Portuguese participation in the Seventh International Congresses on Tropical Medicine and Malaria in 1963: the defense in Brazil of Portuguese overseas policy in times of decolonization

Abstract

 This article aims to address the relationship between Portuguese and Brazilian tropicalist doctors in the context of the struggle for decolonization of Portugal’s territories in Africa, having as its object of analysis the Portuguese participation in the Seventh International Congresses on Tropical Medicine and Malaria, in September 1963 in Rio de Janeiro. At the beginning of the 1960s, the war began against Portuguese colonial rule in Angola and Portugal, increasingly isolated in the UN, was the target of international pressure for not recognizing the principle of self-determination of the people in its colonies. During this period, an important turning point also occurred in Brazil’s official stance: full support for Lisbon’s overseas cause, manifested in the 1950s, gave way to a more critical stance towards colonialism following the Quadros’s and Goulart’s governments. However, for Salazar’s authoritarian regime, which had chosen Gilberto Freyre’s lusotropicalism as the theoretical basis of foreign policy guided by Lisbon, the realignment of Brazil with Portugal on the colonial issue was expected. In this context, the Congresses on Tropical Medicine and Malaria took place. Through the survey and analysis of a documentary corpus – consisting of works published in the annals of congresses, newspapers from the Portuguese colony domiciled in Brazil, correspondence and reports received by the Ministry of Overseas – I seek to demonstrate how contact between Brazilian and Portuguese doctors contributed to the 1963 congress, in addition to being an important forum for technical-scientific debates, was also used as a space to promote Portugal’s “civilizing mission” that Portugal claimed to carry out in Africa and Asia, at a time when criticism against Portuguese colonialism was growing. Thus, this original article, by addressing the dimension of the political use of a medical congress, aims to offer a contribution to the historiography of tropical medicine and the thematic axis of this edition of the Annals of IHMT – One Health: new historical insights after pandemics.