¹ Departamento da Criança, Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Protecção à Infância. Boletim 6° (1921–1922) (Rio de Janeiro, 1923), p. 131.

² According to Moncorvo Filho, more children died than were born in the Federal District (i.e. the city of Rio de Janeiro), in 1889. In 1930, São Paulo had a rate of 167.87 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births. Rizzini, Irma, A assistência à infância no Brasil: uma análise de sua construção (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Universidade Santa Úrsula, 1993), p. 32 Google Scholar; Iyda, Massako, Cem anos de saúde pública: A cidadania negada (São Paulo: Editora da Universidade Estadual Paulista, 1993), p. 92.Google Scholar

³ Between 1872 and 1920, the population of Brazil had grown from 10,112,061 to 41,236,315 respectively. In Rio de Janeiro, the population had grown from 274,972 to 1,157,873 during these same years. Cited in Besse, Susan K., Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914–1940 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 16.Google Scholar

⁴ The term “welfare state” in this context does not refer to a system of public assistance that paralleled the much wider scope of similar institutions in Europe and the United States. Since Brazil never implemented a system of public assistance comparable in scope to what is traditionally considered a “welfare state,” perhaps it might be better to think in terms not of a “welfare state” but of “state welfare.” In this article we use “welfare state” to refer to state efforts at funding, implementing and enforcing legislation and institutions that provided public assistance. On the other hand, Brazilian elites articulated well developed conceptions of a welfare state. This essay focuses mainly on this welfare state ideology.

⁵ The ideas in this section about periodization and an (overlapping) shift from church to state responsibility for child welfare were presented in Marko, Tamera L., “Pediatrics and the Reinvention of Childhood: ‘Scientific Philanthropy’ in Rio de Janeiro, 1874–1930” at the Conference of the All-UC Latin American History Group, at the University of California, Irvine, January 30, 1999.Google Scholar

⁶ Netto, Alvarenga, Código de Menores: Doutrina, legislação e jurisprudência (Rio de Janeiro: Freitas Bastos, 1929), pp. 235–244, 15–17,193–198, 227–231.Google Scholar

⁷ Netto, , Código de Menores, pp. 21, 24.Google Scholar

⁸ This periodization coincides with that of recent literature incorporating a gendered analysis of the rise of welfare states in Europe and the United States. See for example, Accampo, Elinor Ann, Fuchs, Rachel G. and Stewart, Mary Lynn, Gender and the Politics of Social Reform in France, 1870–1914 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Bock, Gisela and Thane, Pat, eds. Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare State, 1880s–1950s (New York: Routledge Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, ed. Women, the State and Welfare (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Pederson, Susan, Family Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State in Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar These works reveal key historical specificities which vary from country to country and even region to region; focus on different units of analysis; and ground their analysis within different theoretical frameworks. Nonetheless, these works all emphasize, the same point of historical revision: contrary to traditional historiographies of the welfare state, which focus on social security, old-age pensions, and health insurance politics established in the early twentieth century, the welfare states actually originate in the 1870s, with policies geared toward children and women.

⁹ Much of this work was produced in conjunction with the two clinics which the elder and the younger Moncorvo founded respectively: the Polyclínica Geral of Rio de Janeiro, established in 1882 and the Institute for the Preservation and Assistance of Children of Rio de Janeiro, established in 1901.

¹⁰ For a more detailed discussion of a theoretical approach to understanding the central role that health and hygiene concerns played in elite conceptions of childhood and a nation-building project in Brazil, see Marko, “Pediatrics and the Reinvention of Childhood.”

¹¹ Although the Santa Casas were supposed to be funded, at least in part, by municipal funds, they differ from later conceptions of state welfare. The recipients of the Santa Casas’ aid were considered the responsibility of the religious brotherhood, not of the state. State funding was provided, rather, to help fulfill what was considered to be the responsibility of the religious brotherhood.

¹² Russell-Wood, A.J.R., Fidalgos and Philanthropists: The Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550–1755 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), pp. 96–159, 308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Marcílio, Maria Luiza, “A Irmandade da Santa Casa de Misericórdia e a assistência à criança abandonada na história do Brasil,” in Família, mulher, sexualidade e Igreja na história do Brasil, ed. Marcílio, Maria Luiza (São Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1993), p. 153.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Filho, Arthur Moncorvo, Histórico da protecção á infancia no Brasil 1500–1922 (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Graphica Editora, 1927), p. 230 Google Scholar; Departamento da Criança, Boletim 5o (Dezembro de 1920) (Rio de Janeiro, 1921), p. 84.

