Brazil in Focus: A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture [Lingua Inglese] - Brossura

Rocha, Jan

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1899365001 ISBN 13: 9781899365005

Casa editrice: Latin Amer Bureau, 1997

Riassunto

Brazil is depicted as a land of global superlatives, boasting the best football, the largest rainforest, and the world's worst social and economic inequality. It's vibrant culture is best known for Carnival and samba and attracts thousands of visitors each year. The Carnival capital of Rio also showcases Brazil's contrasts, as the shanty towns of the dispossesed cling to the mountainsides overlooking the beach playgrounds of the rich.Brazil In Focus is an authorative and up-to-date guide to the giant of Latin America. It explores: - The history: Slavery and the sugar economy as a Portuguese colony; the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas; the military government from 1964-85 and the return to democracy.- The people: The "social apartheid" of extreme inequality; discrimination against Afro-Brazilian and Indians; the women's movement; street children and child labor; Christian and African religions.- The politics: Political parties and the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso; the popular movements of the shanty towns and peasant villages.- The economy: Brazil's historical role as a supplier of raw materials to the rich nations of the North; Industrialization after the Second World War; the debt of the 1980s; economic policy under President Cardoso.- The Amazon and the environment: Myths and legends of the Amazon; economic development and its impact on the environment; urban pollution. - The culture: Carnival and samba; Brazilian literature, cinema and architecture; soccer; gambling; the mass media and food.- Where to go and what to see: Must-see landmarks and historical sites as well as the authors expert tips on how to get the most out of a brief visit.Brazil In Focus is one on a series of guides covering the countries of South and Central America and the Caribbean.

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Brazil

A Guide to the People, Politics and Culture

By Jan Rocha

Practical Action Publishing Ltd

Copyright © 2000 Jan Rocha
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-899365-00-5

Contents

Introduction, 4, 
1 History, 5, 
2 Society, 20, 
3 Politics, 37, 
4 The Economy, 45, 
5 Amazon and Environment, 53, 
6 Culture, 61, 
Brazil in 2000, 71, 
Where to Go, What to See, 75, 
Tips for Travelers, 78, 
Addresses and Contacts, 80, 
Further Reading and Bookstores, 81, 
Facts and Figures, 82, 

CHAPTER 1

HISTORY

Exploring the unknown world in their cramped craft, the Portuguese navigators were the astronauts of the fifteenth century. At Sagres, a medieval NASA built on the westernmost tip of Portugal, they perfected new navigation instruments, developed modern map-making, and calculated the circumference of the world, when officially it was still flat. In the medieval spice race, Portugal and Spain competed to find new, faster routes to the Indies, pushing back the frontiers of the known world. The monotonous European diet craved spices – pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon – not only for their flavor, but because they were invaluable for preserving meat during the winter. Tea, sugar, chocolate, potatoes, and coffee were still unknown.

In 1500 a fleet of Portuguese ships on its way to the East round the Cape ofGood Hope, commanded by Pedro Alvares Cabral, was blown off course and sighted land: by accident, Europe had "discovered" Brazil. Baptized the "Land of the True Cross" (Terra da Vera Cruz), the new land at first seemed disappointing: no gold or silver in sight, just lots of friendly natives, fruit, and forests. The only commercially viable product was a reddish wood. Because of its color they called it cinderwood, pau brasa, and so the new land became Brasil (in Portuguese), or Brazil (in English). A few trading posts were set up, but it was an inauspicious beginning to a country which would eventually supply the gold to finance Britain's Industrial Revolution, the rubber that made possible the motorcar, and which would feed the world with sugar and coffee. Brazilwood quickly gave way to sugar. Sugar plantations needed labor but the Indians who had welcomed the white man to their land were hunters and gatherers and resisted recruitment. Peaceful co-existence was over.

