fact that Brazil already had a very large mixed-race population. Nina Rodrigues’ confusion about how racial superiority works outside of a racial binary demonstrates this thought. Even at the time slavery was abolished in 1888, 6 percent of all marriages were interracial. This means that, at some level, racial barriers had already been broken down, making it difficult to institute hardline eugenics policies like segregation or racial sterilization. Others argue that the large presence of Catholicism in Brazil may have saved the country from harsher racial policies.“The broad influence of Catholicism in Brazil and the rest of Latin America constrained eugenicists’ interventions in discussions on marriage restrictions and human reproduction. In the eyes of Catholic intellectuals, these were matters of a moral and religious nature and as such not open to political or medical intervention; this kept them from making any more radical proposals such as eugenic sterilization” (From: Sebastião de Souza, Vanderlei (December 2016). "Brazilian Eugenics and Its International Connections: an Analysis Based on the Controversies between Renato Kehl and Edgard Roquette-Pinto, 1920-1930") The Policy of Racial Whitening Racial whitening, or "whitening" (branqueamento), is an ideology that was widely accepted in Brazil between 1889 and 1914, as the solution to the "Negro problem." . Amidst discussions of eugenics and the country's demographics hindering its development, the first Brazilian Republic decided to institute a policy of “whitening” wherein it would try to dilute the black population and drive out all signs of African culture. This was done by incentives encouraging immigrants from Europe to come and skew demographics along with suppression of African and Indigenous culture all in an effort to erase the presence of blacks from Brazil. The policy lasted until 1910 and because of it the percentage of whites in Brazil jumped from 34 percent in 1870 to 64 percent in 1940.The idea of racial whitening has become such a prevalent idea that Spanish artist Modesto Brocos painted A Redenção de Cam (Cam's Redemption). The work addressed the controversial racial policy based on eugenics and depicted the phenomenon of gradual whitening of the population over generations. Shifting Views on Race 1910-1920s The end of European immigration in 1910 meant the resurfacing of fears among Brazil elite about the “blackening” of the Brazilian population. Suggestions about increasing immigration of Afro- North Americans sparked contentious debates inside and outside of the eugenics community. One such person who was troubled by