SOCIAL CONDITIONS
One afternoon I sat in a street-car of the Copacabana line running to
and from the heart of Rio de Janeiro city. As we approached the Avenida
and paused at a sharp turn at the regulator’s signal, a small boy poorly
clad in cotton clothes got on to the front platform with a dinner pail
in his hand. He set it down, removed his cap, and bent his knee as the
motorman, with a swift smile at the child, extended his right hand. The
boy respectfully kissed it, replaced his cap, and jumped down.
The little incident was typical of the wide spread of gentle manners in
Brazil; it is here usual enough to see elderly bankers kiss the hands of
their parents, but courtesy is not confined to cultured classes. One may
in Brazil depend upon a street cleaner as much as upon a senator for
chivalrous politeness. A stranger may address any passer-by in a
Brazilian street in the most execrable Portuguese and will almost
invariably receive serious and kindly attention: it is said that the
Brazilian with his agreeably poised attitude to life “laughs at
everything except a stranger who is speaking bad Portuguese.”
I do not mean that strangers are treated with special courtesy; good
manners are habitual. Brazilian men meeting each other in the street
half a dozen times in a day, lift their hats to each other: no one,
obliged to step past another closely on a street-car, but will raise his
hat and murmur “_Com licença!_” A woman walking down the narrow streets
of the older cities or older parts of the rejuvenated cities will always
find her path cleared by men who step aside into the road with hats in
their hands. If she happens to be very pretty looks will follow her and
whispers may, but in my opinion the ordinary woman with quiet manners is
safer in Brazilian towns than in most centres of population in the
world, may break all the small rules with impunity and may always depend
upon the grave kindness of the Brazilian. People of less punctilious
societies are apt to speak with a degree of contempt of “surface
politeness,” and to say that they prefer roughness and a good heart;
generally this kind of remark is a clumsy apology for boorishness, and
as a matter of fact a good heart is quite as likely to exist under a
courteous exterior as under a discourteous one; a habit of consideration
for others in speech and small actions is without doubt good training
for any variety of heart and head. The Brazilian is in his mental
attitude an inheritor not only of Latin tradition in general but of
French ideas in particular: Paris is his Mecca, French literature and
French science and French art the inspirers of his youth; more
cosmopolitan than the Portuguese born, because he is in close touch with
all Europe as well as with the Americas, quite minus the feeling that
makes the Spaniard love bull-fights, the Brazilian has grounds for his
claim as the brightest spiritual heir of Latinity. His excellent manners
are a part of his heritage.
Apparently, the very considerable additions to the Brazilian population
by immigration during the last hundred years have made little difference
to Brazilian society; it is true that the Englishman with his tennis and
football and his rowing-clubs has introduced and popularized sport, so
that today there are thousands of young Brazilians taking part in these
pleasures and it is true that the influx of artistic French in the
reigns of the two Emperors affected and stimulated sculpture, painting
and writing in Brazil; in each case these were entries into Brazilian
society, the new element arriving with a recognized status as members of
important firms or with a semi-official position. There has been family
mingling, many English and French choosing wives from distinguished
Brazilian families, and in this way the influence of European ideas
frequently has its effect on the education of the children of such
unions. To a less noticeable extent almost every nationality is found in
Brazilian society, for this is a country which has always welcomed the
stranger of distinction, but no race has impressed itself so firmly upon
national characteristics as the Franco-Latin. Immigration, properly
speaking, the systematic colonization with which São Paulo supplied her
coffee lands with labour and Rio Grande and Paraná settled their open
spaces, and Minas tried to supplant negro workers, has affected
Brazilian social conditions scarcely at all. Generally isolated in wide
areas, often with no communication with the outside world except by
mule-trail or river until the railway came a few years ago, the
organized colonies of Russians, Poles, Basques, Bessarabian Jews,
Japanese, Swiss and Germans lived their own lives, retaining perforce
the language and customs of the lands from which they came. The
Italians, employed on great _fazendas_, were more in contact with
Brazilian life than any other race, and even they keep their own speech
together with newly-learned Portuguese, eat Italian food and read
Italian-language newspapers printed in Brazil. Not until the development
of industry brings the colonies into closer contact with each other and
with Brazilian centres of old standing will the Galician and Arab affect
any society but of his own race. No attempt has been made, probably
wisely, to force these settlers into the Brazilian national communion;
they were needed to fill spaces, to bring land into cultivation and
develop the wasted resources of an enormous land: they have done Brazil
this service, and Brazil in return respects their feelings and
traditions. One reason for this lack of interference with the colonies
was that Brazil possessed little machinery which could have brought
about a marked change: but deliberate policy also entered into the
question. It was realized that a change would come about with the
passage of years, when the second or third generations grew and mingled
in a common society, Brazilians born and bred, and that meanwhile Brazil
was too big to fear the effect of these _nucleos_ with their strong
retention of foreign loves and habits. Broadminded enough to sympathize
with such feelings, the Brazilian knows that no man worth his salt
forgets his native land; his idea was expressed by the genial writer, J.
M. de Macedo, when, speaking of the French who made fortunes in Brazil
and returned with their savings to France, he said: “If it be a sin to
love one’s own country better than any other country, then am I a sinner
too!” It is in fact because the Brazilian has so keen a devotion to his
own beautiful land that he comprehends the home-love of the immigrant.
Class distinction still reigns in Brazil to a certain degree, as may be
expected in a land where slavery existed until twenty-eight years ago,
and which twenty-seven years ago still had an Emperor and a Court with a
retinue of nobles. These nobles retain their titles still, except in
cases where formal renunciation was made, but a provision was made at
the establishment of the Republic that they should not be inherited. It
is an example of the liberal spirit in which the break was made, and the
absence of ill-feeling towards the Empire, that Brazil thinks as much of
her Commendadores, Conselheiros, Barões, Viscondes and Condes as she
does of any newly distinguished _bacharel_ of today. Dom Pedro II gave
these titles, very often, in recognition of some special service to
Brazilian development, and it is for this reason that, encountering the
Conde de Leopoldina, we find him to be an Englishman surnamed Lowndes.
When the Princess Isabel (Condessa d’Eu) celebrated her seventieth
birthday in the summer of 1916 the Brazilian newspapers printed long
notices speaking with appreciation of her regencies over Brazil, and
acclaiming her act in freeing the slaves of 1888; a few months
previously a monarchical society held meetings in the capital, their
sayings and doings were reported in the public press without any
excitement, and the trend of editorial comment was, “Well, with the
republic in such a muddle, it is no wonder.”
It is needless to say that the restoration of a monarchy in Brazil is
quite unthinkable, and that the society’s existence is more interesting
than important, but I mention it to show the amused tolerance of the
Brazilian towards other people’s opinions. He has a detached, sometimes
cynical attitude, believes in frank discussion and the airing of ideas,
and together with a markedly democratic habit of life retains a European
respect for tradition and authority. In Rio, the intellectual centre of
Brazil, the influence of the administration is very strongly felt, and
it is the focus of interest and activity: the Brazilian takes a
passionate part in politics, criticizes the Government when and where he
thinks fit, but will never do anything to undermine the power and
prestige of the administration. With but one notable exception the heads
of the Brazilian Government have been men of such ability and force of
character that they have thoroughly earned the confidence of the
thinking classes. From the cultivated caste in Brazil is chiefly drawn
the political group: there have been exceptions, as in the case of
Pinheiro Machado, but as a rule the reins are in the hands of a distinct
social element, descendants of white Portuguese families and frequently
men of great intellectual strength. The names of the Visconde de Rio
Branco, Conselheiro Rodrigues Alves, João Alfredo and Affonso Penna are
but four out of a long list of statesmen of the first rank in Brazil.
The ruling classes are almost always great landowners, _fazendeiros_,
and there was a time when sons of such families destined themselves to
politics, agriculture or one of the “professions;” today commercial
careers are sometimes chosen—perhaps partly because the planter of
coffee or sugar is often necessarily a mill owner and shipper as well—as
Brazil becomes more industrialized, but although these young men may
enter other than the traditional spheres, it is seldom that theirs is
invaded from the world of industrialists or _commerciantes_. The latter
are, indeed, largely recruited from the foreign element; shop-keepers as
well as commission agents and dealers all down the coast were once
largely British and French, but now the energetic Portuguese-born
trader, with the keen Italian and Spaniard, and the still more
insinuating Syrian, has absorbed a marked proportion of the retail
business.
