RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – By borrowing the heart of emperor D. Pedro I for the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of independence, the Brazilian government has created embarrassment among the guardians of the relic in Portugal.
At the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Lapa, in Porto, Portugal, in whose church the heart of the former emperor of Brazil has been kept since 1835, the subject is evaded. The same happens at the City Council, the city’s administrative headquarters. It is confirmed that “there have been contacts to request that the heart travels to Brazil,” but one avoids going beyond protocol declarations.
The heart of D. Pedro I – or D. Pedro IV to the Portuguese – is one of Porto’s greatest pride. A local hero, there is a monument in honor of the former emperor of Brazil at the Praça da Liberdade on Aliados Avenue.
In the 10-meter high bronze statue, D. Pedro is mounted on a horse, with the City Hall in the background. He became an icon of freedom when he led the liberals to victory against the absolutists (led by his brother D. Miguel) in a civil war between 1832 and 1834. Porto sided with D. Pedro at the time and resisted a siege by D. Miguel’s forces for 13 months. It is because of this victory that, until today, the city is called “undefeated”.
In gratitude for the fight of the people of Porto, D. Pedro expressed in his will that his heart should be kept in the city – the bones were to be sent to Brazil, which would only happen in 1972, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of independence. Although the former emperor had not mentioned the Lapa Church as the depository of his vital organ, it was decided to keep it there at the request of his daughter, the Queen of Portugal Dona Maria – it was in that church that her father attended military masses.
With so much history – and affective memory – involving D. Pedro and Porto, the Porto authorities’ attachment to the heart of the man they consider the greatest of heroes is understandable. And although they prefer to remain elegantly silent, everything indicates that there is, among the authorities, a fear that Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gonçalves Mendes expresses in no uncertain terms: “I’m afraid they will lose the heart,” he says. “I understand the symbolism; it was D. Pedro who proclaimed the independence of Brazil. But it’s a government that lets the National Museum burn down, the Cinematheque, that doesn’t take care of its most precious assets, lets everything detonate.”
PORTO’S GREATEST TREASURE
Director of the award-winning film “José e Pilar,” Mendes was the last person to film and photograph the heart of D. Pedro I, in 2015, during the recording of “O Sentido da Vida,” a film and series produced in partnership with the Brazilian O2 Filmes. In the piece, scheduled to premiere in 2023, a young Brazilian takes a trip around the world to follow the route of the Portuguese navigators who, in the 16th century, spread familial paramyloidosis, of which he is a carrier. Known as “foot disease”, the pathology causes loss of sensation in the feet and legs, in a progression that leads to death about ten years after the first symptoms. Giovane Brisotto, the young man in the film, passed away in 2018 at the age of 31.
At the time, Miguel Gonçalves Mendes got permission from the City Council to open the vault where D. Pedro I’s organ is stored under five keys, literally. He wanted to record a scene where Giovane contemplated the heart; a shapeless, pale, spongy-looking mass dipped in formaldehyde in a transparent glass container. The mayor, Rui Moreira (still in office), participated in the filming, conducting a ceremony to celebrate freedom. “D. Pedro’s heart is the greatest treasure of Porto,” said Moreira during the recording.
Director of “A viagem de Pedro”, which has just premiered in Portugal, Brazilian Laís Bodanzky was recently in the Lapa church in Porto and heard from scientists responsible for preserving the heart that the relic may cease to exist if it is sent to Brazil. “It is a very fragile organ isolated from light and handling. It is like a piece of bread soaked in a liquid. At any movement, it falls apart,” says Bodanzky, who classifies the loan request as a “farce.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” says the filmmaker, who delved into the life of D. Pedro I to produce the film, whose narrative centers on his return to Portugal in 1831. “First because of the physical question. Second, because the heart is in Porto at his own request,” she says. For Bodanzky, this is a situation contrary to what happened in 1972, during the presidency of General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, when the former emperor’s bones were transferred to Brazil. “It was necessary for this to happen to meet D. Pedro I’s request”.
However, she does not consider it a coincidence that the transfer was made during a military government. “The current government flirts with military ideals. Borrowing the heart is a “ufanistic” and superficial way of celebrating the 200 years of an independence that, in fact, never happened. We may no longer be a colony of Portugal, but we are still a colony.”
A NEEDLE IN THE HEART
The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) confirmed that the “Itamaraty has begun talks with Portuguese authorities to examine the possibility of temporarily transferring D. Pedro I’s heart to Brazil, in the context of the celebrations of the bicentennial of Independence.” It informed that the “talks are ongoing” with the Chamber and the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Lapa, but did not answer the question about the plans for the heart – if it will be exposed in some public or private ceremony, for example.
Despite the official request, the subject has not yet entered the agenda of Invicta’s politicians. “This discussion has not existed in the context of the municipal bodies,” Susana Constante Pereira, a member of the Left Bloc party in the Porto Municipal Assembly, said. In the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Lapa, requests for information on the subject are delayed for reasons ranging from lack of time to vacations of those responsible for the institution. Historian Francisco Ribeiro da Silva, the Brotherhood’s culture clerk, denied the request for an interview categorically.
Francisco Ribeiro da Silva is the author of the text fixed in Dom Pedro’s mausoleum in the Lapa church. In it, the historian highlights the “reciprocal and deep empathy that led the king of Portugal and emperor of Brazil to donate his heart to the city of Porto”. Although he refuses to publicly comment on the matter, the idea of making the relic cross the ocean does not sound reasonable to the mesary. In 2013, he had expressed annoyance at the request of a group of Brazilian scientists that the heart is sent to Brazil for studies.
One of the scientists involved in the project was the pathologist Paulo Saldiva, a professor at the University of São Paulo School of Medicine. Saldiva intended to extract a millimeter-sized sample of the organ to investigate the cause of death of the former emperor (Chagas disease, tuberculosis, or heart disease were the most common hypotheses considered).
At the time, Francisco Ribeiro da Silva reported to the Lusa news agency the fears that the undertaking would damage the organ. “It’s fragile, and it’s many years old. The operations are very complex, it all stirs up a lot, and we’re afraid of a bad outcome.” Paulo Saldiva’s project did not prosper, but, faced with the possibility of the heart being in Brazil soon, he nurtures the idea of trying, again, to proceed to withdraw the sample for the study. “We would be able to do the exam without destroying the organ at all, with biopsy needles,” he says.
Although he fears that the commemorations for the bicentennial serve as a political platform for the current government, Paulo Saldiva does not consider that the transfer puts the organ’s physical integrity at risk. “Heart transportation is what happens in every transplant program worldwide.” The fact that the material is almost two centuries old, according to him, does not make it so fragile that it should remain in storage. “It is not an expensive operation and, theoretically, does not involve risks. The airlines have aircraft with specific compartments for transporting organs.”
In a rare demonstration on the subject to the Portuguese press, the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, said he was in no hurry to deal with the issue. Faced with words like fires, losses, needles, and extractions, he might be advised to postpone the decision until the 300 years of independence.
With information from UOL