PLANTATION
On June 6, 1874, Domingos Antônio Raiol, Baron of Guajará, purchased the Santo Antônio da Campina plantation. The plantation was located along the Tauapará river, on an island facing the city of Vigia, about 50 miles north of Belém. It included ―an oxen-powered sugarmill … houses
3 The concept is obviously from Edward Palmer Thompson, "La Economía "Moral" de la Multitud en la Inglaterra del Siglo XVIII," in Costumbres En Común (Barcelona: Crítica, 1995): 213-294. Two other works have inspired my combination of oral and written sources in this chapter: Robert Darnton, La Gran Matança de Gats i altres Episodis de la Història Cultural Francesa (València: Universitat de València, 2006), and Ariel de la Fuente, Children of Facundo: Caudillo and Gaucho Insurgency During the Argentine State-Formation Process (La Rioja, 1853-1870) (Durham / London: Duke University Press, 2000). Also Rebecca Scott, "The Provincial Archive as a Place of Memory: Confronting Oral and Written Sources on the Role of Former Slaves in the Cuban War of Independence (1895-98)," History Workshop Journal, 58 (2004): 149-66.
in a bad state, cattle, tools, [fifty-seven] slaves, improvements [bemfeitorias],‖ and several parcels of land (Cacao, São José, Pedreira, São Thiago, and Cumihy), all located very near the engenho.4 The spatial arrangement of the Campina plantation in this period indicates at first sight that productive spaces were well delimited and distributed following the logic of capitalist profit. It was a typical New World plantation, built around the goal of making and exporting sugar. However, a closer look will reveal that there were spaces for paternal interaction between the planter and the slaves, who altered productive spaces to obtain a higher degree of spatial mobility, a ―historical geography‖ opposed to that of their master.5
It is not known when the plantation was created. When the Cabanagem revolt took place in 1835, it was owned by Agostinho José Lopes Godinho, a successful Portuguese merchant.6 ―In the troubles of ‘35 the Senhor was compelled to flee the country … and is [sic] the sacking of his place sustained great loss,‖ explained American entomologist William Edwards when he visited Campina in 1846. By that year, however, the plantation was running again: ―everything about indicated opulence and plenty (…) two mills constantly employed were insufficient to dispose of his [Godinho‘s] yearly crop.‖7
About 30 years later, the Baron of Guajará purchased the Campina plantation.
Its main workspace was originally the tide mill. When the flowing tide came, water from the Campina creek was stored in natural pools thanks to a dam; during the ebbing tide, the stored
4 ITERPA, Livro de Títulos de Propriedade no. 1 from Vigia, pp. 10-14, Register of the Sale Certificate in the City Council of Vigia on October 28, 1891. A copy of the transcription can be found at Rosa Acevedo, Julgados da Terra: Cadeia de Apropriação e Atores Sociais em Conflito na Ilha de Colares (Belém: UFPA, 2004), 255-260.
5
The concept is from Nicholas Blomley, "Landscapes of Property," Law & Society Review 32, 3 (1998): 567-612. See also Neal Milner, "Ownership Rights and the Rites of Ownership," Law & Social Inquiry 18, 2 (1993): 227-253; Edward W. Soja, Geografias Pós-Modernas: A Reafirmação do Espaço na Teoria Social Crítica (Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 1993), Ch.8.
6 ITERPA, Livro de Títulos de Propriedade no. 1 from Vigia, 13; William H. Edwards, A Voyage up the River
Amazon Including a Residence at Pará (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1861), 68-73.
