The article addresses certain interfaces between Euclides da Cunha’s work - particularly Os sertões - and medicine-anthropology in Brazil in the early 20th century. Cunha’s work can be tied in with two lines of thought in the field of medicine-anthropology, each of which constructed its own view of the consequences of Brazil’s racial make-up, especially regarding the viability of a mestizo nation. One of these lines, supported by Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, among others, leaned more towards racial fatalism. The other, represented by Edgard Roquette-Pinto of the Museu Nacional, argued that mestizos were neither organically nor racially inviable. The text is concerned above all with the interpretation of Cunha’s work proposed by those in the field of medicine- anthropology at the Museu Nacional.
Euclides da Cunha; E. Roquette-Pinto; medicine-anthropology; race; racial admixture; nationalism; Brazil