Arthur Reis´s nationalist heroic narrative as a representative of the defense of the Amazon by the Portuguese and Luso-Brazilians in A Amazônia e a Cobiça Internacional (1960s)

Abstract

This study analyzes Arthur Reis´s A Amazonia e a Cobiça Internacional (“The Amazon and International Greed”) as a heroic-nationalist narrative. We argue that the work has become a denunciation and at the same time a judgment about the greedy past of foreign peoples in relation to the Amazon. Arthur Reis consistently spoke in favor of the Portuguese and Luso Brazilians in their struggles to defend the region, considering them as true heroes. In this sense, the facts related to these actions are analyzed as relevant data for an objective historical research. Such data, after verified and proven, would reveal patriotic teachings to the Brazilian nation, especially in relation to the maintenance of our sovereignty over the Amazon in the mid-1960s.