RESOLUCIÓN N.º 279/AGC/

However, controlling land was not enough to increase the production of Brazil nuts – a reliable source of labor was necessary too. Here Brazil nut merchants ran into the same problem as that confronted by the rubber barons: how to stabilize the supply of labor in a region where the population was famous for its flexible, highly autonomous economic strategies and its aversion to long-term wage labor. While the merchants could transport temporary workers to the Brazil nut fields, this solution was initially very expensive, because the castanhais were several hours and even days away from Óbidos and Oriximiná. At least initially, the bulk of the labor force would have to be drawn from the mocambeiros of the Trombetas river, who had their communities in the area and knew it better than anybody else. But how could the mocambeiros be transformed into docile workers?

The privatization of the Brazil nut groves struck directly at the mocambeiros’ principal source of cash income. Other extractive products were available, but none had the value and was as abundant as the nuts. Thus, land privatization forced them to enlist as Brazil nut extractors. At the beginning of the collection season, by early January, most men, some women, and even

entire mocambeiro families went to the castanhais to work.50 This included groups of 60 to 100 individuals at Lake Erepecu, where some of the largest castanhais were located.51 ―When the time came, all of them [the mocambeiros] left to work as nut collectors.‖52 Usually they went to the nearest castanhal. Those living in the Tapagem, Boa Vista, and Jacaré communities, for instance, would go to the Erepecu lake, to castanhais like Fartura and Paraíso, belonging to Costa Lima, while those living at Mãe Cué and nearby sítios would go to Cuicé.53 However, as the trade expanded in the 1920s and 1930s, new castanhais were demarcated further North, in the Acapu or the Upper Erepecuru, and it became necessary to bring workers from beyond the Trombetas. As Zé Melo from Boa Vista explained, ―the locals were not enough for the harvest (…) So in those castanhais upriver … they brought people from Oriximiná, from the Apocu … from Terra Santa, from Faro.‖54

Luis Guerreiro‘s grandfather José Gabriel Guerreiro brought workers from his ranches downriver. During the dry season they worked as cowboys and agricultural workers, but between January and May they were employed as extractors in the castanhais of the Acapu river.55 In 1926 Elyzio Pessoa de Carvalho requested the seizure of Costa Lima‘s nuts extracted from the Último Ponto castanhal, on the Upper Craval. During the

50

Interview with Maria de Souza (born 1935), Javary community (conducted in Oriximiná), May 23, 2009; interview with Valério and Zuleide Melo (born 1945 and 1955) May 26, 2009; interview with Dona Biquinha (born 1934), Pancada community, May 29, 2009.

51 _{For example Maria Rosa Xavier Cordeiro (born 1925), and her brother Seu Duí (born 1934), started to work at} ages 13 and 15, respectively. On Lake Erepecu, collective interview with Nicanor (born 1940), Aldenor Pereira de Jesus (born 1953), Teresa Fernandes Regis (born 1938), and Raymundo Dias Barbosa (born 1947), June 6, 2009. 52 _{Interview with Zé Melo, (born 1942), May 27, 2009.}

53

Interview with Zé do Carmo, (born 1944), May 27, 2009; interview with Zé Melo (born 1942), May 27, 2009. 54 _{Interview with Zé Melo (born 1942), May 27, 2009. Also Interview with Seu Duí (born 1934), June 6, 2009.} 55 _{Interview with Luis Bacellar Guerreiro (born 1929), June 9, 2009. Also ITERPA, Mungubal Property, José} Gabriel Guerreiro, 1923; Tucunaré Property, José Gabriel Guerreiro, undated.

trial, only one of the six workers who testified was a mocambeiro – the other five were extractors brought from Oriximiná.56

Family or individual mocambeiros went to the castanhal belonging to a known patrão and requested a colocação or work assignment. They established themselves in a hut provided by the patrão, ―gathered [the nuts], peeled them, and brought them to the paiol,‖ a shed where the nuts were housed.57 On Saturday they brought the weekly production to the owner‘s shed, where it was weighed and recorded in the livros de aviamento or account books. The worker also purchased the goods he needed, mostly manioc flour but also varied goods like soap, cloth, guns, gunpowder, salt, coffee, sugar, poultry, fishing equipment, steel tools, hammocks, canoes, etc. Once a month or at the end of the season, the merchant presented the final calculation of the saldo or balance of the castanheiro. If it was positive, the worker was paid in cash. If it was negative, he had to work the next year for the same patrão, or could also repay it by gathering other products during the year.58