¹⁵ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^°, pp. 99–100.

¹⁶ Rizzini, , A assistência à infância, pp. 180–183;Google Scholar Oakenfull, J.C., Brazil in 1912 (London: R. Atkinson, 1913), p. 377.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Rizzini, , A assistência à infância, p. 181.Google Scholar Rizzini's work provides a detailed overview of the historical development of child welfare institutions.

¹⁸ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^° , pp. 99–100. Of the 1,032 child welfare institutions, 874 were asylums or educational institutions. These included 611 colégios (schools oriented primarily toward academic education), 152 vocational schools, and 89 orphanages or asylums. Although only 158, or about 15 percent, of the total number of institutions were dedicated exclusively to health and hygiene, it should be noted that childhood medicine was an integral part of educational and orphanage programs as well.

¹⁹ Oliveira, Lúcia Lippi, A questão nacional na Primeira República (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1990), pp. 190–191.Google Scholar

²⁰ This is certainly a simplified summary of the very complex modernist movement. For more information, see de Oliveira, Franklin, A Semana de Arte Moderna na contramão da história e outros ensaios (Rio de Janeiro: Top Books, 1993)Google Scholar; del Picchia, Paulo Menotti, A “Semana” revolucionária: Conferências, artigas e crônicas sobre a Semana da Arte Moderna e as principáis figuras do Movimento Modernista no Brasil (Campinas: Pontes Editores, 1992)Google Scholar; Flynn, Peter, Brazil: a Political Analysis (London: Ernest Benn, 1978), pp. 43–45 Google Scholar and Drummond, José Augusto, O movimento tenentista: A intervenção política dos oficias jovens (1922–1935) (Rio de Janeiro: Edições Graal, 1983)Google Scholar; Serbin, Kenneth P., “Church-State Reciprocity in Contemporary Brazil: The Convening of the International Eucharistie Congress of 1955 in Rio de Janeiro,” Hispanic American Historical Review 74:4 (1996), pp. 726–727.Google Scholar

²¹ The Morro do Castelo, a hill that was one of the oldest parts of the city of Rio, was also a famous historical monument, and the location of numerous slum communities, Motta, Marly Silva da, A nação faz 100 anos: A questão nacional no centenário da independência (Rio de Janeiro: Editora da Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1992), pp. 54–65.Google Scholar Motta follows the debate about the Morro do Castelo in the newspapers and shows that two competing versions of nationalism collided over the meaning of the Castelo and that the version that advocated a break with the colonial past won the debates. Teresa Meade shows that the destruction of the hill was part of a program to civilize Rio by removing the poor from downtown Rio to the outskirts of the city. Meade, Teresa, Civilizing Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City, 1889–1930 (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 173–174.Google Scholar

²² See Motta, A naçâo faz 100 anos; and Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio, Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar; also see Findling, John E. and Pelle, D., Historical Dictionary of World's Fairs and Expositions, 1851–1988 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990).Google Scholar

²³ Tenorio-Trillo, , Mexico at the World's Fairs, p. 200 Google Scholar; O Estado De São Paulo (1 September 1922).

²⁴ Pessoa, Epitácio de, Mensagens ao congresso, Obras Completas de Epitácio Pessoa (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1956), pp. 205, 418.Google Scholar

²⁵ O Estado de São Pauto (1 September 1922).

²⁶ Bulletin of the Pan American Union 54:5 (May 1922), p. 522; hereafter cited as PAN.

²⁷ PAN 54:5 (May 1922), p. 535.

²⁸ Rizzini, Irma, A assistência à infância, p. 178 Google Scholar; PAN 58:2 (February 1924), p. 207.

²⁹ For more than twenty years, Moncorvo Filho had contemplated the creation of a permanent Brazilian Children's Museum. He experimented with the museum in a National Exposition in 1908, where he won the Grand Prize, and at a Hygiene Exposition in 1909 where he won the Gold Medal. Finally, in 1922, the International Centennial Exposition provided the opportunity to establish the museum. Filho, Moncorvo, Histórico, pp. 372–374.Google Scholar

³⁰ Filho, Moncorvo, Histórico, pp. 366–369.Google Scholar Several expositions dedicated to child welfare followed in other countries: France, 1903; Belgium, 1905; England, 1912-1913; and United States, Denmark, and New Zealand. Filho, Moncorvo, Histórico, pp. 370–372.Google Scholar

³¹ Tenorio-Trillo, , Mexico at the World's Fairs, pp. 2 and 9.Google Scholar

³² Rizzini, Irma, A assistência à infência, p. 86.Google Scholar

³³ For a discussion of Moncorvo Filho's institutional and ideological models see Wads worth, James E., “Moncorvo Filho e o problema da infància: Modelos institucionals e ideológicos da assistência à infância no Brasil, Revista da História Brasileira: Infância e adolescência 19:37 (1999), pp. 103–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Filho, Moncorvo, Histórico, pp. 375–379 Google Scholar; PAN 56:4 (April 1923), p. 412 also produced a good description of the Museum.

