No non-Portuguese textbooks?
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I was just looking for something in international mail regulations and stumbled on something curious. Among the items that it is prohibited to send to Brazil are: "Primary educational books not written in Portuguese". I have no desire to send any such textbooks to Brazil – in fact I'm not planning on sending anything to Brazil – I noticed this while looking for something else – but I'm curious as to the reason for this prohibition. It stands to reason that in a country whose primary language is Portuguese most primary textbooks will be in Portuguese, but I should think that there would be some schools in which some textbooks are not, such as international schools. And even if no schools use such textbooks, I can imagine foreign residents importing books in their own language for the use of their children, or teachers and educationists who want to examine textbooks from other countries. Against these legimitate uses for non-Portuguese textbooks, it is hard to imagine the threat posed by non-Portuguese textbooks. Do any of our readers know what this is about?
alice faber said,
August 17, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
Could there be some issue about education in indigenous languages?
Bill Poser said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
It occurred to me that that might have something to do with it, but then it seemed to me that this could more easily be controlled at the level of the schools, and that textbooks written in indigenous languages could just as easily be printed in Brazil, so it seems unlikely. But I don't know.
Bruce Rusk said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Caveat: I know zip about Brazilian history. Could it have been an anti-clerical move to keep Latin-language textbooks out?
Stephen said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
I'd say it's about keeping Spanish-language textbooks out. I don't know the specifics of the law, but I have read on more than one occasion about Brazil's insecurity about being the only Portuguese-speaking nation on a continent of almost entirely Spanish-speaking nations. This is silly, because there are tons of Portuguese speakers in Brazil and there is certainly no threat, but every now and then someone uses the menace of losing Portuguese to Spanish as a political tool. Some of this is related to the membership of Brazil in Mercosur, in which it is the only member that is not Spanish-speaking (think of NAFTA in the US, maybe?). Anyways, I'm not 100% sure that is the genesis of this prohibition, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Bill Poser said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:28 pm
The Jesuits played a large role in Brazilian education prior to independence, but that was a long time ago. Although church and state have been separated since 1891, the Catholic church is still quite influential in Brazil. I don't think that this is a residual bit of anti-clericalism. But I don't really know.
J. W. Brewer said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:42 pm
There are English-language private schools in Brazil that can be located with a moment's googling, so I suppose if one were curious enough one could contact them and ask how they acquire their primary textbooks. There's an interesting note from one such school here http://www.graded.br/page.cfm?p=13 indicating that Brazilian nationals enrolled in the school are required to take "Brazilian Studies" classes meeting with the approval of the Ministry of Education and that those specific classes must be taught in Portuguese. I attended the American School in Japan for three years as a boy back in the '70's, and we were required (regardless of citizenship) to have one hour a day of not-very-intensive instruction in Japanese as a condition of the school being permitted to operate by the Japanese government (and being permitted to use English as the language of instruction for the rest of the curriculum).
Craig said,
August 17, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
I found a book on Google "O livro no Brasil: sua história" by Laurence Hallewell, which may be a translation of "Books in Brazil: A History of the Publishing Trade". On page 364 of the Portuguese edition, it reads (emphasis mine):
Simultaneamente à sua frustada aventura em Portugal, Octalles consolidou a posição de sua empresa no Brasil, onde rapidamente deslocou a Paulo de Azevedo & Cia. da pretensão de ser a maior editora de livros didáticos no pais. Este não era, de modo algum, um Mercado fácil na época. O governo de Vargas estava cada vez mais preocupado em controlar o conteúdo dos livros escolares. Após a implantacão do Estado Novo, foi criada para esse fim, em dezembro de 1938, a Comissão Nacional do Livro Didático. Seu objetivo declarado era o de evitar impropriedades e inexatidões factuais: a Comissão era constituida de proeminentes membros do magistério, muitos dos quas pertencentes ão corpo docente do Colégio Pedro II do Rio de Janeiro, então paradigma do ensino secundário. Quase tão importante foi a preocupacão do governo com a unidade nacional, cuja consolidacão fora uma das principas forças motivadores da Revolução de 1930, e que paracera ameaçada com a Revolução constitucionista de 1932. O Estado Novo estava particularmente desejoso de tornar obrigatória a lingua portuguesa no ensino primário, em todo o pais, como um meio de abortar o separatismo lingüístico em algunas comunidades de imigrantes europeus no Sul do Brasil, um separatismo que, no caso de alguns grupos de linguo alemã, vinha sendo ativamente estimulado e explorado pelo Terceiro Reich de Adolf Hitler.