Below the commercial element comes that of labour, stratum of entirely
different composition; it differs too in varying localities, from that
of the south, where slavery tailed off in São Paulo, never penetrating
the more southerly states, and where white labour of immigrant origin
performs field work, to the central section where the _mestizo_ (mixed
blood) of white and Indian or, about Bahia and Pernambuco, white and
negro, blood is the worker; in and near Bahia itself thousands of
pure-blood negroes or mulattos form the labouring class, to the almost
total exclusion of any other. Farther north the negro element fades out
and the Indian mixture predominates in a wiry strain which furnishes all
the labour of the Amazon valley.
Upon this great mass of mixed-blood labourers the educational systems of
Brazil make a certain if slow impression. Intelligent and apt, docile if
conciliated and stubborn if crossed, the _mestizo_ has some excellent
qualities; the indolence of which he is often accused is sometimes want
of direction, and sometimes the result of ill-health in certain regions,
disappearing when the enervating malaria and ankylostomiasis are
conquered, exactly as in the South of the United States where the same
troubles are common. With better sanitation in the crowded warm regions,
and persistence in good schooling, the _brasileiro_ of the labouring
classes would not need supplanting with introduced immigrants. Between
him and the legislator there is a great gulf fixed; its existence might
be dangerous were not the habit of the Brazilian gentle; it can be
bridged only by education. “We have no organization for the expression
of popular opinion,” declared a Brazilian writer recently. “The
statesman, the government official, the legislator, the administrator
has to be a kind of powerful Jehovah, capable of creating worlds out of
nothing ... unless the bachelor (_bacharel_—“doctor”) president, the
bachelor governor, the bachelor minister or the bachelor deputy should
sally forth through Brazil (_saiam por esses Brazis afóra_), over
mountains and valleys, to enquire at the window of every farm, at the
door of every store, at the entrance of each factory, in each
lacemaker’s shop and at each blacksmith’s forge, what Agriculture,
Commerce, Industry and the Proletariat wish for their practical and
effective betterment....” At least it can never be said that the faults
and lapses of Brazil are not understood and discussed by her own
educated classes; there is no country where self-criticism is more
hearty. During the early part of 1916 a party of specialists in tropical
maladies from the Rockefeller Institute passed through Brazil and made
some investigations; one of the weeklies of Rio famous for its cartoons
and skits on public affairs remarked that the visitors need not have
come to Brazil to study malaria—they would find that in a hundred
places: they should study the troubles that were really peculiar to
Brazil. It gave an illustrated list: among the items was the “national
long tongue”—we talk too much; another was _bacharelismo_—everyone in
Brazil wants to be a “Doctor” of medicine or law or philosophy. It is a
disease not altogether limited to Brazil, despite the _Malho_.
Cartoons in Brazil have a point of interest in addition to their wit, in
the presentment of a national figure, “Zé (José) Povo.” Zé Povo is “the
people,” quite distinct from the dignified figure of the _República_, a
lady in draperies crowned with the Phrygian cap. Zé is the man in the
street who stands by and makes acid comments; he has no counterpart in
North American or English journals, but speaks his mind much as
“Liborio” does in the Cuban humorous-political papers. No one can say
that the press is not free in Brazil.
Industrial expansion in Brazil will be the great amalgamator of the
grades and divisions of the population; colonists of foreign origin
cannot continue to live in separate nests, commercial fortunes will
blend society, and the expansion of agriculture will sooner or later
mean the evolution of the _sertanejo_ into a modernized, trading farmer;
as the hills are opened for metals and the forests are entered for
hardwoods and dyes and latex, the millions of Indians of the interior
must be brought into line, or, retreating, eventually die out—the worst
solution of his case and probably an unnecessary one. But at the present
day there are many distinct types among Brazilian populations, and of
them that of the _sertanejo_, the farmer of the interior, the _sertão_,
is not the least interesting. Here on the wide uplands of the plateau he
lives very much as Isaac lived, his world about him, his home, servants
and herds his chief interests; simple, philosophic, intensely hospitable
although reserved and proud, he makes little money but by his cattle,
and wants little. His bodily needs are few, his furnishings of the
simplest; his food is mainly the inevitable _farinha de mandioca_, milk
products, beans (feijão) and eggs and _carne_. He may be the owner of
great expanses of land, but he will seldom sell or divide it and there
is no other life that he will endure and live. In touch with the open
sky, the broad horizon before him, the _sertanejo_ is of a class apart;
his is a simple and a dignified figure.
Brought to town, through acquisition of money or the wishes of his
womenfolk, the farmer of the interior is a peg for many witticisms of
the townsman; he is a “caipira,” a countryman, a hayseed, and endless
amusement is obtained at his expense. One of the Rio weeklies, the
_Careta_, once ran a series of illustrated adventures of such a farmer
who is supposed to come to Rio de Janeiro on a visit with his wife and
pretty daughter, and who takes in the “sights” of the Capital from the
countryman’s angle.
A simple _camaraderie_ prevails in the upland interior, where little
money passes and barter of goods is the most common form of exchange; it
is frequently impossible to hire labour, and as a consequence farmers
and their sons invite the help of their neighbours when field work is
needed, giving their own time in turn when occasion arises. No
distinction between rich and poor occurs in a society of such friendly
simplicity.
In the cattle regions there is a special ceremony every year, for
rounding and branding cattle, known as the _feira dos bizerros_ (calf
branding) and the _apartação do gado_—separation of herds, frequently
running with those of other _fazendeiros_ over unfenced country. All the
neighbours arrive at the farm which is thus counting its stock, families
making it an occasion of friendly reunion. During the evenings of the
two or three days of _festa_ there is a continual round of coffee
drinking and eating, many a marriage is arranged and consummated; at the
close of the work there is frequently a series of competitions of skill
in horsemanship, the clever performance of the _vaquejada_ or
_derrubada_ always exciting a critical audience. Horsemen, mounted on
well-trained animals, post themselves at the gate of the corral where
bulls have been shut up for a day or two; the bars are let down and when
the cattle rush out each of the horsemen tries to seize a bull by its
tail and throw it to the ground—success largely depending on the
cleverness of the horse in avoiding the rushes and struggles of the
bull. The last night is one of continual dancing and temperate feasting,
the flute and violin sounding until dawn. It is a little curious that
these instruments, with the guitar, are the favourites of the musical
peasantry of Brazil, and that the exquisite marimba of African origin,
carried by negroes into Central America and there enthusiastically
adopted by the Quiché-Cachiquel natives, should not have also found a
home in the southern continent.
Among the other figures of the _sertão_, created by the absence of
mechanical transportation in a series of great regions, is the
_tropeiro_, the leader and frequently the owner of a troop of mules
carrying the products of the interior to market. A good _tropeiro_ is
entrusted with the marketing of the cotton crop of a fazenda or even a
district, and he will carry cash for long distances, settling accounts,
making purchases; his mules are trained performers who know their work
and make themselves understood if there is anything wrong with one of
their number. In the north of the Brazilian promontory—Bahia,
Pernambuco, interior Ceará, Maranhão and Rio Grande do Norte as well as
the hinterlands of the central states, the _tropeiro_ undertakes the
transportation of much of the interior crop of cotton, sugar and
tobacco.
He is doomed to extinction as the steel arms of the railroads push out
into the interior, but his day is not yet done.
Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the
Englishman and baseball to the North American. It is a form of
excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a great deal,
an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. Opinion is not
popularly opposed to the system in Brazil, any more than it is in, for
instance, Italy, and in like manner it is conducted by the Federal
Government, is a recognized source of revenue, and many charities and
other worthy institutions supported by the authorities derive their main
income from it. Few people express any adverse sentiments to these
regularized lotteries, but an amusing offshoot from it, illegal,
forbidden, pounced upon now and again by the police, generally denounced
by the press, and indulged in by everyone, is the famous _bicho_. A
_bicho_ is in Brazil any kind of animal or bird or insect—everything
living is popularly a _bicho_—and in this underground lottery groups of
numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc.,
something more interesting than a bald set of figures. The _bicho_ was
of independent origin, with twenty-five animals represented, but
nowadays depends upon the government results, and is really a gamble on
a gamble, but with the advantage that combinations and groups can be
played on, and very small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on
your favourite humming-bird again and again without feeling the loss
when the _anta_ persists in coming up instead, and there would be little
harm done did not servants sent to the market get the _bicho_ habit so
badly, together with shoe-shiners and waiters and all the working class,
that in its acutest form “playing on the _bicho_” becomes an obsession
equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the _bicho_ can be bought at many
newsdealers, in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run
it, and some daily papers print pictures of the winning animals: it is
well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because while a modest
winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the
assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no
redress as the whole thing is illegal.
Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not
yield a public revenue, and that people spend, in the aggregate, more
money on the _bicho_ than on public lotteries which are sources of
governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occasionally
prosecuted, the _bicheiros_ continue to exist and to furnish a mild form
of excitement and adventure. I do not think that lotteries are more
objectionable originators of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear
to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is universally
abstemious, and the rule is not broken in Brazil.
Rarely does the Brazilian born and bred drink anything stronger than
coffee, and this he takes, in little cups in the innumerable
_cafeterias_ of every city, many times a day. Since the established
price of a little cup of hot, very strong black coffee is but a _tostão_
(two U. S. cents) there is no great extravagance about this. At family
meals a little wine, generally imported from Portugal, France or Italy,
is on the table: since Rio Grande has been trying her hand at
wine-making the bottle may contain _vinho nacional_; in any case it is
sparingly used. The younger generation has taken to a limited extent to
the whisky introduced by the Britisher, the beer of the German, now very
well brewed in the country, and the cocktail of the newcomer of North
America, but he appears to drink these exotics more with a desire to be
in the fashion or a “good sport” than because he likes them.
[Illustration:
Monroe Palacio, on the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.
Municipal Theatre, São Paulo City.
]
Deliberate drinking is almost confined to the _festas_ beloved of the
_mestizo_ and mulatto populations, especially celebrated in agricultural
districts, when the Brazilian-made _cachaça_, a kind of rum made from
sugarcane, is liberally consumed. Its festive use seems to be a survival
of Indian custom, for the natives of the coasts and forests in
pre-Portuguese days made a fermented liquor (from _milho_ = maize) for
special occasions, and their descendants as well as the negro element,
also great lovers of celebrations, regard an occasional period of
revelry as a right. The influence of Christianity has succeeded in
identifying these festal occasions with, and confining them to, saints’
days and other Church celebrations, but their root is more primitive.
Religion in Brazil has never been a matter for dissension or the cause
of social upheaval: the original _donatarios_ brought chaplains with
them as a matter of course, missionary Jesuits and members of
Franciscan, Benedictine, Dominican and other Orders gradually founding
establishments in the settlements. With regard to the natives their task
was easy, since there existed no definite religion to be eradicated,
and, except when the work of the missionaries interfered with the
designs of the planters, cordial co-operation existed between the
_padres_, colonists, and authorities; many of them had a hand in
political matters, were emissaries between the mother country and
Brazil, and enjoyed marked prestige. No Inquisition was ever established
in Brazilian territory, and a bone of contention thus avoided. With the
erection of the Republic in 1889 Church was separated from State,
probably much to the betterment of conditions, for considerable
criticism of clerical ways and habits had grown up, laxity following
upon security; put upon her mettle as an independent organization, and
faced with the competition of other permitted forms of belief, the Roman
Catholic church in Brazil is said to have performed much needed
purifying.
Tolerance is a long-established habit. Protestant forms of Christianity
exist undisturbed, and although their temples are very generally
attended exclusively by the foreign congregations responsible for their
origin, and proselytizing is not encouraged, their social work is
undoubtedly useful. In the southern organized settlements each community
practises the form of faith of the home land, the Russians of the Greek
church, Germans with their Lutheran establishments, and so on; there is
not the slightest interference—religious intolerance is indeed
unimaginable in Brazil. It has been said often of the Brazilian that
this attitude arises from indifference, that the practice of religious
observances is left to women and children and that the grown men of
communities are cynical—next door to what used to be called
“agnosticism” by the professional European unbelievers of the past
generation. This is, I think, only apparently true. It has an appearance
of truth in that the churches are largely filled with women; it is
common for Brazilian men in conversation to affect an airy amusement
before the claims of religious bodies: but due allowance must be made
for French influence. Almost up to the time of the European War there
was a parade of emancipation from clerical leading strings by the
intellectual French, yet the course of the conflict has witnessed a
spiritual awakening, the resurrection of something dormant; the France
of today is probably more sincerely religious than she has been for many
a century. The cynicism of masculine Brazil may be no more deeply
rooted.
As in France, there is in Brazil no reaching out after new religions
comparable to the tendency in the United States which is so curious an
indication of emotional phases: it is impossible to conceive Brazilian
reception of Mormonism or Zionism, for instance. The only notable
example of serious adoption of a new faith is found in the extreme
South, where the principles of August Comte have taken root, and the
_riograndense_ of the educated ruling class is generally a Comtist.
In certain of the older, more northerly towns of Brazil the proportion
of Roman Catholic churches to the population is remarkably large,
particularly in Bahia, Pernambuco and its elder sister, Olinda. That
they are able to exist is largely due to the negro and mulatto element,
for here as in all other parts of the world where he has been taken the
negro is a fervent admirer of almost any kind of religion. It is the
swarming coloured people of Bahia, crowded in the cobble-paved,
half-lighted rookeries of the lower town and the tilted streets leading
to the upper town, who make it possible to keep open the doors of that
city’s four hundred churches. In these centres all the many saints’ days
are kept with fervour, but it is in the interior that tradition and a
simple faith in “white magic” survive; here that the ceremonies of All
Hallowe’en are performed by maids of the sertão, and spells invoked. St.
John’s is one of the popular days, with its legends and traditional
celebrations, when groups of boys and girls, mingling on this occasion
as youth of Latin inheritance does not often mingle, crowned with leaves
and flowers, go down to the river banks to wash, singing as they go,
because as the verse says: “Nessa noite é benta a agua. Pará tudo tem
virtudes.” Fires are lighted outside each house in homage to St. John,
and at these green corn is roasted—the traditional _milho assado na
fogueira_. Over the hot ashes of these fires the faithful walk barefoot
without being burnt....
On this night lovers make their tests of the fidelity of the sweetheart,
and girls try to discover their fate in marriage; St. John, however, is
not the only aider of candidates for matrimony—there is “São Gonçalvo,”
a great lover of lovers, and St. Anthony, famous in North Brazil for his
power in binding uncertain swains. A well-used prayer to this saint is
quoted by Pereira da Costa in his _Folklore Pernambucano_ and begins:
“Father St. Anthony of Captives, you who are a firm binder, tie him who
wishes to flee from me; with your habit and with your holy girdle hinder
the steps of Fulano as with a strong cage....”
St. Raymund is another helper of solitary maidens, and a guaranteed
prayer of noted efficiency is addressed to him; translated freely it
runs:
Miraculous Saint Raymund,
You who help everyone to marry,
Please tell Saint Anthero
That I wish to be married soon
To a very good-looking young man,
In the church of Saint Benedict.
Before the altar of Saint Rosa
I want to give my hand as a wife
To him whom I love so much,
Asking Saint German
And also Saint Henry
That I shall be happily married.
May Saint Odoric permit
That the young man be rich,
And Saint Augustine grant
That he loves me very much
And I beg Saint Robert
That he may be clever.
Also I pray Saint Vincent
That the wedding may be soon,
Begging Saint Innocencia
Not to let me lose patience,
And asking Saint Caetano
That it may happen this year.
I have already prayed Saint Inez
Not to let this month pass,
And Saint Mariana,
That it may be this week—
And I beg the Virgin Our Lady
That it may be this very hour!
From which it will be seen that the saints are expected to be useful,
and that _festas_ of the church are agreeable to these young people,
leading in the older centres a rather restricted social life.
Women in Brazil occupy a position out of which they have been forced or
have voluntarily emerged in many countries. It is for many reasons a
very happy life, for, withdrawn as she is, the Brazilian wife and mother
has complete authority over the wide sphere which tradition has so long
assigned to her. It is a moot point whether women in other lands would
seek emergence from that circle if circumstances did not send them from
it; the salary-earning women of Western Europe and North America perhaps
do not always realize that theirs is not altogether a choice between
home and independence, that they work because they must work. The
exigencies of climate, as well as modern education, send women out to
the ranks of the workers in lands where there are at least as many women
as men.
In Brazil there is no such equality of numbers. The list of men is
always much longer than that of women, chiefly because of the stream of
male immigrants who arrive in the country without families, and, earning
good wages, set about the acquisition of a home. The predominant classes
of such immigrants are Portuguese, and these men, speaking the same
language and with close affiliations to Brazil, readily seek wives among
the Brazilian families to which their status gives them entry. Little
social adjustment is needed in such unions, much less than in the case
of the marriage of Brazilian girls with foreigners of a totally
divergent origin.
The Brazilian girl is said to be precocious, and she is certainly the
possessor of tactful manners and distinct aplomb in her early teens. If
she is a member of a wealthy family she has generally spent some years
in French schools, and it is not unusual to find beautiful young women
of nineteen or so who have been educated in Germany, France, Switzerland
and England, and who speak four or five languages fluently. All educated
Brazilians speak and read French, most of them understand but will not
speak English, and nearly all those from the more southerly parts of
Brazil have learned German for commercial reasons or have been partly
educated in Germany. Educational affiliations with the United States are
new, and apply to young men more than to girls; technical training in
engineering or trading is sought increasingly in North America for
business reasons as commercial exchange develops, but the closely
guarded, often conventual training of the girls has a very different
aim. The young Brazilian girl is frequently a good horsewoman, for life
on a farm is almost sure to be included in the tale of her early years;
she is often also a good swimmer. Music is an invariable part of her
education on which stress is laid, and I have heard some brilliant
executants among Brazilian women. Dressed in the height of Parisian
fashions, chic, demure outside her family and full of gay camaraderie
with her endless lines of brothers and sisters inside the home, the
Brazilian young girl is a very charming creature. She has the loveliest
dark eyes in the world, and often possesses a very fine clear pale skin.
Married, she seems to resign herself contentedly to a purely domestic
life; one enters homes in Brazil whose handsome hostess entertains
delightfully, always exquisitely dressed, and sparkling with the big
diamonds that are considered the simple right of every woman in Brazil—
my washerwoman in Rio had a pair of brilliant earrings that cost three
contos of reis, representing her life’s savings—but this same smiling
hostess will never be seen outside her spacious home and gardens, except
upon the formal occasions when she is obliged to make an appearance in
public with her husband. She not infrequently displays a tendency to
_embonpoint_ early in life, the result of lack of exertion and the
eating of the extraordinary and delicious _doces_ (sweets and candies),
the creation of which is a special art of Brazilian women, but she does
not mind this at all, fearing a thin figure as the most terrible of
disasters in this land where the highest compliment paid to a woman is:
“How pretty and fat you are getting!” _Gorda_ and _bonita_ are indeed
interchangeable terms.
She accepts her destiny as a mother of many children, and generally
spoils them badly, at least in their infancy; the father is equally
indulgent. A harsh parent is a _rara avis_, and nothing excites popular
indignation in Brazil more than any story of hardship in which children
are concerned. Passionately devoted to her babies, the Brazilian mother
stays within her home, is the gracious sovereign of her circle, and
seems little disturbed when it expands notably. This expansion is likely
to happen if any relative either on her side or her husband’s falls upon
evil days; in that case he will come with his family and camp out until
fortune smiles again. There is no turning of the cold shoulder upon poor
relations in Brazil—they are welcome to a share of the family fare, and
to hammock space if beds are lacking in the case of poorer homes, secure
in the knowledge that they in turn will repay this good deed with
similar ones later on. The city centres have of course their more rigid
social laws, but in the less restricted life of smaller towns or
_fazendas_ there is often encountered another variation from the harsher
rules of some other lands: this is the placid acceptance into a home of
children who do not claim the mistress of the house as mother, but who
receive from her bed and board and a status little inferior to that of
her own babies, regular members of society. Lapses from social law occur
all over the world; they are punished to a greater or lesser degree
everywhere, but in some countries the innocent suffer more than the
guilty; unhappy and unwanted children bear a stigma against which they
rebel in vain. Brazilian opinion does not spare offenders, but it does
withhold any harsh hand from innocent children. Acknowledged and treated
with affection, they are given a chance in life together with the more
fortunate.
Life in the two chief cities of Brazil, Rio and São Paulo, takes its hue
from the European capitals with which they are closely in touch, and
from which they have derived mental food for many a generation. There is
little about either of these fine cities, apart from the hot summers,
the brilliant vegetation, their remarkable cleanliness and the Southern
Cross overhead, to distinguish them from European cities; the clothes,
amusements, buildings, and literature of the population is predominantly
European, and there is not much to remind the visitor that he is in
tropical South America. Rio is the “intellectual centre” of Brazil, and
here are gathered the scores of good writers and poets, the artists and
politicians, of the country; there is a profuse and characteristic
literature. If the North American writer was correct in saying that
“American literature is only a phase of English literature,” he would
have been equally justified in saying that South American literature is
a phase of French literature: yet in Brazil this would have less truth
than in most parts of Latin America, because this country has so largely
developed a series of writers who take native Brazilian life for their
theme. There are long lists of Brazilian novels and poems which really
reflect Brazil conditions in the very varied sections of the country; I
know no other South American country whose literature is so emancipated,
not from French style so much as from European subject matter. There is
for instance the excellent work of the Visconde de Taunay, whose
charming _Innocencia_ is a picture of interior conditions, and has been
translated into almost every language, not excepting Japanese. The books
of José de Alencar form another series of provincial pictures; Machado
de Assis wrote a number of historical novels of great merit and
interest; Coelho Netto, Aluisio de Azevedo, J. M. de Macedo, Xavier
Marques, are among a score of names of writers who have left records of
Brazilian life. If I were advising the study of a brief list of such
novels, this would be a preliminary dozen:—
_Innocencia_: by the Visconde de Taunay. Novel of _fazenda_ life in
the interior—a delicate and touching story.
_Os Sertões_: by Euclydes da Cunha. Powerful and vivid description of
a page of national history, with a setting in the interior
Brazilian uplands.
_O Sertão_: by Coelho Netto. Scene also laid in the interior, with its
simple customs.
_O Mulato_: Aluisio de Azevedo. Deals with the position of the negro
half-caste in Brazil.
_O Gaucho_: José de Alencar. Life of the Brazilian cowboy.
_Os Praieiros_: Xavier Marques. Life of the fisherfolk on islands near
Bahia.
_O Paroara_: Rodolpho Theophilo. Exodus of the Cearenses to the rubber
forests of the Amazon.
_Maria Dusá_: Lindolpho Rocha. Story of diamond hunters in the
interior of Bahia.
_Braz Cubas_ and _Quincas Borba_: Machado de Assis. Historical novels
dealing with colonial life.
_Esphynge_: Afranio Peixoto. Social life of Rio and Petropolis, or
_Dentro da Noite_ or _Vida Vertiginosa_, by “João do Rio,” also
social life of the Capital.
There are also the finely written novels of Brazil’s woman writer, Julia
Lopez de Almeida, whose _Fallencia_ is a very skilful piece of work; and
no study of Brazilian life would be complete without José Verissimo’s
_Scenas da Vida Amazonica_, preserving tales and legends of the Amazon,
and the kindly _Memorias da Rua do Ouvidor_, of J. M. de Macedo, telling
tales of the early days of Rio de Janeiro.
Poets are many. The “Prince of Brazilian poets,” acclaimed by public
vote, is Olavo Bilac, whose _Via Lactea_ is a beautiful work: he is one
of the most distinguished members of the Academia Brasileira, whose
President is the publicist and orator of international fame, Senator Ruy
Barbosa.