³⁵ Guy, Donna, “The Pan American Child Congresses, 1916 to 1942: Pan Americanism, Child Reform and the Welfare State in Latin America,” Journal of Family History (July 1998), p. 273.Google Scholar

³⁶ PAN 55:5 (November 1922), p. 435.

³⁷ Faleiros, Vicente de Paulo, “Infância e processo político no Brasil,” in A arte de governar crianças, p. 62 Google Scholar; Rizzini, Irene, “Criança e menores,” p. 127 Google Scholar; Guy, , “The Pan American Child Congresses,” p. 280.Google Scholar

³⁸ Third American Child Congress: Rio de Janeiro—August 27-September 5, 1922—Organization and Conclusions Approved (Washington D.C.: Pan American Union, Congress and Conference Series no. 66, 1954), pp. 33–43; Departamento da Criançã, Primeiro Congresso Brasileiro de Protecção à Infância: Teses officiaes, memorias e conclusões. Boletim 7o (1924) (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Graphica Editora, 1925), pp. 241–251.

³⁹ For a discussion of the Republican symbolism employed in the 1920s see de Carvalho, José Murilo, Aformação das almas: O imaginário da república no Brasil (São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1990), pp. 11,81.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The meninas formosas presentation, however, warrants a lengthy analysis in its own right and would provide insights into gendered conceptualizations of relations between nation, child welfare, and the state. An article about the meninas formosas presentation was published in an article in Jornal do Commércio, November 16, 1922, which was reprinted in the bulletin for the First Brazilian Congress. For a brief analysis of the meninas formosas presentation see Wadsworth, James E., “Brasil en 1922, la niñez en primer plano: Nacionalismo, infancia, ya la ideologio del Estado Benefactor,” Infancia: Bulletin del Instituto Interamericano del Niño-OEA, tomo 68 no. 235 (Abril 1999): pp. 11–32.Google Scholar The Irmãs do Puríssimo Coração de Maria ran the asylum from which these girls came.

⁴¹ Pessoa, , Mensagens ao congresso, pp. 140–141,Google Scholar 302–303, 504–505.

⁴² Rizzini, Irma, “Meninos desvalidos e menores transviados: A trajetória da assistência pública até a Era Vargas,” in A arte de governar crianças, p. 273.Google Scholar For a discussion of this practice and the plight of Brazil's street children in the late 20th century see Dimenstein, Gilberto, Brazil: War on Children (London: Latin American Bureau, 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ Pessoa, , Mensagens ao congresso, pp. 140, 302.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Rizzini, Irma, “Meninos desvalidos e menores transviados: A trajetória da assistência pública até a Era Vargas,” in A arte de governar criunças, p. 271 Google Scholar; Netto, , Código de Menores, p. 109 Google Scholar; Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^°, p. 132.

⁴⁵ Rizzini, Irma, “Meninos desvalidos,” p. 272.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ The following account was taken from the Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^°, pp. 257–260.

⁴⁷ It would be interesting to analyze this competition between the Catholics and the Patronatos for allegories of tensions and overlaps between religious and secular conceptions of childhood and child welfare.

⁴⁸ The dollar value, which would have been $3,579,952, is based on a five-year moving average of the Free Exchange Rate of milreis per U.S. dollar based on the year 1927. The information on exchange rates was taken from Abreu, Marcelo de Paiva, ed., A ordem do progresso: Cem anos de política econômica republicana 1889–1989 (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus, 1990), p. 396. Ali future calculations are done in the same manner.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Netto, , Código de Menores, p. 109. .Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Barickman, B.J., “‘Tame Indians,’ ‘Wild Heathens,’ and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” The Americas 51:3 (January 1993), pp. 341–344.Google Scholar

⁵¹ This practice ended in 1870 due to increased popular opposition and to economic decline which reduced the need for labor. Meznar, Joan, “Orphans and the Transition from Slave to Free Labor in Northeast Brazil: The Case of Campina Grande, 1850–1888,” Journal of Social History (Spring 1994), pp. 499–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵² Eisenberg, Peter L., “A mentalidade dos fazendeiros no congresso agrícola de 1878,” in Amarai Lapa, José Roberto do (ed.). Modos de produção e realidade brasileira (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1980), pp. 181–183.Google Scholar

⁵³ Stein, Stanley, The Brazilian Cotton Manufacture: Textile Enterprise in an Underdeveloped Area, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 53–54, 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^°, pp. 99–100. See footnote #18.

