“O Brazil nunca foi ao Brasil…O Brazil não conhece o Brasil…” (Maurício Tapajós e Aldir Blanc)

“Brazil never went to Brasil…Brazil don’t know Brasil…”

“O Brazil não conhece o BrasilO Brasil nunca foi ao BrazilTapir, jabuti, liana, alamandra, alialaúdePiau, ururau, aqui, ataúdePiá, carioca, porecramecrãJobim akarore Jobim-açuOh, oh, oh”

Divisão Geopolítica

Treaty of Tordesillas - 1494

TRATADO DETORDESILHAS(1494)

Tratado de Tordesilhas

The treaty was historically important in dividing Latin America, as well as establishing Spain in the western Pacific until 1898. However, it quickly became obsolete in North America, and later in Asia and Africa, where it affected colonization. It was ignored by other European nations, and with the decline of Spanish and Portuguese power, the home countries were unable to hold many of their claims, much less expand them into poorly explored areas.

*There has been modern claims for the treaty in the 20th Century…

Pedro Álvares Cabral

Letter to King D. Manuel“tough, healthy

and innocent”

De Caminha description

of the natives.

“They are brown skinned, of a quite reddish complexion, with handsome faces and noses, in such "scarved" features. They go about naked, without clothing. They do not bother about to cover or to uncover their bodies, and show their private parts as readily as they show their faces. In this matter they are of great innocence.”

“... they take a good care of themselves and they are really hygienic. In that I am convinced they are like birds, or mountain animals, with whom the "air" (referring to refreshing hygiene habits) does better to feathers and hair than the comfort [of the lack of regular washing and grooming], because their bodies are so clean and so plump and in such nice shape that could not be better!”

“They only eat this yam, which is very plentiful here, and those seeds and fruits that the earth and the trees give of themselves. Nevertheless, they are of a finer, sturdier, and sleeker condition than we are for all the wheat and vegetables we eat.”

“Walking among them there were three or four women, young and gentle, with their hair very black and very long, loose to their backs; their private parts, so prominent and so neat, and so clean of their hairs that we, by very much looking at them, did not get ashamed.”

One of those young women had the whole body painted, from bottom to top with that tincture, and sure she was so good shaped and so rounded, and her private part so graceful that most women in our land, if had seen those features would feel abashed for not having their own like she has hers.”

“My opinion and everyone’s opinion is that these people lack nothing to become completely Christian, except understanding us (…). I believe that if your Majesty could send someone that could stay a while here with them, they would all be persuaded and converted…”

Tone/style of the letter -

-> Later learn the language, later become slaves to the Portuguese.

“The true history and description of a Land of Savage, Naked, Fierce, Man Eating People found in the New World” (Hans Standen – 1557)

Throughout 16th and 17th centuries, European illustrations of Brazil fixed on cannibalism.

This gave the Portuguese legitimacy that they were bringing civilization to the “savages”.

Exploitation of labor and forced acculturation

According to one chronicler in 1570, the native’s language “lacked the three letters F, L and R – Fé (faith), Lei (law) and Rei (king), and live, thus, without justice and order.”

Pre-Colonial Brazil

Before the Portuguese…- Hundreds of natives inhabited Brazil 10.000 years before the Portuguese arrived.

- 4 main groups with about 2.000 peoples/tribes

A) TUPI-GUARANI – Atlantic Coast

B) GÊ – Open Central Plateau

C) *Carib/Arawak – Amazon Basin

*Advanced in technology and warfare

TODAY 200 tribes / 300.000 native Brazilians

General Characteristics

Most Brazilian natives dwelled in temporary villages

Lowland South America had no animals that could be easily domesticated like the llamas and guinea pigs of the Andes.

Brazilian tribes kept on moving in order to find survival.

Constant floods (Amazon basin) discouraged planting.

No written language (stories were recorded after the Portuguese).

Mounds of Marajó

Ilha de Marajó

Ilha de Marajó e ParáPre-Columbian era society that flourished on

Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River around 800 AD-1400 AD.

Sophisticated pottery—large and elaborately painted and incised with representations of plants and animals—is the most impressive finding in the area and provided the first evidence of complex society on Marajó.

Funeral Urn

Tupinambás

e

Tupiniquins

CAPITANIAS HEREDITÁRIAS1530s

General Nature of Portuguese Colonization

Ambiguous

Missed opportunities to import cattle and send settlers

Leased territories to Lisbon merchants

trade with the natives

*Changed after fear of invasion from other nations.

