Hello, I'm Tânia Barros, welcome to another story on the “LOUCOS POR BIOGRAFIAS” Channel. Today we are going to learn a little about the life of Joaquim Nabuco. Nabuco was a monarchist and reconciled this political position with his abolitionist stance.
He attributed to slavery the responsibility for a large part of the problems faced by Brazilian society, defending that slavery be abolished before any political change. However, the abolition of slavery should not be done abruptly, but based on national consciousness. He said that “True patriotism is what reconciles the country with humanity”.
Joaquim Nabuco was also a lawyer, politician, historian, diplomat, jurist, journalist, speaker and poet and one of the founders of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Among the immortals, he maintained a great friendship with the writer Machado de Assis. Joaquim Nabuco's political action was guided by ethics in favor of reforms, which made him one of the greatest figures of the second reign.
On the date of his birth, August 19, National Historian Day is celebrated. Another Brazilian whose history is worth knowing! Joaquim Aurélio Barreto Nabuco de Araújo was born on August 19, 1910 in Recife, capital of Pernambuco.
He was the fourth child of the jurist and politician José Tomás Nabuco de Araújo and Ana Benigna de Sá Barreto (niece of the marquess of Recife Francisco Pais Barreto. His father was born in Salvador, Bahia, but moved to Recife, Pernambuco where he studied to become a judge. As a judge he acted in the cause of the rebels of the Praieira Revolution.
Three members of Nabuco's paternal family, his grandfather, his great-uncle and his father, were life senators of the empire. When Joaquim was a few months old, his father he was elected deputy to the Imperial Parliament. To take on the role of deputy, his father moved to Rio de Janeiro, together with his family, however, Joaquim stayed with his godmother Ana Rosa Falcão de Carvalho at the Massangana mill.
In his childhood at Engenho Massangana Joaquim had his religious and regular education with a private teacher who came from Recife to teach him at the mill. He was deeply influenced by the religiosity of his godmother and the slaves at the mill. Later, in the book “Minha Formação” (My Formation) ( 1909), Joaquim recalls his first contacts with slaves, as a story, which occurred when he was seven years old, of a young escaped slave who knelt at his feet begging him to buy him to free him from his owner's cruelty.
In 1852, his parents returned to take care of him, but due to the insistence of his godmother Joaquim continued to live with her until her death in 1857. After the death of his godmother, Joaquim Nabuco went to live with his parents in Rio de Janeiro. He was initially enrolled at Colégio de Nova Friburgo, but was then transferred to Colégio Dom Pedro II, always with excellent grades in all subjects.
There he had his first contact with the political world. In 1859, he met José Hermann de Tautphoeus, the Baron de Tautphoeus, who influenced him throughout his life. At this time, he published his first poetry, the ode “The Giant of Poland”, dedicated to his father, and received a commentary from Machado de Assis.
He became a Bachelor of Arts in 1865 and began exchanging letters with Machado de Assis, a friend he would have until almost the end of his life. The following year, Nabuco went to São Paulo and entered the Faculty of Law, which was one of the main liberal and abolitionist centers in Imperial Brazil. His college classmates included the future presidents Rodrigues Alves and Afonso Pena, as well as the poet Castro Alves and the jurist Rui Barbosa with whom he had a long friendship.
Joaquim maintained intense activity in political-literary groups and in the newspapers that influenced academic life. At the age of 18, he founded “A Tribuna Liberal” and was elected president of the student association Ateneu Paulistano. In 1869, he transferred to the Faculty of Law, in Recife.
In the last year of the course, he alone defended, in the jury, the slave Tomás who had been sentenced to the death penalty for the murder of his owner and managed to revert the case to life imprisonment, saving Tomás from the death penalty. Because he was an abolitionist and opposed to the death penalty, Nabuco attracted the antipathy of the farmers, who closed the doors to his political career. After graduating as a lawyer in 1870, he moved to Rio de Janeiro and for eight years he worked in his father's office and also dedicated himself to publishing his first books.
