The Bridge

Brazil - A history in pictures

2016-08-04T10:49:00.001-04:00

An online guide with a wealth of photos and illustrations giving a unique insight into the history of Brazil.

Links to the Illustrated Guide to Brazil can be found at the end of each section of the digital edition of the epic of Brazil enhancing the reader's enjoyment of a spellbinding saga "with the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover."

Brazil is the first work of fiction to depict five centuries of a great nation's remarkable history. With a stunning cast of real and fictional characters, this unforgettable epic unfolds in South America, Africa and Europe.

Brazil has a large cast of characters. The Cavalcantis of Santo Tomás and the da Silvas of Itatinga and most of the incidents involving these families are fictional. Aruanã, Secundus Proot, Black Peter, the Ferreiras, Patient Anthony, Armand Beauchamp, Henrique Inglez, Bábá Epifánia – these, too, are imaginary characters.

King Afonso I of the Kongo; Nóbrega and Anchieta; Tomé de Sousa; Mem de Sá; Raposo Tavares; Johan Maurits; “Ganga Zumba;” Pombal; Tiradentes; Pedro II; Francisco Solano López; Eliza Alicia Lynch; Joaquim Nabuco; Anthony, the Counselor; Juscelino Kubitschek; Vilas Boas; Herbert “Betinho” de Sousa – these are real characters and what is said of them relates to recorded history.

Brazil - The epic of a great nation

Brazil - A writer in search of the heart and soul of a great nation

2016-08-04T10:32:00.000-04:00

I searched for the story of Brazil for five years, a literary pathfinder wandering in quest of the untold saga of the Brazilians and their epic history.

In these pages, I share my mighty journey of twenty thousand kilometers across the length and breadth of Brazil in 1981. I traveled through the heart of a nation in which the flame of freedom was newly lit after years of military dictatorship, the journal I kept colored by the voices and emotions of the era.

I explore the exhaustive processes that go into the making of a novel with a first draft of three-quarters of million words written in the old-fashioned way, by hand. I reveal the early genesis of my ideas for plot lines and characters, the detailed planning of my outline.

Of all the accolades a writer could hope for at the end of an epic work like Brazil none brought more joy than a simple question asked by the famed Brazilian historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre.

"I should like to know if Uys had an unpublished jornal intime of a Brazilian family?"

There was no private journal, just the will to understand the Brazilian "thing" and a passion for writing and storytelling, which lies at the heart of every good novel.

Brazil - The epic of a great nation

Brazil's Last Frontier: Victims and Visionaries

2015-05-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 33

Porto Velho, Rondônia, August 24, 1980 — September 1, 1980

August 29-30 Left Porto Velho at 4.30 a.m. with Eduardo Borcacov for Guajará Mirim 335 dusty kilometers away. Argentinean-born Borcacov of Russian heritage converses on virtually any topic under the sun with worthwhile opinions. He knows environment intimately from many years in Rondônia's forests as lumberman. Trip took ten hours driving with two hours lingering at Madeira-Mamoré stations en route, now mostly ghost towns.

Vila Murtinho, for example, a dozen or so houses around a barely recognizable square. Column in middle of soccer field commemorates 1822/1922 (Independence,) abandoned stores, inhabitants hanging around doing nothing in particular. Along the road, no evidence of real agricultural development in ten years since it was opened, usual burnt patches, some grassed areas, few cattle, all adding to depression one feels at sight of abandoned tracks, equipment, stations etc.

Madeira-Mamoré railroad relics in 1980

Some wide-ranging Eduardo pointers/ observations/ images on past and present as we traveled: a) all railroad equipment imported, including standards from London b) dormitory for visiting dignitaries above station at Guajará-Mirim c) struggling agricultural community with church under construction for five years f) small country hospital, male patients of all ages in general ward g) stream with beautiful bathing spot, Indian maloca upstream x 14 hours travel h) blue butterfly worth at least $50 i) balls of latex covering square in front of old station j) forest landing strips k) 25,000 hectare fazenda.

