Why the samba is a pain’s son (the 500 years Brazil’s “discovery” celebration and the Portuguese press’ opinion)

Abstract

Starting from the analysis of opinion articles published in the Portuguese press during the 500 years Brazil’s “discovery” celebration, one searches to place the complex relations among history, power and identity, outlining some dominant characteristics of the Portuguese nationalism. Concretely, one tries to notice the place occupied by the imperial past in the country on the historical narratives and on the scholars’ sociological imagination. Equally central is the analysis of the guiding points of the political modernity which dominated the approach about the power relations in the colonial context and nowadays permeates these relations in the postcolonial context, concerning the colonization relation and the protest against the 500 years Brazil’s “discovery” celebration leaded by different social movements in Brazil.