My guess is that the current postal regulations are a reflection of this.
Bill Poser said,
August 17, 2009 @ 11:12 pm
@Craig: Thanks very much. That does seem to be the likely explanation.
For those who don't read Portuguese, it says that in the 1930s the Brazilian government wanted to make the use of Portuguese obligatory in primary education out of concern for linguistic separatism on the part of some communities of European immigrants in southern Brazil.
José San Martin said,
August 17, 2009 @ 11:13 pm
Short answer: memorabilia from world war II.
Long answer:
Some research in Portuguese easily solves the problem :-)
There's a decree from 1941, which establishes the "National comitee on educational books." (livros didáticos) The decree has just a few articles, including the following:
Art. 4º Fica proibida a importação de livros didáticos, escritos total, ou parcialmente em língua estrangeira, se destinados ao uso de alunos do ensino primário, bem como a sua produção no território nacional.
which forbids the importing of educational books "written fully of partially in foreign language"
It's completely disconnected from the rest of the text of the decree, and there's no indication of the motivation in the preamble.
Nowadays it looks pointless, but what were the motives 70 years ago? That time, Getulio Vargas was a nationalistic dictator and Brazil was helping U.S. in the war efforts. It meant that there were a lot of persecution against italians and germans immigrants, who were suspected to collaborate with the Axis. (my great-grand father, a Jew who fled to Brazil from Mussolini's Italy, faced a few problems for being an Italian in Brazil…) That's the picture of the decree back then.
It looks so pointless nowadays that I think it's hasn't been revoked yet just because nobody has bothered to do so.
(For the sake of curiosity: Vargas is a quite interesting figure. In 1930, he was a land-owner who overthrew the land-owners' régime. In 1934, a left-wing president under a democratic-liberal constitution he helped to promulgate. In 1937, he coup'ed himself and ruled for eight years in a right-wing fascist-like dictatorship, even though he did send troops to fight against Mussolini. In 1950, after five years away from the government he was fair and democratically elected and he did make a free and democratic left-wing government. Only to commit suicide in office four years later, in the middle of a political crisis…)
The full text of the decree can be read (in Portuguese, obviously) at: http://www6.senado.gov.br/legislacao/ListaPublicacoes.action?id=29109
BTW. About indigenous languages: there is no official stance against indigenous languages in Brazil. Au contraire. In fact, although indigenous languages education is neglected in most regions, there law is favourable and there are some success cases of public schools in indigenous areas teaching in indigenous language only.
Janice Huth Byer said,
August 17, 2009 @ 11:35 pm
I know nothing, so why am I not surprised? No doubt, because it strikes me as the kind of half-baked reactionary law that legislators in, say, Texas, might enact, hoping to protect little gringos from the Spanish Peril.
Brazil's growing Spanish-speaking immigrant population may have sought similarly to ours, to have Spanish made an official, which is not to say "the official", merely "an official" language, in order to mandate the government offer customer service in Spanish.
To quote a TX legislator from a statehouse floor debate in the '80's, "If English is good enough for the Lord Jesus Christ. it's good enough for the children of Texas."
Far be it from me to defend the sponsor of an English-only bill, whose justification was laughed at, even in Texas. Still, to be fair and scholarly, I ought to explain it's not that he imagined Jesus's native tongue was English. Rather, it's that his fundamentalist religious sect teaches that their English version of the Bible is a gift from heaven, from which place Jesus narrated it in English to an American scribe.
Bill Poser said,
August 17, 2009 @ 11:51 pm
@Janice: Interesting, I wasn't aware of sects who believe that Jesus narrated the Bible in English to an American scribe. That's similar to the Mormon story about the Book of Mormon of course. I have heard of groups that believe that the King James Version was divinely inspired (that is, as a translation, not merely in the sense in which most Christians believe that the Bible was divinely inspired), but not that Jesus actually dictated an English translation.
Albatross said,
August 17, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
Brazil is like Texas. Imagine that. Except that Brazil's peril came in the form of the "Terceiro Reich de Adolf Hitler". Not quite the same thing as the "Spanish Peril".
Albatross said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:02 am
Of course, my experience is with Spanish, not Portuguese. I'm just assuming that passage singled out the Third Reich immigrants as ones they wanted to be wary of.