⁵⁵ Meade, Civilizing Rio.

⁵⁶ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^° , p. 132.

⁵⁷ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^° , pp. 133–134; Magalhães was apparently quoting a certain M. Prins for the first part this passage who spoke these words in a talk at the First International Congress for the Protection of Childhood, in Brussels, Belgium in 1913.

⁵⁸ PAN 59:3 (March 1925), p. 312; PAN 54: 3 (March 1925), p. 415; PAN 61 : 1 (January 1927), p. 87,

⁵⁹ PAN 57:3 (September 1923), p. 299; PAN 59:3 (March 1925), pp. 312, 415; PAN 62:2 (February 1928), pp. 214–215.

⁶⁰ Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz, O espetáculo das raças: dentistas, instituições e questão racial no Brasil, 1970–1930 (São Paulo: Comparitila das Letras, 1993).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Sevcenko, Nicolau, “A capital irradiante: Técnica, ritmos e ritos do Rio,” in História da vida privada no Brasil, coordenador Nováis, Fernando A. (São Paulo: Editora Schwarcz, 1998), p. 578.Google Scholar

⁶² Donna Guy has discussed ways in which bourgeois feminist professionals participated in debates about child rights and how they differed from male professionals in their opinions about the goals and methods that should be employed in caring for children and their mothers in “The Politics of Pan American Cooperation: Maternalist Feminism and the Child Rights Movement, 1916–1960,” Gender & History: Special Issue on International Feminism 10:3 (November 1998), pp. 449–469.

⁶³ See Ramos, Donald, “Marriage and the Family in Colonial Vila Rica,” Hispanic American Historical Review 55:2 (May 1975), pp. 200–225;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Figueiredo, , de Almeida, Luciano Raposo, Barrocas Famílias: Vida familiar em Minas Gerais no sécula XVII (São Paulo: Editora Hucitec, 1997)Google Scholar; Kuznesof, Elizabeth Anne, Household Economy and Urban Development: São Paulo, 1765–1836 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986);Google Scholar Mattoso, Katia de Queiros, Família e sociedade na Bahia do século XIX (São Paulo: Corrupio, 1988);Google Scholar Metcalf, Alida, Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).Google Scholar Some scholars have recently challenged the notion that everywhere in Brazil consensual unions were the norm. See Vainfas, Ronaldo, Trópico dos pecados. Moral, sexualidade e Inquisição no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campas, 1989)Google Scholar; Corrêa, Mariza, “Repensando a família patriarcal brasileira,” in Colcha de retalhos: Estudos sobre a família no Brasil, ed., Suely, Maria Almeida, Kofesde, et al. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1982), pp. 13–38 Google Scholar; Faria, , de Castro, Sheila, A Colônia em movimento: Fortuna e Família no cotidiano colonial (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1998).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ For a discussion of how the Argentine government exerted control over the lives of poor families, see Guy, Donna J., “Lower-class Families, Women, and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Argentina,” Journal of Family History (Fall 1985), pp. 318–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁵ Departamento da Criança, Boletim 6^°, p. 245.

⁶⁶ Lewin, Linda, “Naturai and Spurious Children in Brazilian Inheritance Law from Colony to Empire: A Methodological Essay,” The Americas 48 (January 1992), pp. 363–365 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Moreira Alves, José Carlos,“A Panorama of Brazilian Civil Law from its Origins to the Present,” in A Panorama of Brazilian Law, eds. Dolinger, Jacob and Rosenn, Keith S. (North-South Center and Editora Esplanada, 1991), p. 107.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Further research must be done about alternative ideologies of child welfare presented at forums such as the centennial celebrations. Especially interesting are child welfare critiques and projects developed by feminists such as Maria Lacerda Moura, a radical feminist, school teacher, and writer from Minas Gérais who condemned marriage, attacked the church, and criticized the feminist movement for not addressing the needs and concerns of lower-class women. The four papers she presented at the First Brazilian Congress for the Protection of Childhood included scathing criticism of the child welfare ideologies and policies discussed in this essay. See Besse, , Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality, pp. 43,Google Scholar 44, 108–109, 121, 157, 179–180, 183, 240; Hahner, June, Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women's Rights in Brazil, 1850–1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990), pp. 83–86, 136–137, 152–155.Google Scholar