water was directed to an artificial water channel, spinning a waterwheel that drove the mill rollers (Figure 5.1).8 Conditions in the mouth of the Amazon river were favorable to tide mills: the difference of four meters between the high and the low tide was pronounced, and the seasonal combination of sea and river water increased the fertility of the soil. The remains of almost forty tide mills in this area attest to their success.9 As can be inferred from Figure 5.1, tide mills demanded the erection of hydraulic structures: a dam, a stone or masonry channel to funnel the water propelling the waterwheel, and the machinery to convey energy to the rollers in the mill. These structures required large amounts of capital and were thus confined to properties owned by rich planters or religious orders.10 The hydraulic structures of the Campina tide mill existed until approximately 1943,11 although under Godinho‘s ownership the mill was moved by oxen, and the water stored at the dam was used instead to propel barges out to surrounding rivers.12
8 Fernando Luiz Tavares Marques, "Modelo da Agroindústria Canavieira Colonial no Estuário Amazônico: Estudo Arqueológico de Engenhos dos Séculos XVIII e XIX" (PhD Thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, 2004), 34; ——— and Scott Douglas Anderson, "Engenhos Movidos a Maré no Estuário do Amazonas: Vestígios Encontrados no Município de Igarapé-Miri, Pará," Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi - Série Antropologia 8, 2 (1992): 295-301. On tide mills, see Esterzilda de Azevedo, Arquitetura do Açúcar: Engenhos do Recôncavo Baiano no Período Colonial (São Paulo: Nobel, 1990), 37; John Nicholson, The Operative Mechanic and British Machinist; Being a Practical Display of the Manufactures and Mechanical Arts of the United Kingdom (London: Knight and Lacey, Paternoster-Row; and Westley and Tyrrell, 1825), 94-128, 104-105; John S. Skinner, "Tide Mills of Easton, Md," in The American Farmer: Containing Original Essays and Selections on Agriculture, Horticulture, Rural and Domestic Economy, and Internal Improvements: With Illustrative Engravings and the Prices of Country Produce ed. John S. Skinner (Baltimore, MD: John D. Toy, 1828). See also http://sites.google.com/site/molinosdemarea (accessed May 2011).
9 Marques, "Modelo da Agroindústria Canavieira Colonial," 34, 38. 10
Esterzilda de Azevedo, Arquitetura do Açúcar: Engenhos do Recôncavo Baiano no Período Colonial (São Paulo: Nobel, 1990), 41.
11 Interview with Sylvia Helena Tocantins (born 1933), March 3, 2009.
Figure 5.1. Functioning of a Tide Mill13
Back to Mr. Edwards‘s visit to Campina in 1849. Godinho accommodated the entomologist and his companions in the casa-grande, where the master‘s family and household slaves lived. The casa-grande ―was decorated with objects from Europe. It had two stories and many rooms,‖ explained Dominga de Moraes, a former household servant of the Baron, as well as ―long gloomy corridors, courtyards and windows everywhere,‖ and ―heavy doors with iron bolts.‖14
The upper floor was occupied by the planter, his family, and their slaves; the lower floor
13
1) Sugarcane is grown in a nearby igarapé. 2) The high tide fills the reservoir, where a dam stores the water; 3) it is then directed to 4) a narrow artificial channel, where it spins a waterwheel, which in turn propels the mill. Source: Marques, ―Modelo da Agroindustria Canavieira Colonial,‖ 28.
14
Quotations from interview with Domingas Moraes (unknown DOB – probably late 1800s), ―Raiol na Lembrança de sua Escrava,‖ O Liberal, November 14, 1976, from Sylvia Helena Tocantins, No Tronco da Sapopema: Vivências Interioranas (Belém: Imprensa Oficial, 1998), 34. Interview with Sylvia Helena Tocantins (born 1933), March 3, 2009.
probably by the overseer and his own family, following a model common in eighteenth-century Bahia and Rio de Janeiro.15 However, while in Bahia or southeastern Brazil most masters‘ houses were located on higher ground, dominating the plantation from a symbolic and material position of power and privilege, on the flat terrain of Campina this was not possible. Nonetheless, those who knew the casa-grande always describe it as ―very beautiful,‖ ―huge,‖ and ―seigneurial.‖16
A two-story building made of masonry and housing a powerful master undoubtedly made its impact in rural Pará, where the peasants‘ huts were usually humble cabins made of mud and thatch.
