From September 1922 to July 1923, the Republic of Brazil commemorated the 100-year anniversary of Prince Dom Pedro I's September 7, 1822 proclamation of independence from Portugal. Held in the country's capital of Rio de Janeiro, the organizers of Brazil's Centennial Exposition aimed to take the focus off of the monarchical roots of Brazil's independence by emphasizing various aspects of their vision of the country's push toward modernity, including the industrialization of the economy, the influx of European immigrants, and improvements in the transportation, education, and public health infrastructures of the country's chief metropolitan centers. Far from uncontroversial, this aspirational view of Brazil had many detractors who argued that such a narrow focus left no place in the country's future for its poor, laboring, rural, agricultural, and non-European communities. Marked by a wealth of debate in Brazil's artistic and academic circles -- most notably São Paulo's Semana de Arte Moderna -- the year 1922 also saw the beginning of a surge in military uprisings which would continue until the end of the First Republic.

The United States joined 15 other foreign countries with pavilions at the Centennial Exposition. Several facts point to the importance the United States place on its participation in the Centennial Exposition. The United States Commission to the Brazil Centennial Exposition included suffragist Henrietta Livermore, and diplomats J. Butler Wright and Richard Paul Momsen, the latter the founder of the American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil. Congress devoted one million dollars to its contribution to the Centennial Exposition, which included displays on the work of many of its government agencies and industries, including the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Bureau of Mines, the War Department and the Library of Congress. The Centennial Exposition in Rio de Janeiro even merited a visit from Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, who used the occasion to meet with Brazil's president Epitácio Pessoa, who himself had visited the United States in 1919.

Brazil's Centennial Exposition marks an important landmark in the "special relationship" between the United States in Brazil. The event had widespread success in promoting a vision of a modernizing Brazil in the United States. The September 28, 1922 edition of the Albuquerque Morning Journal called the newly-constructed Avenida Rio Branco "one of the world's finest and most conspicuous examples of the modernized city street" and further judged that "while Brazil cannot claim a place among the great manufacturing nations, the progress made in this line of activity during recent years has been remarkable". As planned, the pavilion of the United States became the site of the American embassy, located on what is now the Avenida Presidente Wilson. Finally, the Centennial Exposition contributed to commercial relations between the two countries, which would continue to flourish and grow for decades.

Key events

• Exposição do Centenario do Brasil (1922-1923 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Key figures 

• Hughes, Charles Evans, 1862-1948
• Livermore, Henrietta W. (Henrietta Wells), 1864-
• Momsen, Richard Paul, 1890-
• Pessoa, Epitácio, 1865-1942

Key groups 

• United States. Commission to the Brazil Centennial Exposition

Key subjects 

• Brazil--History--Declaration of Independence, 1822--Centennial celebrations, etc
• Urban renewal--Brazil--Rio de Janeiro--History