Brazil

by Heloisa Maria Murgel Starling

  At its peak, Palmares had a population of around 20,000. Of these approximately 6,000 lived in the Cerca Real do Macaco. This was at a time (around 1660) when the population of Rio de Janeiro, including Indians and Africans, was estimated at 7,000.49 The quilombola confederation maintained a thriving trade with neighbouring towns and villages. For more than a century it encouraged slaves to escape en masse, made innumerable attacks on engenhos, farms and hamlets, and repelled all the military expeditions that were sent to destroy it. The first Portuguese attack on Palmares was launched in 1612, and the last, during which the leader Zumbi (Ganga Zumba’s successor) was killed, in 1695. Between 1644 and 1645, during the Dutch occupation of the sugar-producing region in the northeast – notably the captaincy of Pernambuco – the West Indies Company ordered two attacks on Palmares, both of which failed. The Dutch became the victims of forest guerrilla tactics that employed ambushes, skirmishes and surprise attacks.

  Palmares took advantage of the crisis caused by the Dutch occupation, by expanding. This was to be a recurring feature of the slaves’ resistance: they always acted at moments when the slave-based society was weakened or divided, whether due to war, foreign invasion or internal disputes. After 1670, as the threat posed by the quilombolas grew and the fame of Palmares spread throughout Portuguese America, the colonial authorities formulated a strategy of systematic destruction. This included annual attacks, reconnaissance missions, and the elimination of commercial links between the quilombos and neighbouring communities. Although Portugal’s attempts to eliminate the quilombos continued to fail, it did finally reap the benefits of the eventual infighting between the quilombo leaders.

  In 1678, Portuguese representatives met in Recife with a large group of rebels sent by Ganga Zumba to celebrate a peace treaty proposed by the colonial authorities. The agreement arranged for the return of all escaped slaves to the Crown, in other words all the quilombolas who had not been born in Palmares. The Portuguese plan was to put an end to the complicity between the quilombolas and the slaves on the engenhos. In exchange, Portugal guaranteed freedom, the donation of land and the status of subjects of the Crown for all those who had been born in Palmares. The Recife Agreement divided the quilombolas, pitted Ganga Zumba against Zumbi, and inaugurated the most violent period in the community’s history. Ganga Zumba was poisoned after being declared a traitor and all his military leaders were beheaded. During the next fifteen years Zumbi led the war against the Portuguese authorities, maintained the autonomy of the quilombo and guaranteed the freedom of its inhabitants. The war only ended with the fall of the Cerca Real do Macaco after a siege of forty-two days, the defeat and execution of Zumbi, and the total destruction of Palmares.

  Palmares was to serve as an example for both sides. The colonial authorities used it as evidence that ruthless repression and total destruction were the only response to slave resistance. But Palmares also became an emblem of resistance, and a clear refutation of the idea that Brazil’s population of enslaved people and formerly enslaved people were merely passive victims. Instead, they had agency: they were unwilling to submit to a perverse regime like this.

  In August 1870, nearly two hundred years later, the abolitionist poet Castro Alves50 wrote ‘Salute to Palmares’, a harsh condemnation of the brutality of slavery and the degradation of human relations, and an exaltation of the quilombos.51 The great poet was far ahead of his time: it was only later that this powerful federation of slave refugees was to become the subject of academic research and national curiosity. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while slavery still existed,52 the quilombos were the cause of widespread fear. The greatest of them all was that the phenomenon of Palmares would be repeated. It was only during the twentieth century that there was a major shift in the way Palmares was viewed in historical writings, in intellectual discourse, and in the culture in general. It became not only a symbol of the struggle of the slaves and of all black people in Brazil, but an icon of how other moments and memories in Brazil’s history can be constructed.53

  THE MANY FORMS OF THE FIGHT FOR RESISTANCE

  Not all slaves who escaped founded or joined quilombos. But escape was always an act of resistance, and the captives had many good reasons to do so: the extreme violence of the physical and moral punishments, the dividing up of families and loved ones, the arbitrary nature of the masters’ power; escape might also bring bargaining power, reinforce demands to halt punishment and overwork. And it was, of course, a clamour for freedom. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘tirar o cipó’ meant ‘to head for the bush’ – and to risk a myriad of dangers.

  Whether by an individual or group, escape was always a challenge to the ruling class. A slave who escaped was an affront to the principle of property, a threat to the social order and a financial loss to his master. Brazilian society soon discovered that the punishments inflicted on recaptured slaves, however horrific, were not enough to deter escapes. It was essential to create mechanisms for the control and maintenance of slavery and to develop effective strategies of repression. The creation of this control apparatus was gradual, systematic, and had the backing of the law, which in turn had a broad scope of repressive tactics. There was a firm belief in the efficacy of public punishment, a theatrical exhibition of the force of the law. This public punishment took several forms. One was mutilating the offending slave’s body so that all who saw him, at any time and under any circumstances, would see the marks and remember his ‘crime’; another was public humiliation at the pelourinho (a pillory in the form of a stone column displaying the royal arms, erected in the main square of all the towns as a symbol of loyalty to the Crown), to which the slaves were chained and then whipped; another was the public display of the decapitated heads of captured fugitives and quilombolas whose refuges had been destroyed in the innumerable incursions.

