This paper investigates how Brazil should be placed inside the field of postcolonial studies. This country is rarely mentioned in the textbooks of this field, even in a Latin American context. This could be due to its process of colonization, to its singularity in America (being the only Portuguese colony) or to its unique decolonizing process. Albeit Brazil has followed some of the steps defined by postcolonial authors to describe former colonies of Africa, Asia and Latin America, my research shows how Darcy Ribeiro is a fundamental source of knowledge that allows a postcolonial reading of Brazilian literature. Based on his studies about indigenous culture, this work builds the idea that Brazilian national liberation was achieved in the early years of the 20th century with the anthropophagic movement. It uses one of the most important lines of the Anthropophagic Manifesto (