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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 a 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.
Background
The term was originally coined by novelist and writer Nelson Rodrigues, initially referring to the trauma suffered by Brazilians in 1950 when the national football team was defeated by Uruguay's national team in the final match of the 1950 World Cup, which was held at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro. The estimated 200,000 spectators at the stadium that day were stunned into an eerie silence after the match concluded, some so distraught they committed suicide inside the stadium.[1] Brazil would recover, at least when it comes to football, in 1958, winning the World Cup for the first of five times.[2]
For Rodrigues, the phenomenon was not exclusively related to sport. According to him:[3]
By "Mongrel Complex" I mean the inferiority in which Brazilians place themselves, voluntarily, when they compare themselves to the rest of the world. Brazilians are the backward Narcissus, who spits in his own image. Here is the truth: we cannot find any personal or historical pretexts for self-esteem.
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 use 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.[4]
—Larry Rohter
8/24/2025, 6:39:04 AM
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