  But this was still not enough. The colonial authorities were convinced that trained professionals were needed, even if this meant the landowners had to pay. The solution was, to a certain degree, predictable: the development of a specialized force to chase down escaped slaves, a sort of professional body of highly militarized men with the authority to capture black fugitives on highways, in forests and in the quilombos – and with orders to kill, torch and destroy any persons or points of resistance. At the centre of this apparatus of repression the Portuguese established the position of the slave catcher, the capitão do mato.54 Before the creation of this post in the mid-seventeenth century, the pursuit of escaped slaves had been sporadic, organized by the overseers, who were responsible for both managing the engenhos and punishing the slaves. But, starting in mid-century, with well-defined laws and permission to search villages to prevent escapes, the capitães do mato were recognized by society and were an integral part of the institution of slavery.55

  From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries there were thousands of capitães do mato scattered throughout the colony. Many of them were former slaves who boasted about their inside knowledge of fugitive behaviour. Since within this slave-based society slaves and quilombos were associated with the worst images of hell – painful death, hiding in forests inhabited by demons, the practice of idolatry – it was decided to put these capitães do mato under the protection of a person of great substance, St Anthony of Padua. He was the most venerated saint in both the colony and the seat of the empire, where he was held to be the warrior saint who defended Portuguese America against invasions. Without his permission, for three centuries St Anthony lent his divine collaboration to the recapture of slaves and the destruction of the quilombos.56

  The earthly capitães do mato, on the other hand, were hired and paid by the slave-owners, in accordance with services rendered. The amount depended on the distance between the location of the escape and the location of the capture: the greater the distance, the higher the pay. Payment was made on delivery, either of the slave himself or of his decapitated head, which the capitão do mato carried in a leather bag to show h
is employer and prove he had met the terms of their agreement.57

  Escape was not the only form of resistance. Others included murdering or poisoning the master, suicide and abortion; the enslaved made demands and were steadfast in rejecting their situation. But the simplest act of disobedience was a threat to the master’s authority, because in order to run his estate and ensure his profits the master needed the blind obedience of his workforce. The slaves knew all too well the risks they ran. The enemy had daunting forces at his command and, if they were captured, they had no protection under the law. Thus it was essential for all acts of resistance to be committed in secret, whether theft, assassination, suicide, abortion or mere insults – not to mention disobeying and manipulating employees or other small but disconcerting acts of disobedience.

  Resistance required creativity, luck, collusion and cleverness. The strategy adopted was often indirect, often aimed at wearing the enemy down. Sabotage was a constant danger, and success could be achieved with very little effort. The smallest of actions could wreak destruction: a spark in the sugarcane fields, a piece of lemon dropped in one of the bronze cauldrons used for producing molasses, or a spoke broken on one of the giant wheels used for extracting sugarcane juice, propelled by water power or animal traction.58 Any of these small interventions, however insignificant, affected the sugar production and, in more extreme cases, could cause the loss of the engenho’s entire production.

  For enslaved Brazilians, an indispensable ingredient in developing resistance was the preservation and cultivation of memories of Africa, the traces of cultural roots. As the generations passed, these roots were modified, mixed together and recreated, and within the new reality of slavery. They became an important instrument for the construction of a religious life, forms of recreation, the development of a collective identity and group resistance.

  On the coffee and sugar plantations, and in urban environments, slaves often faced up to their masters and bargained for the right to drum and to dance and sing in accordance with their religious rites, without permission from the overseer, and particularly without the intervention of the police. These activities usually took place in clearings in the woods, prepared with special care by the slaves, in areas near the engenhos and towns. They were called terreiros.59 The rituals practised there incorporated a unique combination of cultural and religious elements. Music, dance, rhythm and movement were integrated to form a distinct spiritual language of worship, characterized by its connections to the oral transmission of African rituals and possession by the deities.60

  This reconstruction of African rituals, based on the traditions of the Nagô peoples and culturally influenced by groups of Jejes, has been known as candomblé – the religion of the orishas – since the beginning of the nineteenth century.61 From the outset, candomblé combined a number of cultural elements the slaves absorbed through contact with different groups of peoples brought from Africa. In many ways candomblé created itself: breaking down cultural barriers between the different groups, generating principles of symbolic importance for harmonious community life, and serving as a channel of communication with other segments of the slave-based society. It also incorporated the religious traditions of the Indians, so that even today candomblé de caboclo evokes the ancestors of the peoples who lived in Brazil long before the Europeans arrived.

