Brazilian eugenics and its international connections: An analysis based on the controversies between renato kehl and edgard roquette-pinto, 1920-1930

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the dialogue and exchanges between Brazilian eugenicists and their counterparts abroad in the early decades of the twentieth century. Through an examination of Renato Kehl’s and Edgard Roquette- Pinto’s eugenics projects and the controversies between these two leaders of the eugenics movement in Brazil, I investigate their contact with the movements in countries like the United States, Germany, England, Sweden, and Norway and show that the ties that the two researchers maintained with socalled mainline eugenic thought were broader and more extensive than first believed. The result was the shaping of different brands of Brazilian eugenics, expanding the international circulation of ideas and extrapolating the borders of “Latin eugenics.”.