Paper short abstract:

This work seeks to think about how the Portuguese Imperialist logic used the native brazilan women's bodies to justify not only the geographic colonization of a virgin and uncivilized land, but also to justify a mestizo loving connection which validates the desire for the patriarchal order.

Paper long abstract:

In the Western tradition, the genders do not occupy the same positions in national beliefs, being experienced by men and women in a hierarchical manner. In the Brazilian case, the nationalist imaginary seems to have been constructed from a indinaistic woman's representation who has in the character "Iracema" its greatest exponent. She is the starting point of the tradition started by the Portuguese Empire who built the description of the new land to be deflowered begining by the native woman to be conquered and filled by the colonizer's speeches. She is the porno-tropic myth that defines the center and gives meaning to the Portuguese Empire, the white male colonizer and the series of ideologies that diminishes women within the patriarchal paradigm. Her connection with the Portuguese man it's the base of the Brazilian mestizo nation, legitimizing the romance that creates/reflects the history of the country and validates the loving connection, being difficult to separate political ethics from erotic passion, nationalism and intimate sensitivity. In this sense, love and nation work by colonizing women's subjectivity on two levels: within the patriarchal speech and within the imperialist logic. The geographical spaces are therefore transformed in sexual areas. In Brazil, women's bodies were constructed as a limit, boundary of the cosmos and of the known world, where the European tradition eroticized the Brazilian women as exotics, a symbol of underdeveloped lands and with the need to be inseminated by superior civilizations, understanding the gender as crucial to maintain the security of the imperial logic.