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To what extent was the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) able to serve as an instance of legitimization of the military dictatorship established in Brazil after the 1964 coup? This article aims to examine a specific aspect of the daily life of this institution during the military dictatorship: the investiture ceremonies. We believe that this approach allows us to analyze how politics could operate “apolitically” within the ABL. We argue that ceremonies may have become political events because it showed, first of all, the proximity and networks of sociability between the conservative intelligentsia and the regime. Secondly, we identified the transmission of values in some speeches that were, at that time, those of the conservative environment. The examination of the investiture ceremonies indicates that the ABL contributed to legitimize the regime which was established in Brazil in 1964. However, this legitimization did not take place through an open “collaboration”, but by the behavior of all its members, their proximity to the representatives of the regime and the diffusion and circulation of a conservative discourse.

This article presents the result of a research on the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) during the military dictatorship. It aims to analyse to what extent this supposedly apolitical institution served as an instance of legitimation for the regime. The article examines the way the “immortals” sought to build a memory of the “heroes of the Nation”. In doing so, they extolled important values to the regime as civility and patriotism. The option for this perspective allowed to restore the complexity and ambiguity of the relations between the ABL and the regime established in Brazil in 1964.

Este ensayo examina los argumentos de una corriente de intelectuales conservadores que a lo largo de los años treinta y cuarenta articuló una crítica a la Revolución Mexicana invocando el espíritu de la hispanidad.Los grandes ejes de su crítica fueron los siguientes: recuperar los elementos arraigados en la tradición española que habían definido originalmente a México como nación; impedir la erosión de las jerarquías en un momento en que las masas estaban siendo demagógicamente invitadas a participar en la vida política;finalmente, oponer claras barreras a la influencia norteamericana y al protestantismo. Esta reflexión crítica se acompañó de una propuesta de mestizaje dominada por el elemento criollo, opuesta a aquella que estaba siendo impulsada a través del indigenismo y la mestizofilia oficiales. Abstract This article examines the arguments of a group of conservative intellectuals who throughout the 1930s and 1940s articulated a critique to the Mexican Revolution by invoking the spirit of Hispanidad. The core ideas of their critique were the following: to recover elements rooted in the Spanish tradition that originally defined Mexico as a nation; to prevent the weakening of hierarchies at a time when the masses were being demagogically called to participate in political life; and finally to close the way to the North American influence and to Protestantism. This critical reflection was accompanied by a new vision of mestizaje (racial hybridization), in which the creole element would be dominant, in opposition to the one which was being driven by indigenism and the official mestizofilia.