Olavo Bilac is something more than a poet; he has recently made it his
mission to sound a “call to arms,” addressed to Brazilian young men,
with the object of bringing about physical and moral improvement through
military service. His addresses in the capitals in 1915 made a great
stir: he later, in the middle of 1916, began a tour of Brazil,
penetrating into interior regions as well as visiting coast towns, to
repeat his appeal. A most admired and beloved poet, Bilac has prestige
which few other people could bring to such a self-appointed task.
After Bilac comes Alberto de Oliveira, and a long list of other
dexterous versifiers; many produce charming poems, and he who wishes to
have an acquaintance with classical Brazilian verse must read the output
of Gonçalves Dias, who took the life of the Indians for his theme, as
well as that of the lyric writer Gonzaga and the graceful Claudio da
Costa.
Brazil also has a national stage. I know of no play of first-class
importance, but there is an active supply of native Brazilian actors and
actresses, and if their work is generally that of playing in the
home-made _revistas_, and if these _revistas_ are not very high art, at
least they are genuinely Brazilian, and often extremely amusing. I
suppose that on the stage, as in the pages of the Brazilian press, there
is a limit beyond which the libel law would become active, but I cannot
imagine where it is drawn; the audience rocks with laughter when
well-known political personages are caricatured upon the stage—as they
are lampooned in the press—and no notice appears to be taken of whatever
alludes to matters of intimate family concern. Nobody in the public eye
is exempt, and the result is that Brazil possesses a lively, home-made
stage which is at least a beginning in dramatic craft.
Brazil has an exuberant press. There is a large number of dailies and
weeklies in proportion to the population, many of the smaller journals
existing to serve the purposes of some special movement, colony, or
party, and there are many technical periodicals of varying merit. Grace,
pungency and a frequently merciless frankness are the chief
characteristics of the free-lance sections of the Brazilian press,
although there are certain staid and conservative journals whose dignity
never deserts them. The first of all Brazilian newspapers was a little
sheet started in Rio, soon after the arrival of Dom João, by Frey
Tiburcio; it was practically a Court Journal. Two of its notable
antagonists later on were the _Tamoyo_ and the _Sentinella_. All of
these early periodicals died a natural death, the newspaper of longest
continual publication in Brazil being the _Diario de Pernambuco_.
The premier newspaper in Brazil, which is also perhaps the best in South
America, although it has a formidable rival in the Argentine, is “o
velho,” the famous _Jornal do Commercio_, the semi-official, powerful,
wealthy, and most excellent daily of Rio, with a circulation all over
Brazil and reaching out as well to most parts of the educated world. It
is a great paper in all senses of the word, is finely printed—this great
sheet, often with thirty-two and sometimes eighty big pages, eight
columns wide, printed in a language requiring the “til,” “cedilla,”
acute and circumflex accents, constantly employed, comes out day after
day almost without any typographical errors. Its reviews of commercial
affairs are made with authority; it is remarkable for having no
editorials, anything that needs to be said editorially appearing in the
“_Varias Noticias_;” months may pass without this column containing more
than chronicles of official acts and movements, but when the _Jornal_ is
moved to speak its voice comes in no uncertain tone. Its denunciations
and pronouncements are discussed like a Papal Edict in the Middle Ages.
Anyone who reads the _Jornal_ day by day, with its pages of European
telegrams, its excellent letters from world capitals, its fine literary
and political essays, its _Publicações a pedido_ where every kind of
public or private matter is thrashed out, often to the great
entertainment of the reader, knows everything that is going on in
Brazil, is well up in European news, but will hear only faint echoes
coming from North America and these as a rule only when some
distinguished Brazilian happens to be travelling there, and cables are
sent south dealing with his sayings and doings. When I have enquired the
reason for this lack of news from North America the reply has generally
been that the news services are responsible: that the arrangements made
with certain European agencies cannot be duplicated. It seems as if this
is a matter needing thoughtful attention, for it is obvious that the
Brazilian cannot be so deeply interested in a country about which he
hears practically nothing as about others which present even trivial
domestic news to him in long cables every day. The same lack occurs, of
course, in the United States in regard to Brazil; if accurate, frequent
information were disseminated we should not read that “in the states of
Paraná and Santa Catarina, in Brazil, the entire population subsists on
bananas as food and are famous for their strength and endurance,” or
that (an item of early October, 1916) “the Brazilian coffee crop is
estimated at 11,000,000 bags, the greatest ever harvested and three
million bags bigger than last year’s crop,” nor should we see the “Girl
from Brazil” represented upon a New York stage dressed, and comporting
herself, much like a Carmen, and speaking Spanish; or read tales
repeated in the press of the “little republic of Coanani” near the
Guiana boundary in Brazil which has “sent its army to fight on the side
of the Allies.” With the United States as Brazil’s best customer, and,
at least for the present, Brazil’s greatest supplier, there should be
better channels of interchange not only of information but ideas; there
should be room for a Brazilian journal in New York—there is one in
Paris—and for a Bureau of Information with exhibits, something on the
lines of the existing Bureau in the French capital, where Brazilian
hardwoods, cotton, precious stones, fibres, ores, etc., are on view. The
Pan-American Union, as well as other organizations and publications with
the Pan-American object in view, do sincere and arduous work which has
borne much industrial and social fruit, but their labours are
necessarily spread over a great field: nor can Consuls do everything,
however energetic. Brazilian interchange with North America is quite
important and promising enough to merit a special news service.
Other strong Brazilian newspapers published in Rio are _O Paiz_, _O
Imparcial_, _O Correio da Manhã_ issued in the morning, with a host,
including _A Platea_, _A Tarde_, _O Noite_ and the afternoon edition of
the _Jornal do Commercio_, issued any time after mid-day: the latter has
had a wonderful war-review series of articles running since 1914. Very
many papers of the Brazilian press, like the major part of the
non-German Brazilian people, are strongly pro-Ally, and particularly
pro-French, and have no hesitation in declaring their feelings, as
witness the “Liga Brasileira pelos Alliados” formed by some of the
foremost men of the country, but in the case of the war articles of the
afternoon _Jornal_ there was a serious attempt at impartiality. It was
possible thus to read first a criticism of the war-telegrams of the day
showing that a distinct advantage had accrued to the Allies, while
printed just below would be another analysis by a second contributor,
demonstrating that the news was distinctly favourable to the Teutonic
forces.
Also published in Rio are many technical papers, medical and engineering
periodicals, etc., and some of the gay illustrated weeklies of very free
speech, as _O Malho_, _A Careta_, _Fon-Fon_; also the _Revista da
Semana_, a society paper. There are French, Italian and German papers,
but the great home of a polyglot press is São Paulo, with its groups of
immigrants. Here the oldest Brazilian paper is the _Correio Paulistano_,
sixty years established, a daily morning paper; another in the same
class and perhaps the most widely read is the _Estado de São Paulo_,
while the _Commercio de São Paulo_[5] also has a high reputation. The
_Estado_ runs an afternoon edition, and there are many other evening
papers—the _Diario Popular_, _Naçao_, _Gazeta_, etc. For the Italian
population there is the daily morning _Fanfulla_, the afternoon
_Giornale degli Italiani_ and the weekly _Italiano_. Germans have the
morning _Diario Alemão_ and the weekly _Germania_. Two French weeklies
seem to do well, the _Messager de S. Paul_, and the _Courrier Français_.
There is a Spanish _Diario Español_, two Turkish papers, and in the
colonies outside the city there are said to be Russian and Japanese
sheets published. The city of S. Paulo counts eighty journals, the State
counting over two hundred dailies and weeklies.
Rio and S. Paulo are the two chief literary centres, but every town of
any size in Brazil has its newspaper. Of these perhaps the most
important are the Pernambuco papers; the _Diario de Pernambuco_, already
mentioned, bears the proud inscription of its age in conspicuous
lettering on the front of its building in a square in Recife; it is a
very good paper, and so is the _Jornal do Recife_, among several other
daily sheets. Bahia has the _Diario de Bahia_ and _Diario de Noticias_,
amongst others, and the State Press here also publishes daily an
excellent _Diario Official_.
Pará has quite a variety of papers, the _Estado de Pará_ and the _Folha
do Norte_ probably the two most powerful. Manáos also supports several
newspapers, of which the _Jornal do Commercio_ and _O Tempo_ appear to
be most widely read.
