Alfredo Ellis, Azevedo Amaral, Renato Kehl, and Leonídio Ribeiro, to name only a few.At various thematic sessions, attendees hotly debated topics related to "the nation's eugenic future", like immigration selection, marriage controls, sex education, mother and infant care, the eugenic sterilization of the 'mad' and the 'criminal', genetics and heritability, biometrics, racial anthropology, psychiatry and mental hygiene, and education and hygiene in general.
Over 75 papers were presented, discussed, and, in some cases, voted on, resulting in the event's main conclusions.Only a share of these were published, in what now stands as a singular, critical document for the history of eugenics: Actas e trabalhos do Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Eugenia (Actas e trabalhos..., 1929).In addition to the final minutes and the five conferences held during the event, the volume also offers another twenty papers on eugenics and related themes.In its closing pages, the text indicates that another two volumes of presented papers were to be published, but this never came about.
In an especially noteworthy article published in Actas e trabalhos -"Nota sobre os tipos antropológicos do Brasil" (Note on the anthropological types of Brazil) -author Edgard Roquette-Pinto broadly defends Brazilian miscegenation, arguing that none of Brazil's "racial types" display any stigma of degeneration of racial inferiority.Owing to the impact of Roquette-Pinto's arguments and to his scientific weight in the field of physical anthropology (Santos, 1998;2002), this text became a major reference during the period; in fact, in the preface to Casa-Grande & Senzala (The masters and the slaves), Gilberto Freyre cited it as one of the works that made a crucial contribution to his understanding that Brazilian miscegenation was eugenically viable.The volume also includes important papers by Renato Kehl, Fróes da Fonseca, Azevedo Amaral, Levi Carneiro, André Dreyfus, and others as well.
The original copies of many of these papers, along with unpublished ones, belong to the repository of the National Museum's Physical Anthropology Archives.One of these, to take an example, was among those that fueled the most heated controversy during the Congress: "O problema eugênico da imigração" (The eugenic issue of immigration), by Azevedo Amaral, an intellectual who would become one of the foremost figures in Brazilian political thought during the Vargas government.The arguments espoused by this author generated a rift among congress participants, primarily over the immigration model that should be adopted by the Brazilian government.Grounded in presuppositions that reaffirmed racial inequality, Azevedo Amaral made the case that the eugenic selection of immigrants should be based on hereditary and racial qualities, measured first and foremost by the "characters of intelligence and character", and not merely on their state of health.In his view, desirable immigrants, likely to display a "sound heritage", would come from northern Europe, like Germanic Aryans.Although Azevedo Amaral found a good number of allies to support his thesis -including Renato Kehl, Miguel Couto, and Xavier de Oliveira -other attendees, like Roquette-Pinto, Belisário Penna, Fróes da Fonseca, and Fernando Magalhães, maintained that the immigrants recruited into the project to settle Brazil should not be selected according to their racial characters but rather to their state of health, physical vigor, and their interest in assimilation into Brazilian society.
The collection provides access to conferences given during the Congress as well, in the form of typed texts with handwritten corrections and notes by their authors.Renato Kehl's conference "A eugenia no Brasil" (Eugenics in Brazil) offers a historical and bibliographic outline of eugenics in Brazil, with information of value to an understanding of the Brazilian eugenics movement.It is worth noting that the original is longer than the version published in Actas e trabalhos.The latter, for example, does not include a lengthy excerpt in which Renato Kehl harshly criticized the "ineptness" and "immorality" of Brazil's political elite, who he felt would be unable to advance the idea of the population's eugenic regeneration.Kehl also believed that this same elite needed to be eugenized itself; he disagreed, for instance, with Oliveira Vianna, who thought Brazil's elites represented the best "eugenic types".There is no way we can know for certain but it is likely that these paragraphs were omitted from the published paper for two main reasons: first, because they were not to the liking of many Congress attendees, who were members of Brazil's political elite; second, because copies of Actas e trabalhos were to be distributed to the country's paramount political figures, including the Office of the President and both the lower and upper houses.
Another quite polemic conference was given by André Dreyfus.In "O estado atual do problema da hereditariedade" (The current status of the problem of heritability), Dreyfus The National Museum's physical anthropology archive stressed the importance of Mendelian genetics to understanding heritability and the phenomena studied by the biological sciences, while he contested neo-Lamarckian arguments about the role of the environment in heritability.This discussion also split those in attendance since many were fervent advocates of neo-Lamarckism.The best example of this schism can be found in the conference by physician Levi Carneiro, "Educação e eugenia" (Education and eugenics), in which he contended that, progress in heritability research notwithstanding, it was unthinkable that the environment, education, and other social laws not be considered essential to the racial improvement of mankind.In the eye of this author -as of many Brazilian eugenicists -social laws, hygiene, and education had much to contribute to regenerative eugenic practices, by transforming "softened" men into "tenacious, intrepid" men, "ugly" into "sturdy", "uncultured" into "wise and intelligent".
Based on the neo-Lamarckian presupposition that improving the environment would lead to the perfecting of future generations, a portion of the eugenicists who attended the Congress understood that hygienization and education in turn meant eugenization.At the same time, it should be remembered that these eugenicists were influenced by a strong tradition of medical climatology, which had been infecting Brazilian medical thought since the nineteenth century (Edler, 1999).According to Maio (2004), there were close ties between First Republic sanitarian ideas and nineteenth-century medical environmentalist thought, especially from a neo-Hippocratic and a-racialist perspective.Furthermore, in the early decades of the twentieth century, sanitary and social issues were of greatest concern to physicians, hygienists, and eugenicists.They felt that combating "dysgenic environments", encouraging the spread of hygienic habits, and employing sanitary prophylaxis measures would be the fastest, most efficient way of regenerating the population.