Weekend with Eduardo along Madeira-Mamoré railroad, in every retrospect, a valued experience. I have begun to see Vicente Cardoso's (Cavalcanti) experience in a very different light for two reasons: A) Rondônia provides bases of “last frontier” (soon to pass with coming of statehood.) B) Madeira-Mamoré story needs more than an outsider's view. Vicente has to be physically involved with the construction and thereafter gradually to become a “man of power” in the territory. All points to having Vicente actually engage on the construction of the railroad and emphasis of rubber boom.

Gold Nugget found in Brazil 1980

Eduardo offered many leads to this in yarns like that of Maciel, the coronel/concessionaire who went batty after taking to Indian pagé's concoctions i.e. mushrooms of altered states variety. Rondônia is not “Amazonas” with all that name implies but all the ingredients are here, plus some of the unknown: a great river (Madeira); Indians of violent and pacific type: Caripunas and Novas Pacos; rubber boom; typical Trans-Amazonas type highway; pistoleiros and possesseiros; the old Wild west, to this day; great lumber enterprises; area south-west of Rondônia scene of gold rush today, dredging and panning rivers with some major finds of nuggets; significant immigration from the North-East, especially Ceará; Japanese farmers; migrants and adventurers from many lands, including descendants of the workers who came to build the Madeira-Mamoré; Shockness, Norman, the Asians, Lebanese. A microcosm of an earlier Brazil of the South and, in some respects, an unfortunate carry-over of problems of the North-East.

Madeira-Mamore Rapids near Guajara Mirim

Spent hours talking as we traveled back from Guajará-Mirim yesterday banging along cratered road with stops at "Restaurante e Borracharia" for food and to fix tires i.e. "borracharia!"

Roadside Garage, 1980, Rondônia

Some of Eduardo's points: The vast land extent of Brazil is totally deceptive for you have to fight the forest inch by inch, a battle that may never be “won,” possibly can never be won and, like so many confrontations leaves a trail of victims. In this case, some human but more the spoliation of nature as depicted in the charred hulks of forest giants fallen in grotesque ruin amid fields of ashes.

As the Indians showed centuries ago, so today: The soil thus “liberated” is able to produce a good first crop, the second is poor, the third a disaster necessitating a new clearing and leaving the forest to recover with a poor secondary growth.

On North/South dichotomy: the people of the North-East, and by extension the north “migrants” are sufferers, they are martyrs who love the land no matter how cruel it may be to them and their children. The people of the South see them as the meanest laborers for whom there is little home, a burden for booming Brazil.

Edward offers an anecdote sadly familiar: “Waldemar” migrates from the North-East to São Paulo where he becomes a bricklayer engaged in the construction of one of São Paulo's skyscrapers. When it's finished, he is not allowed to enter!

On prospects of revolution: Ed refers, as do most people, to three safeguards: futebol, carnaval, loteria. (Looking at TV antenna atop the remotest shacks, I would add “TV” as fourth safeguard.)

He notes, too, that you don't launch a revolution on hungry bellies. Ché Guevara tried that in Bolivia and look what happened. The real incentive comes from a reasonably well-fed middle-class with more time to think and plan; the peasant has less time to do anything but “survive.”

A power-clique of generals and moneyed aristocracy call the shots at the national level. Men might change, as with appointment of Figueiredo offering apparent new image, but driving force and ideas remain the same. Backing the clique are multinationals and foreign banks, who in the foreseeable future make a drastic change of status quo impossible. Brazil has once again traded its independence for colonialism, this time no gunboats and foreign princelings but “economics.”

With leadership of Brazil, important to comprehend the “man on the second floor.” The real power is often held by people other than those in the “boardrooms;” people who stay out of the public eye and quietly exert Power.

Foreign influence in Brazil was same, for example, with “Ypiranga,” Strangford, Collingwood, backing independence not for sake of Brazilians but to gain a favorable trade and economic foothold for British interests. England's economic colonizer role was taken over by America and now a new “partner” is on the horizon: Japan, going after the vast mineral and natural resources.

With an important difference, according to Ed: The Brits and Americans always looked down upon the Brazilians from highest level. Brazilians, because of the big Japanese community in their midst, have come to know and respect them as honest, hard-working; they trust the Japanese whereas long experience has led to wariness of the U.S. and the British.