Indians and Slaves

Slaving expeditions were organized, and the hunters became the hunted. Nobody really knows how many million Indians there were when the Europeans arrived, but today there are just over 300,000 left. The Catholic missionaries who had come with the Portuguese explorers and settlers had a problem. Could the Indians be enslaved if they had souls? Did they have souls if they worshiped pagan gods and lived as primitives? The Jesuits decided that Indians did have souls and set about converting them, gathering thousands of Guarani Indians into fortified settlements known as "reductions." The Indians worked the land, became literate, studied music and learnt crafts. But the plantation owners needed slaves, not musicians, and the reductions were regularly raided and destroyed.

By claiming that Indians had souls, the Jesuits became an embarrassment, standing in the way of development. Accused of setting up a state within the state, in 1759 they were expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese Crown, as they had been from the Spanish-speaking colonies. Priests in chains were shipped back to Europe and the first of Latin America's many attempts at building Utopia ended in flames. The slavers became Brazil's first explorers, sailing thousands of miles upriver in search of Indians and gold. They became known as bandeirantes, because they carried the flags (bandeiras) of their patrons on their expeditions. They were a bloodthirsty lot, killing and enslaving wherever they went – one boasted of possessing 30,000 dried human ears. Nevertheless, the word "bandeirante" has heroic associations today, especially in São Paulo, whose early development was based on their activities.

By the seventeenth century, Brazil was Europe's leading sugar supplier and Portugal's most important colony. To meet the need for labor, slave ships brought Africans in ever increasing numbers. One historian calculates that forty per cent of the estimated 9,500,000 slaves transported to the New World went to Brazil. Others believe that up to 13 million men, women, and children were imported during slavery's 350-year reign in Brazil, before abolition in 1888. They were counted not as individuals, but as merchandise, by weight, and referred to as "peças," pieces. Many years later the Nazis also referred to their Jewish prisoners loaded into cattle wagons for transport to the death camps as stucken, pieces.

Brazil imported six times more Africans than the United States, double the number that went to the Spanish colonies or the British West Indies. Originally intended for the sugar plantations, they ended up wherever there was economic activity. For four centuries, Brazil's immense wealth was accumulated by the work of slaves. They cut cane, panned for gold, and picked cotton and coffee. They were porters for the bandeirantes and tilled fields for priests and monks. In the towns, they worked as cooks, house servants, nursemaids, street sellers, sedan chair carriers, water carriers, and laborers. Slaves were the hands and the feet of their masters. With Indians, they made up the bulk of the army in Brazil's war against Paraguay in 1865.

On arrival from Africa, people from the same tribe were separated to make rebellion difficult. They spoke different languages, they came from different regions, they had different customs, but they were united by their suffering and in their revolt at the inhuman conditions to which they were subjected. The average life span of a plantation slave was between seven and eight years. Many came with trades: they were artisans, goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths. In the gold region of Minas Gerais, they built the baroque churches that still stand today. "The Brazilian dream was to have one or two slaves whose labor could be hired out for a price high enough to free the dreamer from ever having to work. Begging was preferable to work. Even beggars had slaves," wrote Pedro I, Brazil's first post-independence ruler.

Clovis Moura, a black sociologist, believes that slavery became the blueprint for Brazilian society. It provided the dominant ethos, laid the foundations for economic inequality and exploitation, and influenced the way institutions, groups, and classes developed after abolition.

Slave Rebellion

Generations of Brazilian schoolchildren studied history books that omitted a whole side of slavery – the many revolts, rebellions and uprisings and the existence of the quilombos. Free territories set up by groups of runaway slaves, the quilombos took root all over Brazil. Their direct descendants can still be found in remote villages today, using the odd word of Bantu or Nagô. The runaways defended themselves from attacks and raided plantations, stealing food and killing the owners.

Zumbi and Palmares

The most famous and longest surviving quilombo was the Republic of Pal mares, which lasted from 1630-1695, with up to 30,000 people in dozens of villages scattered over an area of 17,000 square miles in what is now the state of Alagoas. Even Indians and poor whites came to join the runaway slaves. Plantations and villages were raided for women, but the sexual imbalance was so great that polyandry became the custom, each woman having up to five husbands. Palmares developed its own language, a mixture of Bantu and Portuguese. The ex-slaves fed themselves by hunting, fishing, and farming, made pottery and baskets, wove clothes and forged iron. They made musical instruments and weapons with which to defend themselves. For a few years, solidarity, equality, and cooperation replaced the degradation and exploitation of the plantations.

