The relationship between Brazilian and Portuguese tropicalist doctors in times of decolonization, 1944-1975

• Grant number: 23/12616-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: June 02, 2024
• End date: June 01, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Science
• Principal Investigator: Francisco Carlos Palomanes Martinho
• Grantee: Ewerton Luiz Figueiredo Moura da Silva
• Supervisor: Marta Cristina Catarino Lourenco
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/04027-2 - The relationship between Brazilian and Portuguese tropicalist doctors in times of decolonization, 1944-1975, BP.PD

Abstract

This work plan aims to develop post-doctoral research on the scope of scientific exchange between Brazilian and Portuguese tropical doctors during the 1940s and 1970s. More precisely, the time frame of this study begins in 1944, the year in which João Fraga de Azevedo and Augusto Salazar Leite, doctors linked to the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Lisbon, carried out a study mission to Brazil, an opportunity in which they visited the Oswaldo Cruz and Butantan Institutes, and ended in 1975, the date of the official closure of the domain Portuguese colonial rule over Africa and also when the Brazilian parasitologist Leônidas Deane was accepted as a professor at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Lisbon. In the 1950s and 1960s, scientific exchange between Portuguese and Brazilian doctors gained momentum through initiatives such as the Luso-Brazilian Medical Days (1952 and 1956) and the Sixth and Seventh International Congresses of Tropical Medicine and Malaria, held, respectively, in Lisbon. (1958) and in Rio de Janeiro (1963). At the same time, Portuguese-Brazilian bilateral relations were marked by a change in the Brazilian government's position in relation to decolonization on the African continent: the demonstrations of solidarity by Brazilian representatives at the UN, during the Vargas (1951-1954) and Kubitschek (1956-1961) governments, with Portuguese overseas policy gave way to more incisive positions against colonialism in the Quadros (1961) and Goulart (1961-1964) governments, which coincided with the beginning of the colonial war in Portugal's African possessions. With the civil-military coup of 1964, the Brazilian government took greater care not to displease the Salazar regime in the overseas issue and, from the 1970s onwards, when economic pragmatism began to prevail over ideological orientation in Brazilian foreign policy, Brasília sought dissociate itself from the support provided to Portuguese colonialism. Thus, by consulting a diverse set of sources, available in Brazilian and Portuguese archives, we intend to analyze the medical-scientific relationship between tropicalists from both countries in a context marked by the dissolution of European colonial empires in Africa. (AU)