Also effect, in a lesser way but no doubt important, of anti-U.S. propaganda over the years, with “Yankee Go Home” drummed into heads of South Americans. Conversely, though, average Brazilian has little love for Cuba which is seen as a “government mess.” Brazilians know what a sprawling bureaucratic muddle can result in through their own home-grown examples: They're not interested in importing something that could worsen the situation.

September 1 Flew from Porto Velho to Cuiabá, changed there and flew to Brasília and onto Rio de Janeiro. It's not merely the vast distance covered within one country but coming out of the bush, it strikes you dramatically: the difference between all the poverty and struggle you have seen in “greater Brazil” and the suited, suave, soft-leather shoed people here, all bound for Rio, which most people I've seen these past forty days will never set eyes on. The contrast is shocking. I have a picture of a quintessential Rio granddame, paunchy, loaded with jewels, transported to one of those “restaurantes e borracharias” alongside any sertão road I've traversed...

Manioc mill in Amazonas settlement

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

7,000 Railroad Men Died in the Green Hell of Brazil

2015-03-31T12:11:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 32

Porto Velho, Rondônia, August 24, 1980 — September 1, 1980

August 26 On this writing table a few inches away is a souvenir of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad. A six-inch spike I picked up yesterday. It evokes so much for me. It was here, in this very place that men came from all over the world to build this railroad and left 7,000 of their number dead.

Railroad Spike

A war, in a way, against The Forest, and which almost as it ended in 1912 was lost. With the collapse of the rubber boom the purpose of the railroad (to get Bolivian rubber to the “navigable” Madeira) no longer existed.

Today there is an attempt to re-activate the railroad, some 32 of 360 miles operative, but the real story lies in the marshalling yards where half a dozen old locomotives (Baldwins etc.) stand with their great steel wheels buried in the sand. Most dramatic relic is the steam-powered crane (INDUSTRIAL WORKS - BAY - MICHIGAN) that appears at the head of the rail-advance in old photographs. You can imagine it, easily, clanking and hissing. You can imagine it but you can't ignore the twitter of the birds amid its workings.

Abandoned Steam Crane at Madeira-Mamore Railroad, Porto Velho

August 27 Above all, I have to remember to divorce present “reality” from historical fact: that the cemetery where hundreds upon hundreds - thousands - who labored to build the railroad lie is unreachable must say something. Can't go there, you're told by local head of museum, because bush that obscures place is infested with “cobras.”

So, too, I think are the minds of those who inherited the sweat, the sadness, the lost dreams of all who came here. Nothing. Not a memorial, not a single relic except a small station filled with “functionaries” unexcited and unmoved by what they represent.

Abandoned railroad locomotive on Madeira-Mamore line, Brazil

By God! I say to myself, I'll write an epitaph for you yet, you brave “lost” adventurous souls who lie beneath this dust-damned soil. You came from so far away to so violent an environment, and you found the paradise you sought an earthly hell!

I walk through these dreary streets, I witness this museum without a soul and I feel a rage and anger beyond my control at such forgetfulness, such disregard for heart and soul and effort.

I look at a single spike, a single spar of rail, a rusted locomotive and I have respect. For what am I but an adventurer braving the same area, but with a comfort and safety you never knew. For five days I have trod these same grounds, endured the same heat - with air conditioning to help - and yet at no time have I seen anything that said these were men! — How I hate the forgetful, the thoughtlessness!

How I sometimes love the adage, "those who forget the lessons of the past are bound to repeat them." I wouldn't really wish it upon them but if they are so ready to dismiss the 7,000 (10,000?) who gave their lives in this place...

Baldwin locomotive from Madeira-Mamore line

I enjoy this burst of emotion, for it gives me a special urge to reach paper, it puts six thousand spirits behind me saying, "Tell them!" It brings a single spirit, a soul perhaps akin my own, who lies a dying in Candelaria with thought of a love far away, feeling all forgotten forever — I say to that spirit bound to this dusty hell hole, you will be remembered, not alone in dry unemotive reports I spent the best part of a day reading.