Fernando Pereira said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:15 am
Following up on Craig's post, there's an online database of Brasilian federal law at . Unfortunately they do not have the full text for 1938 laws, but there was presidential decree DEL 383/1938 that was further modified in later decrees, together focusing on the assimilation of immigrants, prohibition of foreign political activity, and primary education. The summary of the initial decree is
VEDA A ESTRANGEIROS A ATIVIDADE POLITICA NO BRASIL E DA OUTRAS PROVIDENCIAS
(Prohibits political activity by foreigners in Brasil, and other provisions)
later altered as follows:
DEL 406 – 04/05/1938: DISPOE SOBRE A ENTRADA DE ESTRANGEIROS NO TERRITORIO NACIONAL – DEL 639 – 20/08/1938: MODIFICA O DECRETO-LEI 406, DE 1938 – DEC 3010 – 20/08/1938: REGULAMENTA O DEL 406, DE 1938 – DEL 868 – 18/11/1938: CRIA, NO MINISTERIO DA EDUCACAO E SAUDE, A COMISSAO NACIONAL DE ENSINO PRIMARIO – DEL 948 – 13/12/1938: CENTRALIZA NO CONSELHO DE IMIGRACAO E COLONIZACAO AS MEDIDAS CONSTANTES DE DIVERSOS DECRETOS EM VIGOR, TENDENTES A PROMOVER A ASSIMILACAO DOS ALIENIGENAS
(… regulates the admission of foreigners to the national territory; … creates the national commission on primary education in the ministry of education and health; … centralizes in the counsil on immigration and colonization … measures … promoting the assimilation of the foreign-born)
The dates and topics seem to fit.
Marcus Lira said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:18 am
I don't think anyone cares about this law any more. I've got plenty of foreign textbooks here at home (I'm a Brazilian living in the capital), and always bought them legally. I'm surprised to hear such a law exists, as there are many bookshops here that sell nothing but foreign textbooks.
@Janice: Huh? What growing Spanish speaking immigrant population? The Spanish speaking community here is virtually invisible. I've never heard of a single politician who even cared about Spanish being spoken here (though there's a handful of purists trying to protect Portuguese from the "evil" Anglicisms every now and then).
We're still waiting for the official numbers to come out next year but it's often stated that Japanese, Italian, and German are the most spoken languages in Brazil after Portuguese, thanks to the massive amount of immigrants from overseas in the last century. It's hard to believe any other language is among the top 4.
Besides, I've never heard of any animosity towards the Spanish language here in Brazil. Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the three other languages I mentioned, reason why I think Craig hit the nail on the head.
Rick said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:24 am
"To quote a TX legislator from a statehouse floor debate in the '80's, 'If English is good enough for the Lord Jesus Christ. it's good enough for the children of Texas.' "
The '80's, really? I thought it was traditionally attributed (dubiously) to Ma Ferguson, governor of Texas in the '20's. A quick Google search doesn't show the words emerging from a more recent occupant of the halls of Texan power, but I can't claim to have exhausted every hit. On the other hand, many of the quotes which did turn up all involved the line being "overheard" or "heard by a friend."
It wouldn't suprise me if this quote began as a joke about the ignorance of rural folk which survived as a sort of catchphrase.
[(myl) Yes, exactly.]
Albatross said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:28 am
Marcus, I don't think Janice cares so much what happened in Brazil in the 1930s. The Brazil-textbook situation is just an opportunity for her to share her views on the "little gringos" in modern-day Texas.
Bill Poser said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:32 am
@Albatross: Actually, it doesn't say that they were especially concerned about the Third Reich. What it says is that among the foreign language communities with separatist tendencies were some groups of German speakers, whose separatism was stimulated and exploited by the Third Reich.
@Marcus Lira: Thanks. This could easily be a holdover from another era. At any rate, the US postal system thinks that it is still in force. I don't think that they enforce such foreign laws though – they're just supposed to inform the sender of the rules and that the package might not be accepted at its destination.
Albatross said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:42 am
@Bill: Thanks. I really have no experience with Portuguese, and that Hitler reference was the elephant in the room. Thanks for clearing it up.
João Lucas Pinto said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:42 am
As a Brazilian, I would just like to clarify something: this alleged feeling of insecurity Brazilians have concerning the threat to the dominance of Portuguese posed by Spanish is probably something a foreign person came up with after taking a look at South America on a map and realizing, to their astonishment, that Brazil is a lonely Portuguese-speaking country surrounded by a lot of Spanish-speaking countries. I have never witnessed a single sign of fear or insecurity about this fact from my fellow Brazilians, nor have I seen any politician use it as a political tool. There might have been, at most, some discussion at international summits regarding how to make sure Portuguese wouldn't be crushed by Spanish in Latin American foreign affairs. But the risk of Portuguese being overthrown by Spanish in Brazil is the same that the U.S. faces of having English substituted for French because of Quebec, or something. And nobody here would be stupid enough to believe otherwise.