But for Brazil's rulers, Pal mares was diabolical and dangerous, a permanent incentive to revolt which had to be destroyed and its memory erased. Supported by the Church and the plantation owners, they organized armies of bandeirantes, mercenaries, and criminals to do the job. In I 695, after several expeditions, Palmares was finally overrun. All the inhabitants were killed or enslaved and the severed head of Zumbi, its legendary leader, was put on display to terrorize black Brazilians, who had come to believe that he was immortal.

In a way he was. Three hundred years later, Zumbi is officially a national hero and Brazil's rulers make pilgrimages to the site of Pal mares. Even after the most famous quilombo was destroyed, slaves continued to escape. In 1741 the King of Portugal ordered all runaways to be branded with the letter F for Fujão (runaway). Nineteenth century newspapers carried columns of "wanted" advertisements for runaway slaves which convey an idea of the treatment they were fleeing from. The Diário de Pernambuco of May 23, 1839 offered a reward for a runaway called Joana, who had "burn marks on her breasts and few front teeth." In 1870 the same paper was looking for a slave called Germano, aged 17 or 18, "with a sad look, big feet, long legs and marks of recent punishment on his buttocks."

Abolition

In 1850 the British banned the international slave trade and blockaded Brazilian ports, but slaves continued to be smuggled in. Inside Brazil, the abolition campaign was gathering momentum, but slaves were not finally freed until 1888. By then only five per cent of the 14 million Brazilians were slaves, down from a third in 1850, due to European immigration and the release of slaves prior to abolition.

Slave owners had predicted disaster when the traffic ended, but instead the end of investment in human suffering freed capital for investment in infrastructure and encouraged the immigration of free workers. While slaves had been captive, land was free to anyone who occupied it; once they were free, land had to be paid for. After abolition, some slaves were kept on by their former masters as employees, but many were abandoned, without money, jobs, land, or homes. A new vagrancy law was enacted, making anyone without a fixed address and work liable to arrest. The law is still on the statute books.

Independence

One of the reasons slavery lasted longer in Brazil than anywhere else in the Americas was the survival of the monarchy. Long after all the other colonies of Latin America had become republics, Brazil was ruled by an Emperor. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution had been over for a century when Brazil finally became a republic in 1889. The delay was not for want of trying. Like the Americans, Brazilians objected to the taxes imposed by Lisbon and resented the ban on any industry or indeed learning in Portugal's richest colony. Printing presses, bookstores, universities, and foreign newspapers were all forbidden.

Tiradentes

In 1792 the small town of Vila Rica, now known as Ouro Preto, was the center of Brazil's lucrative gold industry. There, a group of prominent citizens, including lawyers, a priest, and landowners, began plotting for independence. They rejected Portuguese taxes and demanded the right to build factories, universities, and steel mills. The rebels even sent emissaries to ask the newly independent USA's Thomas Jefferson for military aid in exchange for future trade preferences.

The conspiracy foundered when they were betrayed and arrested, and the Crown decided to make an example of one of them. A young military officer called Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, better known as Tiradentes, the Toothpuller, was hung, drawn, and quartered and his descendants officially cursed (only recently was the curse withdrawn). While his fellow conspirators are forgotten, Tiradentes is now Brazil's national hero. He was also the only one of the rebel band who thought that independence should also mean an end to slavery. Six years after his death, inspired by the successful slave rebellion in Haiti as well as the French Revolution, slaves in Salvador staged an uprising which failed. After that, none of the many rebellions against the Portuguese and the Brazilian monarchy ever seriously threatened royal rule.

