Brazil

by Errol Lincoln Uys

  usina modern sugar refinery and plantation

  vaqueiro cowboy of northeastern Brazil

  vila small town

  voluntário volunteer, particularly during Paraguayan War

  Xangô deity of Afro-Brazilian religion, god of lightning and thunder

  GENEALOGICAL CHARTS

  THE CAVALCANTIS

  THE DA SILVAS

  MAPS

  BRAZIL - THE COLONY

  BRAZIL - NINETEENTH CENTURY and THE WAR IN PARAGUAY

  For larger maps and family trees, visit

  Brazil: The Making of a Novel

  Author’s Note

  “Why choose Brazil as your subject?” people ask me. When I came to America, one of my first assignments was with the novelist, James A. Michener, a two-year collaboration that produced The Covenant. We spoke about countries with an epic history that would lend itself to a novel on a grand scale. One of the places I suggested was Brazil, which has captivated me since I was a boy. In childhood, eccentric foreigners like the English engineer-explorer-mystic, Percy Fawcett, whose Amazon exploits filled the pages of adventure magazines like Wide World, fired my imagination.

  When I decided to write Brazil, my choice was more complex. My birthplace was South Africa, where laws kept the races apart, a striking contrast to the racial melting pot of Brazil. I wanted to know what made the critical difference in the development of the two countries.

  And then, too, there was my new home, the United States, where I found an ignorance about Brazil at every level of society, from the apocryphal “They speak Spanish, don’t they?” to stereotypes about Carnival, samba, the Amazon and the beaches. The more I read and studied, the stronger my desire to help dispel this shallow view.

  It was critical to have firsthand experience of the country. In April 1981, I began my research in Portugal, before traveling to Brazil, where I covered 15,000 miles, almost exclusively by bus to get a feel for that vast land. My journey took me into the sertão, the arid backlands of the Northeast and to the Casas Grandes of coastal Pernambuco. I voyaged the Amazon from Belém to Manaus and rode by bus down to southernmost Rondonia. I followed the route of the bandeirantes, the Brazilian pathfinders, west of São Paulo and roamed the highlands of Minas Gerais.

  The writing of Brazil took five years. Like my fictional hero, Amador Flôres da Silva, I knew periods of utter loneliness and fear; times when I felt the caatinga closing in on me but always, I broke through the barrier. I never lost the will to understand the Brazilian “thing.”

  The Cavalcantis of Santo Tomás and the da Silvas of Itatinga and most of the incidents involving these two families are fictional. Aruanã, Segge Proot, Black Peter, the Ferreiras, Antônio Paciência, Bruno Salgado — these, too, are imaginary characters. The towns of Rosário and Jurema in Pernambuco and Tiberica in São Paulo do not exist.

  King Afonso I of the Kongo; Nobrega and Anchieta; Tomé de Sousa; Mem de Sá; Raposo Tavares; Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen; “Ganga Zumba” of Palmares; Marquis of Pombal; Bento Parente Maciel; “Tooth-Puller;” Emperor Pedro II; President Francisco Solano Lopez; Eliza Lynch; Joaquim Nabuco; Antônio Conselheiro — these are real characters and what is said of them relates to recorded history.

  The enslavement and massacre of the Brazilian Indians; the pathfinding and prospecting journeys of the bandeirantes; the Lisbon earthquake; the republican uprising at Minas Gerais; the Paraguayan War; the abolition of slavery; the rebellion at Canudos; the birth of Brasília — these principle Brazilian historical events are faithfully summarized within the context of the novel.

  I could not have accomplished Brazil without the help of numerous Brazilians on that long journey, including: José Honôrio Rodrigues; Gilberto Freyre; Fernando Freyre; Antônio Fantinato Netto; Max Justo Guedes; Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy; Luiz Hafers; Edson Nery da Fonseca; Aluysio Magalhães; Vladimir Murtinho; Roberto Motta; Oswaldo Lima Filho; José Antonio Gonçalves de Mello; Fernando Antonio Novaes; Carlos Rizzini; Anna Amelia Viêra Nascimento; Antonietta de Aguiar Nunes; Amalia Correa; Christina Mattos; Eduardo Borcacov. Plus countless Brazilians I met along the way, like “Black Jimi” Carvalho, who showed me a tough side of Recife I would never have seen without his guidance. People like the anonymous woman in the bus station at Brasília, who asked a few coins to buy oranges for her child — all she could hope for on a thirty-six-hour trip that lay ahead. I never forgot her or many others who showed me the face and soul of Brazil.

  My thanks to Herman Gollob, who guided this massive project through those five years. I am grateful to David Wilk of Silver Spring Books, whose enthusiasm and faith brought Brazil back into print.

  The original work ended at the inauguration of Brasília in 1960. I have added an “Afterword” taking the story up to April 2000.

  In Brazil: The Making of a Novel, I share the story of how I wrote my epic, including the daily journal kept on my five-month trek through the country.

  Errol Lincoln Uys

  Boston, Massachusetts

  http://www.erroluys.com

  About the Author

  Errol Lincoln Uys was born in South Africa and immigrated to the United States in 1977. A former international editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest, his first assignment in the U.S. was to collaborate with James A. Michener on his South African novel, The Covenant. Uys traveled 15,000 miles in Brazil to research his novel, the writing of which took five years. He is the author of the non-fiction, Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression.

  Publication History

  Brazil was first published in the United States in 1986 by Simon and Schuster, New York. In 2000, a new edition was issued by Silver Spring Books of Connecticut. A French edition titled La Forteresse Verte (The Green Fortress), Presses de la Cité, Paris won the highest critical praise in summer 1987. - In 2007, Presses de la Cité published a 20th Anniversary Edition. - Brazil has also been translated into Brazilian-Portuguese, German, Dutch and Hebrew.

  Copyright ©1986, 2000, 2008, 2013 by Errol Lincoln Uys

  All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of

  criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in

  part in any form.

  Cover designed by Hope Forstenzer

  Original cover illustration by Yves Besnier

  Maps by Palacios

  Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, from BRAZIL by Errol

  Lincoln Uys. Copyright 1986 by Errol Lincoln Uys.

  Published by Silver Spring Books

  Library of Congress Card Number: 00-104182

  ISBN: 0-916562-51-4