IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 49

with historic sovereignty. Unlike the 1976 Constitution, the 1940 one was a Constitution created
from native, historic and cultural elements, with
only external influences that refer to fundamental
freedoms, which actually gave it its origin. The
1940 Constitution emerges at a time when direct
political influence on the republican system that
came from the Platt Amendment was declining.
This Amendment’s effects, imposed by the
United States in 1902, began to disappear when
the external geostrategic restrictions over our Republic’s institutions began to decline.
To the contrary, the origin of the 1976 Constitution must be situated on the 1936 Soviet model,
which has nothing to do with our history, or cultural or political reality. It involved or brought
back the consideration of foreign powers, such as
restrictions that were placed on our institutionalism. In this sense, there was a clear reminder of
this in the 1976 Constitution’s preamble, which
began by thanking the former Soviet Union for
our very existence.
The participants situate the advantages of the
1940 Constitution over the New Constitutionalism in the fact that the latter would, in essence,
mean starting from zero, with no referential tools.
This would essentially stifle debate or derail it,
and necessarily cau se it to end up in some sort of

constitutional platform. To avoid this, it would be
better not to fool ourselves, not to pretend that we
can invent something new regarding something
that we can only innovate, at most. We must start
with the best point of departure we have: the Constitution of 1940.
The Constitution of 1976
The participants also expressed themselves regarding the Constitution of 1976. Some can’t see
how it would be possible to propose constitutional changes using current legal mechanisms;
others believe there is no other option but to appeal to current legislation because it is the only
way to guarantee legal changes in the law, even
through they did not approve of the current Constitution.
Yet others focus on the fact that we should consider the non-ideological nature of a Constitution
that sees itself as democratic. For them, the defining line be