The book "A Escravidão", although it was only published posthumously, shows his long literary career against slavery. Joaquim Nabuco also worked as a journalist with articles defending the monarchy and abolitionism for the liberal newspapers “A Reforma” and “A Época”, the latter founded by Machado de Assis. Religion On the religious issue, Nabuco sided with the Freemasons.
During his time writing for newspapers he became increasingly averse to the Catholic Church. Influenced by the French author Ernesto Renan, Joaquim abandoned the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church once and for all . He still believed in God, and saw Jesus from a Rhenish perspective, that is, as a great teacher.
In 1872, he wrote a book in honor of Ernesto Renan, “A Lei do Assassinato” and another in honor of Camões, "Camões e os Lusíadas”. Nabuco, alongside Ruy Barbosa, assumed a prominent position in the fight for religious freedom in the Brazil which, at the time, had the Catholic religion as its official religion. Like Ruy Barbosa, Nabuco defended the separation between State and Religion, as well as the secular nature of public education.
He returned to Recife, to revisit his home and receive his share of the inheritance of her godmother, resources that allowed her to travel to Europe in 1873. Eufrásia On the ship heading to Europe, she met the financial investor and philanthropist Eufrásia Teixeira Leite, holder of one of the largest fortunes in the world at the time. Eufrásia and her sister, Francisca Bernardina Teixeira Leite After their parents' death , they inherited a fortune equivalent to 5% of the value of Brazilian exports in 1872.
Nabuco and Eufrásia got engaged with a scheduled wedding, but Eufrásia discovered Nabuco's flirtation and didn't want to know, breaking up the marriage. Their relationship went back and forth for 14 years. Diplomat In 1876, with the help of his father, Joaquim entered the diplomatic career as an attaché in Washington and was later transferred to London.
Two years later his father died and Nabuco returned to Rio de Janeiro, exchanging his diplomatic life for law. With the return of the liberals to power, he ran for the Chamber and was elected General Deputy of the Province. As a deputy, Joaquim led the abolitionist group proposing the immediate abolition of slavery and the presence of non-Catholics in Parliament.
In 1880, he transformed his home, on Flamengo beach, into the Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society and founded the newspaper “O Abolicionista”. He was elected deputy for Pernambuco in 1885. In a speech in the Chamber, he condemned the use of the Army in the pursuit of runaway slaves.
On March 10, 1888, the cabinet of the conservative Baron of Cotegipe fell and João Alfredo took over, who had the mission of proposing abolition, including with the approval of Princess Isabel. Nabuco urgently forwarded the measures and on May 13, 1888, the Lei Áurea was signed by Princess Isabel. Joaquim Nabuco, aged 39, married Evelina T.
Soares Ribeiro, daughter of the baron of Inoã. Together they had five children. In the last years of his activity as a parliamentarian, Joaquim made a prophetic speech: “The honorable president of the Council, Viscount of Ouro Preto, must be inspired by his patriotism so that his Ministry cannot be the last of the monarchy”.
A few days later, on November 15, 1889, the Republic of Brazil was proclaimed. Joaquim Nabuco received news of the proclamation when he was at his home on the island of Paquetá. After the overthrow of the Brazilian monarchy, Nabuco retired from public life for a long time.
Only ten years after the republic was established in Brazil, Nabuco, at the invitation of then president Campos Sales, led the Brazilian delegation in London to defend the cause of the boundaries between Brazil and British Guiana before the British Crown. Diplomat In 1904, he was appointed Brazilian ambassador to the United States, where he delivered several conferences at universities on Brazilian culture and the Lusíadas of Camões and became friends with President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1906, he returned to Rio de Janeiro to preside over the III Pan-American Conference and was festively received in his hometown of Recife.
Death Although he was deaf and had heart problems, he fought for the Pan-American idea, at the embassy, at conferences and in American universities. Joaquim Nabuco died at the age of 60 in Washington, United States, on January 17, 1910 and was buried in the Santo Amaro Cemetery in his hometown in Recife. In 1949, the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation was created with the aim of preserving the historical legacy of this great abolitionist.
Engenho Massangana, where Nabuco spent his childhood, is now the Joaquim Nabuco museum. That's our story today. If you liked it, leave your like, make your comment, share this biography with other people.
Let's encourage our country's culture. Until the next story!