João Lucas Pinto said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:46 am
PS: I have only now seen the comment by Marcus. Sorry for practically repeating it.
José San Martin said,
August 18, 2009 @ 1:02 am
@Bill Poser: The funny part is that it is still in force! Nobody cared enough to revoke it.
Theoretically, of course. Nobody in the customs would care about a foreign educational book, anyway.
chris said,
August 18, 2009 @ 4:03 am
@Bill and Albatross: the passage does seem to suggest that the separatism of the German speakers was particularly threatening, sponsored as it was by a major foreign power. And although that passage doesn't address the matter directly, it's very likely that the Germans were one of the chief offenders when it came to importing foreign language textbooks, given that they were probably getting them for free from the Nazis.
HP said,
August 18, 2009 @ 8:15 am
My knowledge of Brazilian history is pretty superficial, but wasn't Brazil in a particularly fraught position with respect to the Axis, in that the Estado Novo was essentially a Fascist regime with ideological ties to the Estado Novo in Portugal as well as the Franco regime? Meanwhile, Brazil was economically tied to the United States, largely due to rubber trade agreements and the Good Neighbor policy, and considered one of the Allies?
Also, when I was researching the history of Brazilian music, I recall that Vargas had a strong policy of establishing "Brazilianness" (I forget the Portuguese word he used), as a way to unite a country previously fractured by racial, ethnic, regional, and class divisions. (There was a law in the 1930s, IIRC, promoting the previously-banned samba, but only if the sambas had patriotic lyrics, e.g. the world-famous Aquarelas do Brasil). So legislating culture is not unknown during the Vargas era.
Ginger Yellow said,
August 18, 2009 @ 8:51 am
"But the risk of Portuguese being overthrown by Spanish in Brazil is the same that the U.S. faces of having English substituted for French because of Quebec, or something."
That doesn't stop many Americans from being absurdly insecure about the status of English in the US.
Amy Stoller said,
August 18, 2009 @ 8:54 am
"To quote a TX legislator from a statehouse floor debate in the '80's, 'If English is good enough for the Lord Jesus Christ. it's good enough for the children of Texas.'"
This is commonly attributed to Ma Ferguson, perhaps most famously by Ann Richards, who was a good story-teller and loved making use of it. The attribution is erroneous, but the story served its purpose as an instrument for ridiculing "know-nothings" in government.
arthur said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
The joke about English as the language of the Bible originated in Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, published in 1916, well before Ma Barker became governor. It was repopularized in the musical adaptation, My Fair Lady.
"Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon."
Leonardo Boiko said,
August 18, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
As others have said, here in Brazil there is no insecurity about Spanish at all. There is, however, a noticeable fear of English, sustained by both the Left and populist sections of the Right. Every other year some dumb ignorant politician on either side of the spectrum tries to forbid usage of English in educational materials, advertising, to mandate a minimum percentage of national movies in cinemas or songs in radios, or even to outlaw public English altogether. Mainstream opinion is not so extreme, but still holds that Portuguese needs to be actively “protected” from English. In my experience it’s common for high-school language teachers (invariably prescriptivists) to claim that using English words in discourse is the same as being “colonized” by some imperial power and amounts to “murdering” the national language.
So there’s basically zero fear of immigrants and complete indifference towards Latin America—irrationality here is expressed as anti-americanism. I’d not be surprised if this sentiment somehow sustained that ancient textbook law. There’s even an urban legend about U.S. geography textbooks teaching American children that the Amazon forest is a (non-Brazilian) “international protectorate”.
The Vargas government was kind of supportive of both Italy and German at first; notoriously, they sent Jewish communist Olga Benario back to the Nazi, which of course was as good as killing her. Later, Vargas reversed his stance on the Axis for purely political reasons and joined the war on the Allied side.
Leonardo Boiko said,
August 18, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
I should add that my whole college education was based on English textbooks, either in the (federal) university’s library, or bought myself from Amazon. Today’s the first time I ever heard of that law. Importing textbooks is easier than everything else, if anything, since they’re exempt from the absurd, abusive 60% import tax, and thus of little interest to authorities. I once came from the U.S. with a box full of books and no one even glanced at them.
