O “tipo racial” do presidente: branquitude e política externa nas páginas da grande imprensa brasileira (1990-1992)

This article examines how the mainstream Brazilian press constructed racialized framings of President Fernando Collor de Mello in his conduct of foreign policy, mobilizing, around his figure, signs of whiteness thatwere presented as symbolic capital in Brazil's international insertion. The documentary corpus used in the research consisted of the magazine Manchete and the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and O Globo, sources that were subjected to the Content Analysis method. We observed that the signs of whiteness attributed to the president forged the image of a "Europeanized" leader, representative of a modernity that had color and origin: white and European. But it would not only be racial, it would also be economic, since it was associated with European-style neoliberalism (whose implementation in Brazil would "modernize" the country). Collor would therefore be the counterpoint to a backward Brazil and, at the same time, a link between the country and the "modern" First World, especially the European continent, framed as the stage of development to be achieved, an economic and racial paradigm.