Good men for tomorrow: racial and republican thoughts in “A Ilha”, from Virgilio Várzea

Abstract

This article analyses the book Santa Catarina, A Ilha, writen by Virgílio Várzea (1863-1941). The main objective is understand the political and social meanings of his ideologic and racial statements. To do that, Virgílio Várzea’s ideas and opinions will be analysed in the original historical context of emission, that was the public debate about the racial viability of a “Brazilian nation”, recurrent subject in the end of the nineteenth century.