Multi-family order as a determinist vector for the culture of privilege and power relations in Brazil

Abstract

By reproducing to exhaustion and with greater intensity the historical practice inherited from the Iberian tradition, the long process of formation of Brazilian society incorporated into its constitutive elements the family order as a distinctive factor in the country's social and political relations, which was
established as a standard and informal rule, shaped by the interests of the Portuguese Crown and its
many beneficiaries. Deeply rooted in Iberian society, particularly in its Lusitanian portion, the culture
of privilege was conceived as a kind of class identity, restricted to the nobility and its derivatives (fidalgos of all kinds), in such a way that those who were favored segregated those who were not accepted, who, by the way, represented the vast majority of the Portuguese population. The “package of privileges” dedicated to the kingdom’s chosen ones was extended to the family, assuming application trajectories in all directions (ascending, descending, lateral) and developments (reaching the most diverse affinity ties, even aggregates), as well as constituting a transferable patrimony to heirs and godchildren, consecrating the family order as the structural cell of life in society, not by a determination of values cultivated in the ethical-formative dimension, but purely with the purpose of ensuring the respective share of public privileges and benefits, for enjoyment in the private sphere and in a hereditary manner. Permanently living in the Portuguese territory overseas and claiming a dubious proximity to the King, the colonizer's agents, far from the eyes of royalty and eager to cover themselves with the flattery typical of the universe that gravitated around the monarchy, did not restrain themselves from importing and implanting in these lands the culture of privilege, reserved for distinct groups and families that settled or developed in that scenario, far from mechanisms of effective control and any reference to advanced standards of civility. Predominant in the Colony, active in the Empire and suffocating in the Republic, the culture of privilege as an end in itself assumed an air of unanimity and object of desire, taking root in such a way and scope that it would become consecrated as a true national institution, a mirror of distortions, deviations and diverse degenerations. Enjoying the approval of the complicit solidarity of peers and class partners, it would resist modernity and flexible institutionality, and would be maintained in the country as a reserve of privileges destined for a few and members of families that would perpetuate themselves in the most diverse segments of social life — in politics, in the Judiciary, in State careers, in the Armed Forces, in diplomatic representations, in the academic environment, in short, expanding in a diffuse manner, but without compromising the restriction of the oligarchic-familial criterion.