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"Mongrel complex", or alternatively "mutt complex" (Portuguese: complexo de vira-lata, lit.'street dog complex, mutt complex, stray dog complex'), is an expression that refers to a feeling of "collective inferiority complex" reportedly felt by many Brazilians when comparing Brazil and its culture to other parts of the world.
Writing in the 1950s, the playwright Nelson Rodrigues saw his countrymen as afflicted with a sense of inferiority, and he coined a phrase that Brazilians now used to describe it: "the mongrel complex". Brazil has always aspired to be taken seriously as a world power by the heavyweights, and so it pains Brazilians that world leaders could confuse their country with Bolivia, as Ronald Reagan once did, or dismiss a nation so large – it has 180 million people – as "not a serious country", as Charles de Gaulle did.
The idea that the Brazilian people are inferior to others or "degenerate" is not novel and dates back to the 19th century, when French nobleman Arthur de Gobineau visited Rio de Janeiro in 1845 and described the city's residents as "unbelievably ugly monkeys".
In 1903, Lobato reveals himself to be profoundly pessimistic about the potential of the Brazilian people, by him thus defined:
>Brazil, son of inferior parents – destitute of these strongest characters that imprint an unmistakable stamp in certain individuals, such as it happens to the German, the English, grew up sadly – resulting in a worthless kind, incapable of continuing to self develop without the vivifying assistance of the blood of some original race.
Aside from the mixed origin, Brazilians supposedly would suffer from the fact they live in the tropics, where the "hot and humid climate would predispose inhabitants to sloth and lust" (another thesis that was held dear at the time, geographical determinism, alleged that the true civilizations can only develop in temperate climates).
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No.149295933
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