Very near the masters‘ house was the chapel, another classic element of plantations in Pará, and elsewhere in Brazil.17 It was consecrated to Santo Antônio and contained an image of the saint brought from Portugal. Both Godinho and Raiol were deeply religious, infusing Catholic practices to their slaves. A member of the Irmandades of Nossa Senhora de Nazareth and of Senhor Bom Jesus dos Passos, Godinho conferred his blessing upon them on a daily basis, following the Catholic rituals of submission that were practiced on so many other plantations.18 Raiol continued the functioning of the chapel and its images.19 It was still standing in the 1930s, when it was visited by one Father Falcão from Vigia, and according to a local resident, ―all the inhabitants of the region came there [to celebrate different liturgies].‖20
15
―Raiol na Lembrança de Sua Escrava,‖ O Liberal, 14 November 1976; Interview with Sylvia Helena Tocantins (born 1933), March 3, 2009. On the casagrande in other states, see De Azevedo, Arquitetura do Açúcar, 96, 106; Nancy Naro, A Slave's Place, a Master's World: Fashioning Dependency in Rural Brazil (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), 52-55; Stuart Schwartz, Sugar Plantation in the Formation of Bahian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 283.
16 Interview with Sylvia Helena Tocantins (born 1933), 3/3/09; Interview with Dona Guilhermina (born 1916), March 13, 2009; Tocantins, No Tronco da Sapopema, 34.
17
De Azevedo, Arquitetura do Açúcar, 96, 119. 18 See Chapter 4.
19 ―Raiol na Lembrança de Sua Escrava.‖
Data about the senzala are scant. It is possible that a large building with cubicles for the slaves existed; other sugar mills dating from the 17th and 18th centuries had large, ―L-shaped‖ slave barracks containing 15 to 20 cubicles and often a veranda.21 However, L-shaped slave barracks only appear in an oral testimony gathered by writer Sylvia Helena Tocantins in her childhood, in the early 1940s;22 neither William Edwards‘ account from 1849, nor the Baron‘s sale deed from 1874, nor any other later sale deed make mention of them. What the sale deeds from 1874 and from 1928 do mention are ―houses in a bad state,‖ the former, and ―palm-thatched huts,‖23
the latter, structures more in tune with the process of caboclization that slaves were experiencing by the time the Baron purchased Campina. Edwards had described in a brick factory nearby ―the houses of the blacks, structures made by plastering mud upon latticed frames of wood, and thatched with palm-leaves‖; other foreign visitors commented on similar living spaces in the same decade.24
According to Edwards, in Campina ―the negroes and oxen were driving the sugar-mills; the steam-pipe of the distillery was in full blast; and stacks of demijohns and jars were piled in the rooms, or standing ready to receive the cashaça or molasses.‖ He had inadvertently listed all the tasks performed in Campina, in addition to fabricating sugar. Cachaça was distilled, since it was cheaper and easier to fabricate than sugar. Bricks, tiles, and earthenware were made in an earthenware factory, including the ―demijohns and jars‖ used to process, store, and sell the
21 Like the Murutucú, Mocajuba, and Jaguarari engenhos, see Marques, "Modelo da Agroindústria Canavieira Colonial", 81, 101, 107-108.
22 Tocantins, No Tronco da Sapopema, 64. 23
ITERPA, Livro de Títulos de Propriedade no. 1 from Vigia, pp. 10-14, ―Register of the Sale Certificate ... 1891;‖ ―Certidão‖ of the Santo Antônio da Campina property, Cartório do 3º Ofício de Notas de Belém from May 23, 2003, in Acevedo, Julgados da Terra, 247-254.
24
Emilio Carrey, O Amazonas: Segunda Parte: Os Revoltosos do Pará: Descrição de Viagem, Traduzida e Annotada por F. F. da Silva Vieira (Lisboa: Typographia do Futuro, 1862), 282; Edwards, A Voyage up the River Amazon, 54; John Esaias Warren, Para; or Scenes and Adventures on the Banks of the Amazon (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1851), 213.
brandy and the sugar. A few head of cattle grazed in a nearby prairie, which Edwards found ―irresistible.‖25
Finally, foodstuffs from both the floodlands (varzea) and the areas further away from the river were grown or gathered for consumption and sale.26 The harvesting of river crabs and açaí berries, the hunting of pacas and agoutis, and fishing, were all routine activities on the plantation.27 Free workers under tenancy contracts lived with their families in different land plots (sítios) producing foodstuffs. Over the years some of these sítios would disappear, but others would constitute the basis for the formation of free peasant communities like Cacau.