At least four of the original Congress texts remain unpublished.One is a manuscript entitled "Eugenia" (Eugenics), whose author could not be identified.Nor is anything known about its origin or even whether it constituted one of the documents gathered by the Congress secretariat.With references to Francis Galton and other European eugenicists, the text endeavors to define eugenics, its function, and its foundations.According to this text, "eugenics is the science of good biological inheritance, or the hygiene of hereditary tendencies", and its bases were linked to hygiene in general and to genetics.It ends by defending the association between eugenics and hygiene (especially sanitation), public health, sexual morality, body hygiene, and education as eugenic measures essential to the physical and mental regeneration of man.As mentioned earlier, this link between eugenics and hygiene, or eugenics and education, synthesized the viewpoint of many Brazilian eugenicists, although others (like Renato Kehl, Roquette-Pinto, Octávio Domingues, and André Dreyfus), refuted neo-Lamarckism, favoring Mendelian genetics instead.
The tie between eugenics and hygiene appears as well in two other unpublished papers found in the Physical Anthropology Archives.One was presented by Maria Antonieta de Castro, who was among the few women at the Congress.Her text, entitled "A influência da educação sanitária na redução da mortalidade infantil" (The influence of sanitary education on the reduction of infant mortality), focuses on initiatives taken by the São Paulo State Inspectorship of Sanitary Education (Inspetoria de Educação Sanitária do Estado de São Paulo) in the area of mother and infant health.Using graphs of statistical data, the author underscores how childcare, prenatal hygiene, and maternal education programs were essential to producing healthy offspring.Along with these graphs and other illustrations, the paper has over forty photographs related to services provided by the Inspectorship, such as the Prenatal Hygiene Service (Serviço de Hygiene Pré-natal); the Mothers Course (Curso das Mãezinhas), focused on maternal education; and contests of sound infant health and the Eugenic Baby, which selected the healthiest, most eugenically beautiful babies.
Another unpublished paper was by Mendes de Castro, assistant physician at the São Paulo Inspectorship of Sanitary Education and Health Centers (Inspetoria de Educação Sanitária e Centros de Saúde de São Paulo).Entitled "A luta contra a sífilis e moléstias venéreas em São Paulo" (The fight against syphilis and venereal diseases in São Paulo), the article talks about state-provided medical services to combat syphilis and other venereal diseases.Mendes de Castro emphasized the eugenic importance of sex education and treatment for the "sick" who had been struck by "venereal evils", which he deemed responsible for the rapid degeneration of the "race".Attachments to the paper include instructional pamphlets, photographs from the Syphilography and Venereal Diseases Service (Serviço de Sifilografia e Moléstias Venéreas), and numerous graphs and tables with information on venereal disease indicators and treatment in the state of São Paulo.Leonídio Ribeiro's "A idade e o casamento" (Age and marriage) is another unpublished article available at the Physical Anthropology Archives.The author stresses how "early marriage" could damage the "future of the race".While allowing that the development of sexual functions may vary in accordance with race, climate, and environment, Leonídio Ribeiro maintains that in physical and biological terms -especially as far as reproductive organs -newlyweds are only "biologically ready for procreation" at the age of 18. Well received by those in attendance, the text was one of a set of papers on selection in marriage and eugenics, a widely discussed topic during the six-day event.Other texts on this theme can be found in the Physical Anthropology Archives, such as Jorge de Lima's "Tese de eugenia" (The eugenics thesis), Newton Belleza's paper on marriage and consanguinity, and the conclusions of Joaquim Moreira da Fonseca's work on marriage, chastity, and eugenics.
The Physical Anthropology Archives' collection of archival sources directly related to eugenics includes the following as well: -Documents of the secretariat of the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress, including correspondence, regulations, by-laws, congress program, list of submitted and presented papers, registration forms, list of those registered, and publicity material about the event; -Documents with abstracts and conclusions of papers, motions, reports, and minutes on the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress, with information pertinent to an understanding of the debates between congress participants; -Clippings from newspapers and scientific magazines, with articles by Brazilian, German, French, British, and Spanish authors on eugenics, heritability, miscegenation, and related themes; -Other texts on eugenics, like Renato Kehl's "A eugenia prática" (Practical eugenics), published in Folha Médica in 1929; Vanderlei Sebastião de Souza et al.
-The first three issues of the Boletim de Eugenia, published in January, February, and March 1929.
In conclusion, despite growing production on the history of eugenics in Brazil, nothing specific has yet been written about the First Brazilian Eugenics Congress, though many authors have underscored the role played by this event in the trajectory of Brazil's eugenics movement (Marques, 1994;Cunha, 2002;Boarini, 2003;Stepan, 2004;2005;Souza, 2006).The documentation that has recently become available through the Inventory of the Physical Anthropology Archives thus stands as an invitation to those interested in the study of the early twentieth-century history of eugenics in Brazil and related topics.

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: The caption of the photograph underscores the role of eugenics in fighting syphilis and other venereal diseases and in mother and infant protection; illustration from the paper "A luta contra a sífilis e moléstias venéreas em São Paulo" (The fight against syphilis and venereal diseases in São Paulo), presented at the Congress by Mendes de Castro.(Arquivo de Antropologia Física, Museu Nacional/UFRJ).

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Photograph of a 'cafuzo' , a racial classification category by Edgard Roquette-Pinto, from the paper "Nota sobre os tipos antropológicos do Brasil" (Note on the anthropological types of Brazil), presented at the Congress.(Arquivo de Antropologia Física, Museu Nacional/UFRJ).