Entre a cruz e o sigma: o integralismo de Plínio Salgado interpretado pela sociologia católica de Alceu Amoroso Lima (1932-1937)

Abstract

Alceu Amoroso Lima, also known as Tristão de Athayde, was one of the most important literary critics of modernism in the 1920s and became a significant figure in Brazilian history when he converted to Catholicism in 1928, when he assumed leadership positions in the Catholic intelligentsia. This work chooses as its object of study the stage of the intellectual's trajectory situated in the period immediately after his conversion, the 1930s, with an emphasis on the analysis of the controversial approximations that Amoroso Lima had with Plínio Salgado's integralism. Considering the ideological affinities between the integralist project and the project of Christian restoration of Brazilian society defended by Amoroso Lima in the period, as well as the significant distinctions between the institutional strategies of the Catholic Church and the Ação Integralista Brasileira (Brazilian Integralist Action), we sought to understand the dimension and the feelings of sympathy declared by the then leader of the Catholic laity to the most expressive expression of fascism in Brazil in the 1930s. The analysis of books, ecclesiastical documents, publications in the press and private correspondence indicates that the favorable nods given by Lima to integralism during the AIB's years of operation were simultaneously crossed by tactical pragmatism, faith convictions applied to politics, personal ties of intellectual sociability and the search for a corporatist nation project that would overcome both liberalism and socialism.