The merchants resorted to advances, then, in order to maintain the fidelity of all workers during the harvest; to avoid such indebtedness, workers sold nuts to other merchants. At the beginning of the harvest the workers purchased goods on credit at the commercial store – those debts would have to be repaid at the end of the harvest by collecting the same value in nuts. The

56 _{CF, Autos de Manutenção de Posse, Elysio Pessoa de Carvalho v. Raimundo da Costa Lima, 1926, pp. 61-80; CF,} Petição de Mandato de Apprehensão de Castanhas, Raimundo da Costa Lima, 1926; See also the list of Brazil nut workers at Relação Geral dos Bens da Firma Augusto e Emeraldo, 1929, pp.16-17.

57 _{Interview with Zuleide Melo, (born 1955), May 26, 2009.}

58 _{CF, Relação Geral dos Bens da Firma Augusto e Emeraldo, 1929; Petição de Falência da Firma Salon Cohen,} 1931; both documents contain abundant information about the products provided by the aviadores and the balances of the extractors. Descriptions of the work performed by the castanheiros may be found at Frazão, Castanha do Brasil 4-5; Le Cointe, L'amazonie Bresilienne, 453-57. But the most informative document about work in the castanhais is by far Palma Muniz, Castanhaes de Alemquer. Here I have also relied on the approximately 40 interviews conducted with mocambeiro-descendants from Alenquer and Oriximiná, most of them former castanheiros, and on the interviews with Luis Bacellar Guerreiro (born 1929), former Brazil nut trader, and with Olinda Vallinoto (born 1924), Alenquer merchant Antonio Vallinoto‘s daughter, former accountant and manager. More specific aspects of labor relations will be discussed below.

system was called aviamento: the worker was the aviado or freguês, and the supplier of the goods the aviador or patrão.59 The landowner built a commercial store in a strategic point of the property, usually at the dock where the nuts were shipped. From there the owner or his manager oversaw the gathering of the nuts, paid the workers, and watched the river traffic, trying to avoid the presence of competing merchants. The basic design, however, admitted numerous variations. While the store was frequently supplied by a commercial firm from Oriximiná, Óbidos, or Alenquer, sometimes an aviador could supply several smaller merchants, and even buy nuts from independent extractors.60 There could be as many intermediaries as the price of the nuts admitted. At the upper end of the chain, the aviador would sell the nuts to an export house who shipped them to foreign markets, mainly the UK and the US.61

Maroon descendants argue that the relations between merchants and the collectors greatly favored the former. The price of food and implements was very high, producing negative balance for the castanheiros. According to Zé Melo, who started working as a castanheiro in the mid- 1950s at Lake Erepecu, ―we knew that they were exploiting us, but we had no choice. The manioc flour … many people did not bring theirs to the castanhais, and then you had to purchase it there. Sugar and everything else was more expensive there.‖ In sum, ―at the end [of the nut season] you wanted to pay the balance of the products you bought, [and] the produce you had collected, the nuts, was not enough to cover it. You were in debt. (…) The nuts were cheap, and the products were expensive. You worked just for food in those months, most times you did not

59 _{The system paralleled that employed in the rubber trade. See Barbara Weinstein, The Amazon Rubber Boom:}

1850-1920 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983), 5-20.

