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Time and again, in heated debates over Brazil's political economy and democracy, one disputed concept emerges: nationalism. Claiming the Nation traces the contested history of the nationalist label in twentieth-century Brazil, examining how both progressive and conservative forces invoked national interest to advance divergent political agendas. Focusing on the period from the 1920s through the end of military rule in 1985, Andre Pagliarini demonstrates how progressive reformers linked nationalism to social justice, economic sovereignty, and mass participation, while right-wing elites often used it to justify hierarchy and technocratic governance. Through detailed analysis of political debates, media, and activism, the book shows how competing attempts to define and claim nationalism in the public square shaped Brazil’s civic identity, development, and political trajectory during the past one hundred years. Ultimately, Pagliarini unveils the enduring ways in which control over nationalist discourse became a proxy for determining who legitimately represented the nation and its future.
Andre Pagliarini is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Louisiana State University, fellow at the Washington Brazil Office, and nonresident expert at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of Lula: A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future.
“Andre Pagliarini has delivered a thorough, fascinating, and extremely well-researched history of nationalism in Brazil. This book will help strengthen a scholarly call to recapture politics as a central valence in historical analysis.”—Jacob Blanc, author of Searching for Memory: Aluízio Palmar and the Shadow of Dictatorship in Brazil
“Claiming the Nation sets a new, high bar for the study of twentieth-century Latin American politics by carefully analyzing narratives of nationalism across the political spectrum during eras of dictatorship and democracy in Brazil.”—Joel Wolfe, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst