Is it out of fashion to speak badly of Brazil?

Recent achievements by Brazilian athletes and artists have helped bolster national pride. However, the idea of the country's inferiority compared to developed nations persists in the popular imagination. "This country isn't moving forward because the people don't like to work; they're lazy." This is the quote from businesswoman Odete Roitman, played by actress Débora Bloch in the remake of the soap opera "Vale Tudo" on TV Globo. The actress has stated that the villain embodies the inferiority complex by underestimating everything national. For the author of the new version of the series, Manuela Dias, speaking negatively about the country "is overdone."

In 1958, writer Nelson Rodrigues coined this trait of inferiority embedded in Brazilian culture. In his column "In the Shadow of the Immortal Boots," published in Manchete magazine, the author describes Brazilians as "a reverse narcissist, who spits on his own image." However, he argued that this "lack of self-confidence" was overcome when the men's national soccer team won its first World Cup title against Sweden, after defeating other European teams.

However, experts interviewed by DW state that this pessimism about Brazil still lingers in the country's imagination, which oscillates between periods of greater and lesser emphasis. While the criticisms embodied by Odete Roitman in 1988 and 2025 still resonate with the public, the recognition of Brazilian athletes and artists in international competitions and awards shows that they are rekindling national pride.

This was the case with gymnast Rebeca Andrade, who won the gold medal at the Paris Olympics, and in May of this year, Hugo Calderano, who took silver at the table tennis world championships. In the cinema, Walter Salles's "I'm Still Here" won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" won the Palme d'Or for Best Actor and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

Economy of inferiority

Gilberto Maringoni, a researcher at the Federal University of ABC (UFABC), points out that while culture and sports offer encouragement, they are insufficient to justify these moments of greater euphoria. He recalls that, during the 1958 World Cup, the country was experiencing a period of economic growth, with the construction of Brasília and the push for industrialization.

However, since the 1980s, the country has experienced periods of hyperinflation and unemployment, and industry has increasingly reduced its share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). "The economy is constantly in a state of flux, with jerks and fits, and can't take off. When we need to import technology, the underlying idea is that we're incapable of producing it, which reinforces the idea that everything foreign is better. Or when the country focuses on exporting commodities, it's as if it can't produce sophisticated goods, but Brazil has the capacity to invent them."

A survey released by the consulting firm AtlasIntel in April showed that 44% of Brazilians believe the job market is poor. Another 37% said their family's economic situation is unfavorable. Furthermore, they cited crime and drug trafficking, corruption, and inflation as the country's biggest problems. Therefore, economist Eduardo Giannetti says that by 2025, Brazil will be in the middle of the spectrum between feelings of inferiority and self-esteem.

"Brazil experienced a moment of near euphoria at the end of Lula's second term, when there was a very promising path of economic growth with the growth of the middle class. Now, it is unlikely that the country will have a strong sense of confidence when the economy is not doing well," he said.

For Giannetti, this pessimism is related to the economic and academic elite's view of the country. "According to this view, we are a poorly crafted copy of modern civilization in Europe and the United States, which disregards Brazil as a cultural option for a way of life more focused on human relationships than on consumption, technology, or efficiency."

Colonial roots

For researchers, this discourse of Brazilian inferiority is tied to the country's formation since colonization and the miscegenation of Europeans, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans. "To force a slave to work, it wasn't enough to have a whip and chain; it was necessary to convince them that they were inferior and worthless. This instilled the inferiority complex in the people, whether by the colonizer or the ruling classes," explains Maringoni.

According to the researcher, after the abolition of slavery in 1888, the immigration of European workers to Brazil "increased the perception of the mongrel through the idea of whitening." He notes that intellectuals of the time, such as Nina Rodrigues and Silvio Romero, relied on notions of scientific racism to justify Brazil as an inferior country due to its ethnic mix.

Eduardo Giannetti says this perspective contributed to the cultural identification with pessimism. "But it seems highly misleading to me to call this feeling of inferiority a mongrel complex," he asserts. "Why choose the mongrel as the worst thing we have? The mongrel is miscegenation. There is an implicit subtext in this metaphor that the pure is superior to the mixed. I consider this very serious; it denotes racial discrimination. The true mongrel complex is the idea that there is something wrong with being a mongrel."

Overcoming viralism

Just as in the colonial past, the idea of the inferiority of the Brazilian people persists today. For philosopher Marcia Tiburi, those who carry the inferiority complex are not the populations targeted by this narrative, but rather the dominant social classes. "This humiliation is a political technology used by those in power, who are also the masters of violence, in a colonized, patriarchal, and racist country like ours, to exploit the poorest, women, and Black people."

She emphasizes that, over time, the repetition of these ideas by intellectuals and members of a social and academic elite has led to their being taken as truth. "For example, this idea has been created that Brazilians don't work. Anyone who has lived in Europe knows how hard Brazilians work. These are statements that work through repetition and create this truth that dominates subjectivity as a whole."

However, Tiburi notes that the target groups of those who reproduce the "mongrel complex" discourse have begun to organize themselves into social movements, such as the Black and feminist movements, to dissociate themselves from a negative stereotype. "Populations that were once humiliated are overcoming their humiliation through social movements, through which people gain awareness. Today, we see a Black population proud of itself in Brazil."

To overcome the feeling that the country has failed, experts believe that more than a change in mindset is needed; it's necessary to provide better living conditions for the population, such as education, transportation, security, and basic sanitation. Official data highlights challenges such as 29% functional illiteracy, lack of access to sewage in 37.5% of homes, and persistent food insecurity in 27.6% of households.

"We face a range of practical challenges that the country has long failed to address with the necessary decisiveness," says Giannetti. "I think the symbolic agenda is just as important as a more down-to-earth agenda. Oswaldo de Andrade poses the question: Tupi or not Tupi? That is the question. I think the answer is Tupi and not Tupi. Let's absorb the essential elements of modern Western culture, in its important aspects, such as medicine and technology, but without losing what distinguishes us as a culture endowed with originality."