60 _{See for example Palma Muniz, Castanhaes de Alemquer, 39.}

61 _{Ricardo Borges, Castanha e Oleaginosas da Amazônia (Belém: Associação Comercial do Pará, 1952), 6-8;} Frazão, Castanha do Brasil maps ‗Produção e Exportação‘ and ‗Recebedores‘.

manage to bring home anything.‖62

Dona Biquinha, who worked at the Erepecuru castanhais in the late 1940s, explains that ―it was hard‖ to end the season with cash, ―because it [the Brazil nut] had a low price (…) You collected many nuts but made little money.‖63

When Maria Teresa Fernandes Regis‘s father died in 1947, she started working in the castanhais of the Erepecu, and like Maria Rosa Xavier Cordeiro, from the Tapagem community, who became a castanheira in the late 1930s, she sadly recalls how the nuts had a low price at the commercial store.64

Valério and Zuleide Melo, from the Boa Vista community, who worked with their families for Costa Lima and his descendants at the Jacaré lake, claimed that he ―cheated people. He never calculated the balance in front of the employee; when the worker got there, the balance was ready.‖65

In other words, Costa Lima manipulated the worker‘s balance. ―Yes, that happened,‖ adds Seu Zé Melo. ―Because look: we did not know mathematics, and they cheated people. In addition to buying the produce cheap, they did the math and kept everything.‖66

It is difficult to assess the extent of this practice, for even if fraud was widespread, it would have been hard for the workers to prove it in court. Other oppressive practices, nonetheless, did exist and were registered in the documentary record.

Former castanheiros, for example, contended that if the owner of a castanhal or his manager caught a gatherer trying to make cash by clandestinely selling nuts to a different merchant or to a regatão, the worker was either arrested by the police or beaten by the manager. ―You went straight to jail,‖ explained Maria de Souza, from the Erepecuru. ―If you sold [nuts] to a regatão, you went to jail,‖ remarked Maria Rosa Xavier Cordeiro, to which her brother Seu

62 _{Interview with Zé Melo (born 1942), May 27, 2009.} 63 _{Interview with Dona Biquinha (born 1934), May 25, 2009.} 64

Collective interview with Nicanor (born 1940) and others, June 5, 2009; interview with Maria Rosa Xavier Cordeiro (born 1925), June 5, 2009.

65 _{Interview with Valério and Zuleide Melo (born 1945 and 1955), May 26, 2009.} 66 _{Interview with Zé Melo (born 1942), May 27, 2009.}

Duí added that ―you lost the nuts, and you lost the job. They never gave it back to you.‖67

Merchants reported thefts of nuts to the police, who usually acted promptly to defend the merchants‘ interests. Antônio Souza, a former Brazil nut worker during the 1950s and mocambeiro-descendant from Lake Abui, argued that when a patrão accused a local of stealing nuts, ―before a week had passed, the police came, caught them, and sent them to Oriximiná.‖68

In January 1936 it took exactly seven days for the chief of police of Alenquer to arrest and seize the nuts collected by ―strangers invading the castanhal [Felinto], where they are extracting nuts without the authorization‖ of the owners.69

On March 6, 1930, Portuguese merchant Joaquim Tavares de Souza, who controlled the Brazil nut groves adjacent to the Pacoval community in the Curuá river, complained to the police that one Francisco Paes had ―invaded and gathered a large number of nuts‖ from his castanhais.‖ ―You should immediately summon the invader and instruct him to cease these actions,‖ the Alenquer police chief instructed the local officer. ―Otherwise, he will be brought to this office‖ to be interrogated.70

Sometimes the merchants‘ tight grip over the nuts expressed itself through physical violence. Manoel Vicente de Oliveira, a recently arrived worker to the castanhais of Alenquer, was ―violently incarcerated‖ when a merchant reported to the police that he was working in a nearby city to repay a debt.71 On July 1935, Alenquer police chief Columbiano Marvão relieved

67 _{Interview with Maria de Souza (born 1935), May 23, 2009; Interview with Maria Rosa Xavier Cordeiro (born} 1925), June 5, 2009; Interview with Seu Duí, (born 1934), June 5, 2009. See also De Azevedo, Puxirum, 45.

68 _{Interview with Antônio Souza (born 1940), Abui community, June 5, 2009.}

69 _{Áurea Nina Personal Archive, Alenquer (henceforth ANPA), Livro de Petições e Portarias, Município de} Alenquer, 1936, Portaria 2 and subsequent Certidão, January 14, 1936, and January 23, 1936.

70

ANPA, Livro de Ocorrências Policiais, Município de Alenquer, 1934, Police Chief to Manoel Rodrigues, March 6, 1930. In this same book see Complaint from Marcos Alves, June 2, 1930, and Police Chief of Alenquer to Subprefeito de Cucuhy, June 4, 1930. See also Arquivo Público do Estado do Pará, Fundo Segurança Pública, Série Chefatura de Polícia , Caixa 389, Ofícios recebidos April-May 1925, Arnaldo Pereira de Moraes to Police Chief of Pará, April 4, 1925, which shows how police officers intervened in disputes over Brazil nuts.

71 _{APEP, FSP, SCP, Cx 434, Oficios recebidos October-November 1926, Manoel Vicente de Oliveira to State} Governor, October 6, 1926.

Antônio Vianna dos Santos, the manager of a Brazil nut commercial house, from his duties as police commissioner in the maroon-descendant community of Pacoval. ―Exceeding his duty,‖ Vianna dos Santos had beaten Antônio Rufino de Oliveira, a local nut worker. He was suspended until an investigation was finished; the results of the investigation remain unknown.72

Aviador Elysio Pessoa de Carvalho reported to the Land Bureau in 1924 that ―the poor of the Rio Grande [Trombetas] … sometimes have experienced the bars of the Óbidos jail, caught in arbitrary proceedings for revolting against exploitation by Crocodile Throat [o Guéla do Jacaré, i.e. Costa Lima].‖73 Costa Lima was ―a scourge for the inhabitants of the Trombetas and the Cuminan [Erepecuru], stunning the entire population with his demarcations on paper, without any profit for the State and many problems for those who wish to dedicate themselves to extractive activities in that region.‖74

In a trial that took place two years later, Carvalho added that Costa Lima was making ―mischief and violent actions‖ [violências e tropelias] against the people of the Trombetas, where there was considerable ―buzzing‖ [zoadas] about him.75

This description of Costa Lima‘s expansion in the Trombetas river sheds light on two important points. On one hand, it is undeniable that the strategies deployed by Brasil nut merchants during the 1920s and later decades were felt as oppressive and often violent by the local population, composed mainly of mocambeiros. The merchants, as shown in this study of Costa Lima‘s strategies, purchased posses that belonged to maroon-descendants, sometimes through abusive practices. They used the services of local mateiros or explorers and rewarded

72 _{ANPA, Livro de Petições e Portarias do Município de Alenquer, 1933, Portaria 159, July 29, 1935.} 73

There is a pun here impossible to translate properly: the Jacaré is the lake where Costa Lima started his activities, but also means ―crocodile‖ in Portuguese. ―Guela do Jacaré,‖ therefore, means both the throat of the Jacaré Lake, and Crocodile Throat.

74

Abelardo Conduru (Elysio Pessoa de Carvalho‘s lawyer) to the Director of the SLB, February 2, 1924, at ITERPA, Autos de Medição ―Tres Barracas‖ or ―São Braz‖, Theodora Gonçalves de Lima, 1923.

75 _{CF, Manutenção de Posse, Elysio Pessoa de Carvalho v. Raimundo da Costa Lima, 1926 (II); Elysio Pessoa de} Carvalho v. Raimundo da Costa Lima, 1926, p.70.

them poorly in exchange. They used knowledge of the legal procedures of land demarcation to ―bend‖ reality, enlarging their properties, transforming maroon-descendants into nut workers, their houses into workers‘ huts, and, in general, trying to erase the ex-maroons from the documentary record. In order to secure a stable supply of laborers, the merchants also subjected the mocambeiros to debt peonage and imported workers from out of the area. By fixing high prices for the products purchased at the barracão and probably by manipulating the balances, the merchants kept their workers in thrall and secured a disproportionate share of the profits of the Brazil nut trade. If the extractors tried to pilfer nuts, the local police moved promptly to guard the merchants‘ interest.

However, a second idea resonates in Pessoa de Carvalho‘s letter to the land bureau. By stating that the ex-maroons were ―revolting against the plundering of Crocodile Throat,‖ Carvalho was making reference to the refusal of the mocambeiros to passively accept the merchants‘ domination. To this subject we now turn.