Things

Afonso Almeida Brandão"

We recently read an article that sought to describe the sexual habits of the indigenous people who inhabited the territory that became Brazil, before the arrival of the Portuguese. Unsurprisingly – there are articles whose content is guessed from the first few words – the text in question was a complete fabrication, unfortunately an increasingly common example in the so-called “social sciences”. Thus, if the Portuguese brought a “castrating and patriarchal Catholicism” there, naturally the pre-existing paradigm could only be the opposite. All that was missing was to claim that it was an “LGBT paradise”. In short: when there is no documentary support, as is the case here, one can invent whatever one wants. It is important, however, that these inventions obey at least the most basic logic – which was clearly not the case. If not, let us see: these indigenous communities fed themselves on what the fertile nature provided them – in terms of fruits – and, additionally, on what they were able to hunt or fish. If this was the case, as seems unequivocal, naturally the type of social relations – first and foremost, between men and women – would certainly be similar to what occurred or had occurred on other continents – including Europe –, when the communities living there practiced the same type of subsistence. There is no reason to suppose that it was substantially different. Now, in this type of more primitive society (we use the term here without any pejorative connotation) there was a clear ascendancy of men over women. For obvious reasons: in hunting and fishing, as well as in the defense of communities – against all types of threats (including cannibalism) –, greater male physical strength was certainly an asset with social repercussions. Furthermore, contrary to what is often repeated, it was not Catholicism that instituted patriarchy. Far from it, Catholicism even tried (at least in theory) to mitigate it. As the evolution of societies on all continents has more than proven, what gradually gave women more civic and political rights was the phenomenon of urbanization. That is why, when we see some self-proclaimed feminists denying our civilization, yearning for more primitive types of society, we cannot help but smile. Going back to the beginning: before the arrival of the Portuguese, the indigenous communities that inhabited the territory that became Brazil most likely had a “machista” regime that was much more severe than that which came into force with our “castrating and patriarchal Catholicism”. It was certainly not a paradise. MIL Proposal for Constitutional Review in Portugal: Given the opening of a Constitutional Review procedure, the MIL, echoing the desires of Portuguese civil society and Lusophone civil societies, could not fail to urge the political class to deepen the constitutional principle, already structuring today, of the commitment to Lusophone integration. In this sense, the following is specifically called for: i) the constitutionalization of the CPLP: Community of Portuguese Language Countries, that is, the mention of this Community in the Constitutional Text, similar to what happens with the European Union; ii) the inclusion in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic of a programmatic reference to the construction of a “statute of Lusophone citizenship”, analogous to the “statute of European citizenship”.

2025/12/3