Many imported foreign periodicals have a ready sale in Brazil, as the
French _L’Illustration_, many Portuguese publications, and the _Blanco y
Negro_ of Madrid; nearly all the English serious reviews and illustrated
weeklies are sold, and there is an increasing demand for illustrated
North American periodicals of good class. Altogether Brazil has a
remarkably cosmopolitan class of readers and therefore a cosmopolitan
press.
Almost all the Brazilian authors of note have, at one time or another,
contributed to the great _Jornal do Commercio_; this is really the
cradle of much fine writing. Founded in 1827, it is today housed in a
splendid building on the corner of the famous Rua do Ouvidor and the
Avenida Rio Branco, the building and press equipment costing over half a
million dollars.
Linked with the life of the _Jornal_ for the last twenty-five years is
that of José Carlos Rodrigues, Director from 1890 until his retirement
in 1915; a great student and great organizer, possessed of international
prestige, José Carlos was the moving spirit of the newspaper for a
generation. He is one of the eminent figures in modern Brazilian life.
At seventy-two years of age he is completing his _Vida de Jesus_, fruit
of long years of research.
José Carlos Rodrigues is one of the constructive Brazilians. There have
been many others, as the great Andrada brothers, Campos Salles, the
Visconde de Rio Branco and his son, the Barão; Varnhagen (Visconde de
Porto Seguro), politician and historian; Joaquim Nabuco, writer,
ambassador, and instigator of slavery abolition—as were also several
fine men still alive, as Rodrigues Alves, the great Paulista.
Of modern Brazilians to whom the country owes a debt there are none with
more claim to gratitude than Dr. Oswaldo Cruz, who banished yellow fever
from coast towns once notorious for their unhealthiness, and Colonel
Rondon, who has devoted his life to the opening-up of the Brazilian
interior, and besides mapping, charting, and creating telegraphic
communication throughout the hinterlands of Matto Grosso, has brought
whole tribes of wild Indians into civilized ways of living.
Among the elements which comprise and influence Brazilian social
conditions, that of the Portuguese of course stands first, for as Ruy
Barbosa said the other day, “Americans are descendants not of Apaches,
but of Anglo-Saxons; not of Guaranis, but of Latins.” The Indian
admixture has left little traceable influence but that of physical
hardihood. The extreme south of Brazil, as we have already seen, has had
during the last century an enormous influx of European white blood other
than Portuguese, chiefly Italian and Germanic, while all the large coast
cities are noticeably impregnated with more or less foreign elements. In
the interior of the northern promontory a noticeable feature is the
blonde average of the population, partly an inheritance from the days of
Dutch control and partly from that of French settlement. Among the
groups of unhappy _retirantes_ from the drought districts, encountered
in the streets of Pará and Manáos, waiting for shelter and work, there
are often to be seen people with fair hair and blue eyes who might have
come direct from Amsterdam or Brittany.
On the coastal belt of the lower half of the northern promontory there
is another very strong admixture, that of the negro. Frequently the
Brazilian shakes his head over this element, but occasionally the
cudgels are taken up in its defence. The author Sylvio Romero says
frankly that the European was not, in early colonial days, “strong
enough to repel the native savage and cultivate the soil, and so
resorted to that powerful auxiliary, the negro of Africa ... the ally of
the white men.” He calls the negro “a robust civilizing element,” and
says that from the close association of slavery sprang the mixed-blood
descendants, who constitute today “the mass of our population and the
chief beauty of our race.”
“Still today,” he declares, “the most beautiful feminine types are these
agile, strong, brown-skinned girls with black eyes and hair, in whose
veins run, although well diluted, many drops of African blood.... The
coast of Africa civilized Brazil, said one of our statesmen, and he
spoke truth; the negro has influenced all our intimate life and many of
our customs are transmitted from him. It is sufficient to remember that
the only genuine Brazilian cooking, the _cozinha bahiana_, is entirely
African. Many of our dances, songs and popular music, a whole literature
of ardent outpourings, have this origin. It is unfortunate that this
energetic race should have suffered the brand of slavery; we should make
a vow to revindicate its place in our history. There are means of
utilizing the negro without degrading him.”
Sylvio Romero adds that “all the first-class people of Brazil have white
blood, either pure or mingled with that of another race,” but that the
white element should do justice to the degree to which the black has
been a mental, political, economic and social factor. He traces, in a
little book of which I found a stray copy on a bookstall in Manáos
market, the negro element in the folklore of Brazil (_Contos Populares_,
Rio de Janeiro) as well as that of the native Indian, and makes the
point that both Indian and negro are “inarticulate” in Brazilian
society, except through the medium of a language foreign to their ideas,
Portuguese, which has undoubtedly coloured their mental expression.
These Folk-tales of Sylvio Romero’s collection, as well as those
preserved by Couto de Magalhães in his _Selvagem_, are delightful tales,
many hinging upon the adventures of various wild animals, and frequently
displaying a decided streak of humour not unlike that of the “Uncle
Remus” negro tales of North America.
At least one negro poet of Brazil has a claim to fame—Cruz e Souza; the
sculptor Pinheiro was also chiefly of African blood; José de Patrocinio,
who worked hard for the abolition of slavery and stood by the chair of
Princess Isabel when she signed the decree of freedom, was an able and
eloquent negro writer. Altogether, the debt of Brazil to the strong
African races appears to be quite as important, if not much more so,
than that owed to the Tupi-Guarani and other “Indian” tribes of native
Brazil. Fleeing from before the hard hand of the white man, the Indian
as a separate social element has disappeared from those parts of Brazil
brought into touch with modern life.
This native Brazilian, the “Indian” of the coasts, inland plains, and
forest-bordered rivers who lived in the country before Portuguese
possession, has left no traces of civilization comparable with that of
the Incas or pre-Incas of the north-west of South America, or with the
culture of the Maya of Central America and their pupils and conquerors,
the Aztecs. Only in the north, along the Amazonian river highway
connecting with Peru are there remains of ceramic art, and survivals of
weaving skill, which denote marked attainments by a people with settled
homes and defined social habits.
The Museo Goldi at Pará is full of good pottery, some fairly modern, and
much dug from burial grounds on the great island of Marajó at the mouth
of the Amazon; Marajó has a lake which in turn shelters an island which
has proved a mine for the archaeologist—and none too respectfully
treated, unfortunately, by some recent excavators, who seem to have been
more occupied in acquiring loot than in making historical records. This
island in the lake appears to have served for a burial ground of tribes
with social customs of a distinct type; many of the funerary urns are
large enough to contain an entire human body, and some are of good
artistic design; there is a very noticeable resemblance between certain
of these Marajó pottery specimens, especially the smaller jars and
domestic vessels, and ceramics found in Colombia and Southern Central
America.
To the present day the Amazon Indians have preserved their skill in
weaving native fibres; hammocks made of delicate threads, fine as lace
and beautifully prepared, are ornamented with elaborate feather devices
worked in with the fibres. They are sold on the Amazon for prices
reaching several hundred milreis. Both the Museum in Pará and that in
Rio de Janeiro, begun by Dom Pedro and housed in his one-time palace,
contain beautiful specimens of Indian feather work, the exquisite pinks,
blues and greens of Brazilian birds lending themselves to the gay
effect. Allied in race, apparently, to handsome, stocky natives of
British Guiana, the Amazon Indian often has a skin of a cinnamon tint,
is physically strong so long as he is not called upon for regular and
confined labour, is a good waterman and archer, and is not inimical
while he is allowed to remain undisturbed in his forests. If it were not
necessary to enlist his help or enter his retreats, his effect upon
Brazilian modern social conditions would be nil; there was a time when
Indian blood and labour were forcibly brought into service, but that
period is past, although the effect of the former survives in the
fortifying of much Portuguese blood. The hardy mixture that resulted was
able to withstand a trying climate as a pure European race probably
could not have done.
[Illustration:
Igapó near the Rio Negro, Amazonas.
Caripuna Indians, on the Madeira River.
]
Farther south the Indian seems to have been of a different origin, whose
cradle is assigned by some scientists to Paraguay, and who are
identified with the fierce Caribs, invaders of the West Indian islands
and destroyers of the gentle aborigines of those shores before the
Spanish came. No pottery remains are found in the south as in the north;
these tribes seem to have been nomadic in tendency, cultivators of no
arts that have left traces, builders of but light and temporary
dwellings, living upon few foods and those obtained chiefly by hunting.
The chief articles cultivated were mandioca and maize, the forests
yielding wild fruits and nuts. There seems to be no doubt that the
majority, if not all, of these natives were given to cannibal feasts,
but in some cases the act was ceremonial and in others was confined to
enemies of the tribe. Apart from these propensities the native appears
to have been a gentle and even timid creature, endowed with simple good
sense, and quite a man of his word. With the Portuguese settler he was
almost always at loggerheads, but the French knew well how to make a
valuable and faithful ally of him, loyal supplier of food and shelter in
the darkest day of the French attempt at colonization both north and
south; the Jesuit priests, too, who followed the Indians into the
wilderness were able to make quiet converts out of them, and to train
them to domesticity. Since the Jesuits’ work was destroyed and the
missionaries themselves expelled from the country the Indian has been
practically let alone; withdrawn socially, his part in Brazilian life
has been a silent one. He has been still living in the Stone Age. He
never knew and has not adopted the use of metal, erected no stone or
other permanent buildings of any kind, and set up no temples to his
gods. Idea of a deity was to many tribes represented by Tupan, a being
somewhat resembling the North American’s “Great Spirit;” medicine men,
called _pagés_, performed and still perform, wonders and enchantments to
cure the sick. When Prince Adalbert of Prussia went up the Amazon in
1843 he was able to see one of these wizards at work upon a sick man,
and himself complained of a pain in his arm, asking the pagé to cure it;
the spot was rubbed with unguents, covered with leaves, exorcisms were
made, and at last the pagé blowing upon the arm freed a butterfly and
declared that this was the disappearing pain; the European onlookers
said that it was a marvel that the wizard had been able to go through
such a performance with the butterfly concealed in his mouth: evidently
these are quite good conjurers. It is not unknown for the position of
pagé to be offered to a distinguished foreigner: I heard on the Amazon
of a German doctor, whose cures had won the confidence of a remote
tribe, receiving this curious honour.
The only man of modern times who has had continued success with the
native of the interior is that great Brazilian, Colonel Candido Rondon:
in his work of constructing telegraphs and roads and mapping and
surveying in the vast sertões of Matto Grosso, Rondon has laboured for
twenty-five years to win over the timid and hostile Indians. He has so
far succeeded that not only do they now refrain from destroying his
lines and stations, but have been trained to the service of the
Commission which Rondon heads, guarding the posts and cultivating fields
in their neighbourhood for the supply of the engineers. In 1915 a series
of moving picture films were shown in Brazilian cities, made on the
route of the Commission’s work, and showing interesting pictures of
Parecís, Nhambiquaras, and other Indian tribes friendly to the invaders
of their interior regions; they are frequently fine-looking,
welldeveloped, sturdy people, very well worth saving among the world’s
races.
All over the Americas the question of the fate of the native is a
painful one. In North America, both in Canada and the United States, he
has diminished with extraordinary rapidity even when wars have ceased;
contact with the white man seems to be fatal to him. It is only of late,
since he ceased to be a physical danger, that conscience has been
aroused on his behalf and efforts made to retain the survivals. Farther
south the Aztec is still holding his own, a hardy race living its own
life yet and able to preserve customs and wide land spaces. In Central
America the only marked group of pure race is the gentle Guatemalan
Maya, almost enslaved but still living the life of the sixteenth century
in the uplands: when taken to work in the lowlands, he dies.
In Peru the natives are still a strong tough mountain people: Ecuador,
Bolivia and Chile also have incorporated the Indian into the industrial
life of the country; from the Argentine he has practically disappeared,
the face of the land occupied by restless, industrial strangers, while
he has no place in statistics or in calculations affecting the progress
of the country. He is no more a factor than the North American Indian is
a factor in the United States.
Is he to suffer a similar fate in Brazil? Not yet, for his numbers are
large and he still occupies great tracts of the vast hinterlands. There
is, too, a lively public sentiment on the subject of the Indian in
Brazil, statesmen and writers frequently calling attention to the
problem. Spaces in Brazil are so enormous that it will be many a
generation before any question arises of intrusion upon Indian retreats,
and perhaps by that time an extension of the methods of Rondon will have
divested him of fear of civilization.
It cannot, however, be imagined that the native of Brazil will supply
the labour needed to develop great interior regions; he is not willing
to work at given tasks at appointed times and to maintain such work day
by day. He is probably not physically fitted for such tasks. When,
seduced by agents during rubber booms, he has been bribed into working
at the systematic gathering of _goma_, he has failed and died in too
many instances; only when his blood is mingled with that of another
race, and the _caboclo_ produced, is the child of the _selvagem_ able to
take his place in the industrial world.
With the suggestion that the Indian should be strengthened by admixtures
of introduced Asiatics, on the score that the Oriental and the native of
Brazil are already akin, I have scant patience. A tilt of the eyelids
seen in some Central and South American natives has been the chief basis
of a number of fantastic theories generally pre-supposing the passage of
large numbers of Chinese immigrants by way of the Behring Strait;
difficulties are brushed away with an easy hand by enthusiasts of this
idea, but to ignore them is, as T. A. Joyce says, to ignore the value of
scientific evidence. It is just as reasonable to suppose that China or
Japan or both were colonized from South America as to insist on the
reverse movement, but as a matter of fact the division is so extreme on
the very points where resemblances should exist—in language roots,
social customs, arts and food, and religion—that discussion of the
question appears futile. It may be taken for granted that oriental
immigration and mixing will not be accepted by Brazilians as the
solution to the Indian problem; like many another Brazilian problem, it
will be solved from within.
Education in Brazil for the masses of the people has been the subject of
serious consideration and effort for the last fifty years. Government
schools in the care of the separate States differ widely in varying
latitudes, both in quantity and quality, and problems depend largely
upon the origin of the population. The Italian immigrants of São Paulo
are obviously not in the same class as pupils as the negroes of Bahia
State or the three-quarter Indians of Amazonas, nor can States with few
exports and small revenues spend a corresponding amount on education
with rich and expanding regions.
São Paulo is in the matter of public schools, as in commerce, the leader
State; she is a wealthy State, and she has not hesitated to spend
enormous sums on all kinds of public works, whether roads, water-supply,
railways, drainage—or school buildings and service. The Director of
Public Instruction, Dr. João Chrisostomo, in speeches and writings shows
that he has a very clear idea of the object of modern schooling, to
train a healthy mind in a healthy body. Medical and dental attendance
upon the children is regularly carried out in the Paulista schools,
teachers are trained in an excellently equipped and managed Normal
School, and buildings have been multiplied until there is today a school
for every fourteen hundred of the inhabitants of São Paulo state. The
task of educating the children of the working population is a more
difficult one in the agricultural districts, but every good coffee
fazenda has its school. São Paulo has made special efforts to bring new
immigrants into touch with Brazilian conditions by establishing a series
of night schools where Portuguese is taught, together with Brazilian
history and geography; the writer once visited a school of this kind and
saw Italians, Syrians, Greeks and a Japanese, all adults, learning
earnestly in the same room.
Not all of the Brazilian States have as much money to spare as São
Paulo, but the framework, and much of the real building and equipment,
of a satisfactory public school system exists in every section of the
country. Feminine professional education has made a certain start, and
the writer has rarely seen a more promising, and handsome, group of
young women than the students of a normal school in Pará. Many Brazilian
cities take pride in their professional and technical colleges, some of
very old foundation, as that of the School of Law of Pernambuco, the
School of Medicine of Bahia, the Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro,
and the School of Law of São Paulo.
Religious scholastic institutions are many, several of the great Orders,
such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, and of course the Jesuits,
maintaining splendid, large, and wealthy colleges. Convents for girls
are also of first-class importance in the Brazilian educational field,
the Sacred Heart institutions taking thousands of girls, and apparently
giving them a good training. In São Paulo there are several schools of
Italian origin; there is a popular French Lycée in Rio; the American
Mackenzie College in São Paulo, founded by Dr. Horace Lane, is a fine
institution doing good work—possessing a kindergarten branch for young
children as well as upper grade classes and technical courses; and there
is a series of excellent and popular schools known as the Gymnasio
Anglo-Brazileiro. The first of these was started in 1899 by an
Englishman, Mr. Charles W. Armstrong, in São Paulo, for boys;
subsequently a beautiful property was acquired among the woods on the
lower slopes of the Dois Irmãos mountain just outside Rio, and a second
school opened there, followed in 1913 by the foundation of a school for
girls on the slopes of the Gavea. Sixty-two per cent of the pupils are
Brazilians, who seem to take to the healthy open-air games of the
Anglo-Saxon with a great deal of appreciation.
[Illustration:
_Agricultural School at Piracicaba, S. Paulo State._
Maintained by the State Government; teaches scientific agriculture,
conducts chemical experiments and maintains a splendid demonstration
farm. Director, Dr. Emilio Castello.
_The Butantan Institute, S. Paulo City._
The _Instituto Serumtherapico do Estado de São Paulo_ is maintained by
the State Government. Several thousand poisonous snakes are kept
here in the _Serpentario_ and from them venom is extracted and
injected into horses; the resulting serum is prepared as an antidote
for snakebite, and is distributed all over Brazil. The Director is
Dr. Vital Brasil.
]
The more southerly colonies have their own schools, generally taught in
their own languages; the only criticism of this retention of the
immigrants’ tongue and ideas that I have ever heard in Brazil made
itself known at the time when rumours were freely repeated of plots in
the German settlements of Rio Grande do Sul, soon after the outbreak of
war in Europe, and which were strengthened by von Tannenberg’s book on
German expansion, which discussed the annexation of South Brazil,
Uruguay and Argentina. Brazilian newspapers ran stories dealing with the
possibility of German naval victories being followed by the occupation
of Rio Grande and the use of the Lagôa dos Patos as a base for vessels,
and while the defeat of Admiral von Spee off the Falkland Islands
disposed of such a plan if it ever existed, the suggestion drew the
attention of many formerly indifferent people to the self-centred life
of some of the German colonies. It was complained that nothing but the
German language was taught in the schools, that public notices and
records were issued in German, and the German ideal held before the
people to the exclusion of any other. The matter was very warmly argued,
the colonists scouting, and with a show of reason, any evil intention;
it is hardly to be supposed that any sane person could plan the
deliverance of a piece of South American territory to a foreign power,
with the surrounding republics, not to speak of Brazil herself, looking
quietly on. But so much feeling was expressed that the Governor of Rio
Grande thought it well to announce new introductions of the Portuguese
language into schools. As a matter of fact the Italians in Rio Grande
out-number the inhabitants of German blood, few of whom are German born;
emigration to Brazil was forbidden by the German Government in the year
1859, after some eighty thousand people had settled: the survivors with
their descendants are said today to number two hundred and fifty
thousand. Living as they have chiefly done, in isolated towns, it would
be strange if they had acquired any habits and customs other than those
of their European fathers; they speak German for the same reasons that
they sleep on feather beds, brew beer, plant gardens and build
comfortable houses.
The sweeping charge that South America is a land of revolutions is made
so often and so lightly that few people stop to consider the record of
the vastly different countries comprising the area below Panama. When
the writer has remarked—outside Brazil—that Brazil has never as a whole
had any blood-stained revolution, the statement has been received with
looks of polite incredulity, and yet it is true. Prior to separation
from Portugal a few local, factional feuds occurred, as in Pernambuco
when the natives quarrelled with the petty merchant Portuguese, and in
Minas when the Paulistas fought the men of other states for claims to
the gold mines, but there was no more serious internal disturbance.
Independence from Portugal was achieved almost without bloodshed, by
force of a proclamation: the end of the monarchy and establishment of a
republic was attained peacefully.
After the republican régime began there was occasional trouble, a mere
candle flicker compared to the republican bonfires in neighbour states,
the insurgents of Rio Grande giving trouble for some years; there were
two revolts by the navy, of a not too creditable kind. In none of these
were the Brazilian people deeply concerned, nor did they affect the
government of the country. No Viceroy of Brazil, no King and no
President, has been assassinated in the history of the country.
External troubles, excluding the fights for twenty-four years to expel
the Dutch from Pernambuco, are limited to two, with neighbours in the
south; the first of these was as much the fault of Brazil as that of
Argentina, and she was forced to give up the Cisplatine Province
(Uruguay) forcibly annexed: but in the second, the Paraguayan war,
Brazil acted only after years of aggression obliged her to take up arms.
The fact is that the Brazilian is a peace lover, that Brazil has had few
wars in the past and has no cause for quarrel as far as can be foreseen.
Wars between South American states have frequently hinged upon questions
of boundaries, the result of vague delimitation in colonial days when
much of the interior was still a sealed book. Brazil took steps early in
her history as a republic to avoid such differences: that good diplomat
the Barão de Rio Branco worked for years on the subject of Brazilian
boundaries, and succeeded in making definite settlements with the
Argentine, Bolivia and French Guiana.
Another big step for the preservation of Brazilian peace was made when
in 1915 a pact was arranged between Argentina, Brazil and Chile which
binds the three greatest South American states in a closer alliance than
has yet been possible between North American countries. The terms
include “rules for proceeding to facilitate the friendly solution of
questions that were formerly excluded from arbitration” in virtue of the
treaty of 1899 between Brazil and Chile, of 1902 between Chile and
Argentina, and of 1905 between Argentina and Brazil. The articles of the
new agreement arrange for the submission of disputes to a permanent
Commission, the signatories agreeing not to commit hostile acts while
the Commission’s report is pending or until one year has elapsed: the
constitution of the Commission is provided for, and it is agreed that
any one of the three contracting parties has power to convoke it; the
seat of the Commission was fixed in the neighbouring (and presumably
neutral) Republic of Uruguay—at Montevideo—and after it had presented
its report upon matters in dispute the contracting parties, it was
agreed, would recover liberty of action “to proceed as best consults
their interest in the matter under investigation.”
The A. B. C. Treaty, as it is known, was signed at Buenos Aires on May
25, 1915, by representatives of the three Governments; its strength has
not been tested, but there is little reason to doubt that the formal
acceptance of the arbitration principle by these three powerful states
in the agreement is a big step forward in American history. “Brazil has
always been an advocate of arbitration, and has accepted the fiats of
arbitrators even when against her interests,” says J. P. Wileman, adding
that the actual treaty is but a development of Brazil’s historic policy,
though in the particular form it has taken the formula adopted by the
United States has been followed; it is also significant because it
“diminishes, although it does not eliminate, chances of war between the
three leading South American countries,” and “leaves no excuse for the
ruinous competition in armaments that has contributed so powerfully to
the actual financial crises in all three countries.” With burdensome
purchases of fighting vessels, rifles and cannon eliminated from their
budgets the Argentine, Brazil and Chile can therefore “in future devote
all their energies and resources to the moral and material advancement
of their peoples.”
The proof of arbitration puddings is in the eating. If the contributed
ingredients do not emerge from well-kept cupboards, they are apt to sour
whatever the label upon the cooked product. North of Panama the five
Central American Republics agreed upon the erection of the Court of
Cartago some years ago where all disputes between these neighbours
should be thrashed out. Approval smiled upon the project from the United
States, deeply interested in the peace of Central America; Mr. Carnegie
spent a large number of dollars upon the building of a beautiful palace,
and the first meetings were held with mutual kindliness and the applause
of the world. The writer saw the Peace Palace in May, 1910. A few days
previously an earthquake had visited the lovely mountain-surrounded
valley of Cartago and nothing remained of a charming city but a heap of
broken bricks and stone. The Peace Palace was a dust-heap, with twisted
iron girders thrusting up against the serene sky from a medley of
disaster. The sight was symbolical of the spiritual fate of the Court.
At the shake of an earthquake of opinions it is in ruins.
When Nicaragua signed a treaty which Costa Rica, Salvador and Honduras
declare an encroachment upon their territorial rights, recourse was had
to the Court, re-erected in San José. The Court found for the three
appellants—and Nicaragua refuses to accept its decision.
Let us hope the A. B. C. treaty is made of better material.