HP said,
August 18, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
Leonardo, a few months ago I was watching some Brazilian comedies from the late 1950s, and it seemed to me that English at that time was used as a class marker representing sophistication and education. In particular, in O homem do Sputnik (1959), a lot of the comedy played off of Zezé's attempts at using English to appear more sophisticated than she was, versus the actual Americans, speaking VERY LOUD AND SLOW, and being anything but sophisticated. Is that a genuine cultural reflection of the time, and is any of that still true today?
I wonder how much of the contemporary animosity toward English in Brazil is directed at phrases like "funk party" (a purely Brazilian phenomenon). In other words, is it still about class?
language hat said,
August 19, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
I'm not sure if you're making a joke yourself, but just to state the obvious: the Shaw passage has nothing to do with any "joke about English as the language of the Bible," it is one of very many homages in the last four centuries to the magnificent language of the King James (Authorized) Version.
Stanley Tweedle said,
August 19, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
Do Brazilian customs officials really have the wide-ranging linguistic skills necessary to enforce this law? Let's say a group of tourists from China arrive at Rio airport and Customs, ever eager to root out the evil of foreign school books, search their luggage. No doubt quite a few books in Chinese will surface. Now, wouldn't it take a rather sophisticated grasp of wtitten Chinese to determine which, if any, of the books are primary-school textbooks (and not, say, high-school textbooks, or novels or whatever)?
iiii said,
August 20, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
Postal regulations are not the same as baggage rules. The rule cited above says "Primary educational books not written in Portuguese" may not be imported *by mail*. This does not necessarily indicate that such books may not be imported in the baggage of a visitor or a returning resident. Nor does it necessarily indicate that commercial import of such books is prohibited.
Prosfilaes said,
August 20, 2009 @ 7:24 pm
Stanley, in Aaron Lansky's Outwitting History, he mentions that apparently US printed books have customs due when reimported to the US that books published elsewhere don't. So when he returned from Canada with a few caseloads of Yiddish books, Customs insisted on opening the boxes and taking a look. The first few books pulled out were printed in Eastern Europe. Then they pulled out a book that said right on the title page New York, New York–in perfectly clear Hebrew script. Mr. Lansky looked the officer right in the eye, pointed out that it clearly said that it was printed in Moscow, and they closed the boxes and sent them through free of charge.
Peter Taylor said,
August 22, 2009 @ 6:58 am
iii, José San Martin's quote from a 1941 decree translates as:
Article 4 prohibits the import of textbooks written totally or partially in a foreign language and intended for use by primary school pupils, as well as their production in national territory.
I presume that foreign languages aren't taught in primary schools.
Toby said,
August 23, 2009 @ 3:44 am
@Peter Taylor
English is taught in Brazilian primary schools, after ~ 7 years of age, and this continues for every year of schooling. (According to my Brazilian wife.)
The results of this teaching are variable and generally poor, as far as I can tell, perhaps because opportunities for immersion are rare or impossible for most Brazilians, and motivation is low (after 14 years of age, either Spanish or English – or in some schools, both – is a *compulsory* subject for 3 years, further points against the Spanish Peril theory already demolished by Leonardo and João).
Michele Davila said,
August 31, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
First: remember that laws are very difficult to eliminate (even if they become obsolete) because it gives the idea that they were wrong in the first place and lawmakers would hate to acknowledge this. This is common in many countries, including Brazil and US (and in PR also where I learned this from a labor laws lawyer). However, I agree with Leonardo Boiko that Spanish is not the culprit, but English (and US specifically) might be. When I went to live in Brazil someone showed me the Internet page where an "American textbook" showed clearly that the Amazon was not Brazilian, but American. I was very surprised to see this (the scan was very good and it did look like a real textbook), and had a lot of trouble stating that it was all false. This came up constantly during the 4 years I lived there. So I believe this perennial urban legend is behind this although nobody will acknowledge it.
Laurence Hallewell said,
October 2, 2010 @ 1:59 pm
As the author of "Books in Brazil" translated as "O livro no Brasil", 2nd ed. São Paulo, Edusp, 2006, I should like to put the orginal Vargas decree in context: both the Italian and German regimes in the 1930s were promoting nationalism among their many migrant settlements in southern Brazil (some of which were still monoglot in German or Italian), and the Vargas regime's reaction, despite its political sympathy with the Axis, was to do everything to impose Portuguese as the language of all Brazilians, in which it was quite successful. The long persistence of the prohibition on parcel post one can safely ascribe to bureaucratic lethargy..