Royal Independence

Instead it fell to Napoleon to consolidate Brazil's unique variety of royal independence. To escape from his triumphant advance through the Iberian Peninsula in 1808, the entire Royal Portuguese Court of 15,000 people fled to Brazil aboard a fleet of ships, led by King João VI. Suddenly Brazil was no longer a distant colony, but the center of the Portuguese empire. All around Brazil, the Spanish colonies were fighting for independence, but the presence of the monarchy gave Brazil metropolitan status, allowing it to trade directly with other countries.

When the Napoleonic Wars were over and the King returned to Lisbon in 1821, the Portuguese tried unsuccessfully to turn the clock back of independent Brazil American Pictures and return their richest possession to colonial status. Left behind as regent, the King's son, Pedro, soon realized that his best move was to lead the burgeoning movement for independence, rather than oppose it. Instead of the bloody warfare that ravaged the other Latin American countries, Brazil, so the story goes, became independent in 1822 with a single shout – the Grito do Ipiranga, the river where Pedro allegedly yelled his melodramatic "Independence or Death."

The monarchy lasted another 67 years. Acting as a focus for loyalty and political unity, it prevented the vast country, which shared borders with ten other colonies, ex-colonies, and independent states, from breaking up. It also enabled an aristocratic white class to prolong its rule over a slave society. Brazil was free from Portugal, but most Brazilians had yet to become free citizens. Pedro I's son, Pedro II, did not see why slavery should be abolished, even though he championed the latest technological inventions. Under his rule, Brazil became the second country after England to introduce postage stamps. The Emperor was the first Brazilian to have a telephone installed, and encouraged the spread of the railways. Brazil was modernizing, but slavery continued.

The Republic

By the 1880s, coffee had long surpassed sugar and gold as Brazil's most important product, and the São Paulo coffee planters had become the most powerful political and economic group in the country. They wanted a republic, and once slavery was gone, pressure grew to abolish another anachronism (the monarchy). The Republican movement found allies among military officers who had served in the war against Paraguay and were discontent with government policy. On November 15, 1889 "in the name of the people, the army, and the navy," Emperor Pedro II was deposed and given 24 hours to leave the country, and a provisional republic, headed by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca, a war hero, was installed. Church and state were separated and the Republic of Brazil was formally created in February 1891 with a constitution drawn up by a Constituent Assembly. With the monarchy went the Catholic Church's status as the official religion. The republicans turned instead to positivism, preferring scientific rationalism to religious belief. The country's new flag, with its motto "Order and Progress," was inspired by the new thinking.

Antonio the Counselor

The monarchy had gone, southern cities now had gas lighting, telephones, and electric trams, but in the Northeast, the home of Brazil's first cycle of sugar wealth, little had changed. Landowners were authoritarian patriarchs, some of them despots, and most of the population lived in extreme poverty, worsened by a devastating drought in 1877. Thousands emigrated to the Amazon, where the rubber boom was in full swing, or to the south. Those who stayed, starved.

Without help from the government, the landowners, or the Church, people turned to mysticism. They began to follow a man with a flowing beard and rough robes who roamed the sertão (drylands) preaching that the end of the world would come in the year 1900. Hundreds, then thousands, flocked to hear the charismatic Antonio Maciel, who became known as the Conselheiro (Counselor). What began as a religious movement developed into a challenge to the existing social and political system of the Northeast.

The Conselheiro talked about the need for a better life in the here and now. He protested by tearing down the public notices announcing tax increases. The Church declared him a subversive, while the state governor wanted him locked up in a mental asylum. As thousands abandoned their homes to follow the preacher, landowners feared a labor shortage. In 1893 the band was attacked by soldiers and the Counselor realized he must find a sanctuary. Like an Old Testament prophet, he led his followers on a five-week march into the sertão until they came to an isolated valley surrounded by five mountain ranges. Within two years, the city of Canudos founded by the Counselor and his followers had become one of the largest towns in Bahia, boasting 20,000 inhabitants, two churches, and a thriving economy which even exported goatskins to Europe.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Brazil by Jan Rocha. Copyright © 2000 Jan Rocha. Excerpted by permission of Practical Action Publishing Ltd.
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Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Latin Amer Bureau
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1899365001
• ISBN 13: 9781899365005
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 88
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile