Page:Artificial Indigenous Place Names in Brazil.pdf/6



With the advent of Modernism in Brazil, which began with the Week of Modern Art in 1922, the Indians of the past once again became a basic cultural reference for the aesthetic and cultural renewal that was intended. An environment was formed that was propitious to the studies of the Brazilian indigenous languages of historical importance, mainly ancient Tupi and Nheengatu. This was also explained by the emergence of nationalist ideologies in the West. In Brazil, Getúlio Vargas' rise to power in 1930 was the beginning of a historical phase marked by great political and economic nationalism. The Vargas Era was, in fact, a time when toponyms of indigenous origin were abundantly created in the country. In fact, Decree-Law N. 5,901 of 21 October 1943 established norms for the "elimination in the country of the repetition of toponyms of cities and towns". Article 7 III of this decree-law stated the following:

As new toponyms, date designations, foreign words, names of living persons, expressions composed of more than two words should be avoided, but the adoption of indigenous or other locally owned names is recommended. (DIÁRIO OFICIAL DA UNIÃO, 1943, p. 15750, our translate)

Thus, in compliance with such a decree, many municipalities had their names replaced in the following year, many of them with Tupi names.

Still in the Vargas Era, in 1935, the Tupi language began to be taught in the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters of the University of São Paulo. In that year, Tupi and Toponymy became part of the curriculum of the Geography course. The first regent of such subjects was Plínio Ayrosa, an engineer and independent researcher who had been giving lectures at the Centro do Professorado Paulista for some time and who, by virtue of the appointment he had achieved, was invited by the rector of the new university to create the aforementioned courses. In the 1940s, new initiatives similar to this one would appear in Brazil. Old Tupi courses were created at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (under the regency of Father Antônio Lemos Barbosa), at the University of Bahia (with Frederico Edelweiss as its first professor) and at the University of Paraná (with Mansur Guérios).

Thus, for two decades, tupinological studies dominated in universities that began to maintain courses in indigenous languages. Such was the vogue of such studies that, during Getúlio Vargas' second government, from 1950 to 1954, a bill was passed in the National Congress that made the Tupi language a compulsory subject in all the faculties of Letters in DOI logo.svg http://dx.doi.org/10.35572/rlr.v9i2.1700 257