France Antarctic – 1555-1567

Colonial Brazil (1500-1882)

1500 (Pre-Colonial) The Portuguese arrives in Brazil

1500-1530s Brazilwood trade

1534 Beginning of colonial period and sugar cane

plantation cycle

1550 Beginning of African slave trade

1580-1640 Iberian Union

1630 Dutch invade Brazil

1654 Portuguese expelled the Dutch and Jewish

1693 Portuguese found gold in Southeast Brazil

1763 Rio de Janeiro becomes capital

1789 Inconfidencia Mineira, an unsuccessful Brazilian separatist movement.

1808 D. João and the royal family arrive in Brazil

1822 D.Pedro (the king’s son) proclaims Brazil’s independence

1820s-1930 Coffee is the major product

1840-1889 D. Pedro II is the second emperor of Brazil

1879-1912 Rubber plantations in the Amazon

1888 Slavery is ablolished

1889 Monarchy was overthrown and the country proclaimed itself a

Republic

Spend, Spend, Spend“ the Portuguese became drunk on wealth and

success. (…) the Portuguese were ostentatious, immoral, and corrupt and lorded it over locals in distant lands.”

“in Portugal we are all nobels, and having any kind of job is frowned upon.”

P. 45

Brazilian Colonial Society

- Aristocratic - Patriarchal -No socialmobility

-Pro-slavery

Colonial Pact Proibido ou Não estimulados

Comunicação ou comércio com países estrangeiros

- Atividades Industrial (só tecidos para roupas dos escravos

- Proibida circulação de moedas (utilizava-se o escambo)

- Cultivo de vinha (vinho), oliveira (azeite) e trigo (pão) - evitar concorrência com Portugal)

- Entrada e residência de estrangeiros

- Universidades (ensino básico era oferecido nos seminários religiosos)

- Imprensa e fabricação de livros (espalhar idéias revolucionárias)

- Desenvolvimento de estradas (para evitar o contrabando de metais etc)

- Comunicação entre as províncias (para evitar a troca de idéias Revolucionárias e evitar rebeliões)

Colonial Economy

Series of “feitorias” – factories scatered along the coast from Pernambuco to São Vicente

Capitanias – Captaincies (in the 1530s) – Sugar Cane plantations

1600-1650 – sugar accounted 90-95% of Brazilian export and world’s leading exporter

1670s-1680s – prices fall and competition with the Antilles (*Dutch)

1690s – gold is found

1720s – 25 tons sent to Portugal

Sugar Cane Plantation – Engenho

Slave TradeBrazil received more

African slaves in total than

any other nation.

- About 3,65 million.

- The main source was

Angola and the Congo.

“Casa Grande e Senzala” – Urban Life

First Look at the Question of Race in Brazil

Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987), Brazilian anthropologist known for his discussion about race in Brazil affirmed that the Portuguese were less prejudiced that other Europeans against Africans, partly because of Portugal’s long exposure to the dark skinned Moors… This idea is confronted when analyzing Portuguese writings of those times which express a distaste of the physical characteristics of Africans; “dog faced, dog toothed people, satyrs, wildmen abd cannibals.” Adapted from Thomas Skidmore, “Brazil: Five centuries of Change”

The New Republican Regime –

An Ambiguous Project of Progress, Civilization and Modernization

- Positivism saw the history of mankind as a continuous march towards progress, impelled by science.

"O Amor por princípio e a Ordem por base; o Progresso por fim”

- Civilizatory Missions at the interior of the country.

- Reformation and Sanitation of Rio de Janeiro

Primeira Bandeira da República – 11/15/1889

Bandeira Atual – 11/19/1889

Modernization to Whom?

“It cannot be denied that there were changes especially in the mentality of the elite which came to power after the proclamation of the republic. (…) Beyond that it is also necessary to enquire into the meaning of the modernity that was being preached.” (Carvalho, 149)

MODERNITY = CIVILIZATION

“When it was said that Rio was civilizing itself, the expression indicated an aristocratization of urban life, rather than its democratization. It indicated the creation of an urban space for the elites debarring the inelegant presence of poverty.” (Carvalho, 157)

- The mechanisms of control and maintenance of ‘order and progress’ developed by the republican project of modernization and designed to discipline individuals targeted not only the physical space of the city but also people’s bodies, kinship relations, morals as well as popular expressions.

THE CARNAVAL –

In the later, individuals who did not follow the rules and regulations established by the new Brazilian elite were seen as ‘the other’ and excluded from the newly constructed boulevards where they used to live. For example, there were laws concerning the use of shirts, shoes and the repression of popular festivities such as ‘Festa da Penha’ and ‘Festa da Gloria’ in the remodeled Rio de Janeiro. The popular expressions of carnival were also banned from that space, while the elite started to attended private balls. In this sense, the public space of the streets of Rio becomes private by the hands of the dominant Brazilian elite who placed “the others” in a state of marginality.