flag1 n. 1. A piece of cloth, usually rectangular, of distinctive color and design, used as a symbol, a standard, a signal, or an emblem. 2. National or other allegiance, as symbolized by a flag: ships of the same flag. 3. A ship carrying the flag of an admiral; a flagship. 4. A marking device, such as a gummed strip of paper, attached to an object to attract attention or ease identification; a tab. 5. The masthead of a newspaper.
Sunday afternoon. São Paulo frying at 38 degrees Celsius. My friend in Ibirapuera, stuck in the traffic jam of the Bienal, still with an article about a priest in his mind. In front of the State Legislature Building, the flag of São Paulo, at the top of the flagpole, swayed in the heat. He thought aloud: why thirteen stripes and not fourteen? I, who was sitting by his side, said: there is no answer to this question.
Feeling hot and curious, he looked at me and asked: what would you know about that?
I answered: my great grandfather was the creator of the flag of São Paulo.
The sudden braking of the car was abrupt that the priest of his next article, his briefcase and his next appointment were thrown out of his mind.
What’s the story, he asked, thinking of the fine he might get and asking himself what were those feathers he saw flying over his car.
Well, the story – which is the story of both the flag and of the author of the flag – I told my friend (ignoring the feathers that in fact belonged to a poor pigeon), is this:
The famous writer and grammarian Júlio Ribeiro idealized and published the flag of São Paulo (drawn by his cousin Amador Bueno do Amaral) for the first time in his newspaper “O Rebate”, on July 16, 1888, as a proposal for the Flag of the Republic that he wanted see promulgated in Brazil, and that was discarded in favour of of the positivist flag we now have. But it was adopted as the flag of the Province of São Paulo. Originally it had fifteen stripes and God knows why it was reduced to the present thirteen stripes made immortal by the poem of Guilherme de Almeida (considered by some, to this day, as its creator).
The second story, the one nobody knows, is this:
The full name of Júlio Ribeiro was Júlio César Ribeiro Vaugham. He was the son of an American from Virginia, whose grandfather had been a personal friend of George Washington, in whose homage he had named his son, George Washington Vaugham. This man, who was the father of Júlio Ribeiro, when he was eighteen, rounded some thoroughbred horses he had inherited and came to Brazil. When he was passing by the city of Sabará in Minas Gerais, he fell in love and got married. Many years later, with the son already grown, he left and disappeared in the world. People say he died in Africa. Júlio Ribeiro never forgave him for abandoning the family and this was the reason he stopped using his father’s name. But the resemblance of the flag of São Paulo and the American flag is far too visible for us to escape the temptation of trying our hand at psychohistory..
Ignoring the line of cars that had formed behind him, slowly, not to call attention, my friend parked his car. I thought of flagging him a taxi instead of risking his receiving a ticket but gave up when I thought there were too many flags in this story as it was already.
Sources: 1. Maria Júlia Pinheiro Lopes, granddaughter of Júlio Ribeiro. 2. Michaelis, Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, Melhoramentos, 1998.