  The quilombos were privileged spaces meant to protect the autonomous spiritual and private activities of the slaves. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Brazilian poet Gregório de Matos,62 nicknamed the ‘Mouth of Hell’ due to his scabrous satirical verses, made a passing reference to the religious rituals performed in the quilombos, to the beating of drums: ‘There’s no fallen lady/or bankrupt fop/who doesn’t visit the quilombo/and dance till they drop.’63 In this poem, called ‘Precept 1’,64 de Matos was probably referring to the specific rhythm of calundu, a ritual in which a deity is invoked to foretell people’s futures.

  From the ritual transformation of calundu to the origins of samba, the community life of the African slaves and their descendants, despite the deprivation, was one of creativity.65 If the relationship has always been asymmetrical, the reactions have never been cast in stone. It may be possible to try to turn people into property, but one cannot destroy their agency, creativity and resourcefulness. More than merely surviving, the enslaved Africans became Brazilians, foiling the designs of their tormentors and a perverted regime steeped in violence.

  4

  Gold!

  THE CATAGUÁS SERTÃO

  By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Portugal’s finances had been seriously affected by the high cost of running the empire. The sugarcane industry was beginning to feel the impact of the competition from the Antilles, from where the Dutch, who had been expelled from Brazil, were transporting sugar to Europe, seriously affecting the plantations in the northeast of Brazil. Meanwhile, in Salvador, the governor-general of the colony, João de Lencastro, pondered over whether or not the discovery of gold in the sertão could be a lucrative business for the Portuguese Crown. In spite of the optimism coming out of Lisbon, the governor-general remained sceptical about the quantity of gold. He doubted that the small nuggets of gold found in streams located in what is today the central region of Minas Gerais would compensate for the enormous investment the Crown had made in the colonization of America, or inject new energy into its imperial enterprise.

  ‘Cataguás’ was the name of an indigenous group who lived in the southern, western and central regions of the territory of Minas Gerais – the first to face the colonizers. They were descendants of the Tremembé, a group who, in the sixteenth century, had migrated from the northeast coast of what is today the state of Ceará. They had actually called themselves ‘Catu-auá’; ‘Cataguá’ was a Portuguese corruption of this original name. They are now extinct. Cataguás was also used generically by the people in the lowlands to designate the Indians who lived in the El Dorado of the mountainous regions of Minas Gerais, where amid the coarse sand of the riverbeds there glittered tiny specks of gold.

  It had taken two centuries, but the Portuguese Crown had not given up – the search for precious metals had always been central to their obsession for immediate enrichment.1 There was a prevailing sense of optimism among the authorities in Lisbon, who for some time had been predisposed to believe in the existence of immense treasures in America, just waiting to be discovered. The astonishing amounts of gold and silver the Spanish had found in their American colonies and taken to Seville in the first half of the sixteenth century had dazzled the courts of Europe. The Crown of Castile had accumulated a vast fortune, enough to be the source of any European monarch’s envy, and certainly enough to keep the dream of American riches alive among the Portuguese.

  In the mid-sixteenth century the news that the lucky Spanish had found an entire mountain of silver in the middle of the Andes – the Cerro Rico de Potosí, in what is today Bolivia – set the imagination of Europe alight and convinced Lisbon of two things: there must also be large deposits of precious metals in Brazil and the only way of finding them was to colonize the interior. Such journeys presented innumerable hardships, but those who undertook them were confident they would end in success. At the time mapmakers believed the American continent was so narrow that the Portuguese explorers were virtually neighbours of the fabulously wealthy mountains of Upper Peru. It was thought that if an expedition set out from the port of Santos the journey, by land or water, would take only twelve days.2

  It was the duty of the colony’s governor, who also held the military post of captain-general, to protect the colony against invasions from corsairs and pirates, and from rival European powers such as Holland and France, keen to establish their own imperial colonies and benefit from the profits of maritime trade. He was also required to promote the colonization of the interior in the search for precious metals. However, Governor-General João de Lencastro had good reason to be cautious about the news that gold had been found in the sertão of Catagu
ás. The small amounts of gold that had been discovered between 1560 and 1561 in the mountains that cut across the present-day states of São Paulo and Paraná, above all between Iguape, Paranaguá and Curitiba, did very little to satisfy the appetite of the Portuguese. In the opinion of Lisbon: ‘What we wanted to find in Brazil was Peru, not Brazil.’3 Their intention was to convert the Paranapiacaba Mountains (the indigenous name for the Serra do Mar)4 into a replica of the Andes. They even planned to import two hundred llamas to transport the gold. But the amount of gold found there was negligible; the veins were not continuous and the production from the mines was very low.5

  Like his contemporaries, for João de Lencastro economic growth meant the sugarcane industry, which had prospered since the 1570s, above all in the Recôncavo in Bahia, which became the economic centre of Portuguese America, and on the coast of Pernambuco. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Padre Antonil also thought the authorities’ obsession with finding gold was a risk for the colony. It was not difficult to understand why. Sugar constituted the wealth of Brazil and the engenhos were the centres for the missionary work of converting the slaves. All this could be destroyed if gold were discovered in Minas Gerais, with the consequent mass migration to the interior.6