I sometimes begin to feel like Lord Byron and Childe Harold: “God, why did you give these people this land?” Oursler said I had to have a key. Well, tonight, amid this searching of soul — admittedly without intellectual censorship as the good Antonietta would have it — I'm hyper-critical of the Brazilians. They were handed one of God's private reserves. Are they in the process of screwing it up?

How I need a Sintra! How I need some cool, refreshing place where I can breathe “fresh air,” “sanity” and begin to believe! But then, I tell myself, how can you write about Brazil without experiencing all of it? Even the most distressing aspects? And what is better than spending so much time in the North/North-east until you begin to cry inwardly, “Away!”

Abandoned railroad in Rondonia, Brazil

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

The Burning Forest: Eyes on the Invasion of the Amazon

2014-12-02T15:48:00.000-05:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 31

Porto Velho, Rondônia, August 24 — September 1

Traveling from Manaus to Porto Velho again underlined the poor attempt at “conquering” the forest — the pathetic little farms alongside the road, the road itself tarred but in a state of disrepair. Almost like traveling on a dirt road, the bus swerving from one side to the other to avoid potholes and sections of the road that have completely degraded.

Atmosphere is pioneer, perhaps no better typified as in roadside “restaurants” - crude, wooden affairs catering to buses and truckers, serving one or two dishes only, great piles of food, rice, spaghetti, farina, chicken or beef, and stocked with only bare essentials.

Found sight of smoldering embers of destroyed forest beside road disturbing; nothing seen thus far has convinced me settlers know what they're doing.

As one informant said: they clear thousands of hectares adjoining the forest for cacão plantation and introduce cacão trees. What they ignore is forest's own defense mechanism:

Will it introduce new species of insect or disease to fight this invasion of its territory?

I like this concept of forest as a separate, living entity existing by and for itself, something surrealistic, but need to see it as such to reflect on its relationship with man.

In a small town like Porto Velho, you cannot help noticing excessive number of government organizations. In the downtown area virtually every street has its EMBRATEL, INCRA, INDECO, SUDENE etc - endless offices of functionaries all aiming at one or another type of disinvolvemente. (A strange word to my ears, for translated it means development; having seen some of these functionaries in action you wonder just how much "disinvolvement" gets done.)

At last, the Madeira-Mamoré railroad. Strange feeling of unreality today accentuated by sight of swimming pool, good food (!)and out in Porto Velho's blazing hot rail yard: abandoned engines and rail construction equipment, birds nesting in a great steam powered crane that once moved along the newly-laid rails.

As in Recife, Belém, Manaus, much of the historical atmosphere has been destroyed. It takes a special effort of imagination to recapture what it must've been like - to envisage it in the days of Vicente Cardoso (Cavalcanti.) Feel especially confident of Vicente as character and almost capable of writing about him now.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

What is the Key to Understanding Brazil and the Brazilians?

2014-11-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 30

Porto Velho, Rondônia, August 24 — September 1

August 24-25; Several letters awaiting me, Fulton Oursler among them. Fulton notes: “Why you put the shackles on make damn sure you have the key!”

A crucial poser! Have given it much thought already Don't know full answer but what comes to mind: Land. Dimension. Diversity. Possession. All these are key to understanding Brazil.

The very first impact on Portuguese must have been staggering. Coming from tiny Portugal, the men of Lisbon confine their territories to small bases hugging the littoral, same as in Africa and the Indies. Their motives are primarily exploitive, “factories” for securing wealth, trade for the motherland.

Natives collecting brazilwood in the 16th century

European man emerging from the Middle Ages, not thinking of “land” beyond concept of age-old fiefdom, small kingdoms, encounters a new world of a dimension not previously imaginable. What an impact this must have had on his mind, his view of earth, even of the universe... But could he cope with this change?

First, in Brazil, he seeks the simplest solution, the neat and totally impractical division of “captaincies” stretching as far inland as the Tordesillas Line; the captaincies themselves being divided into sesmarias. For two hundred years, he hugs the littoral, fearful of what lay beyond and lacking the ability or manpower to penetrate the interior.

1591 Map - Terra do Santa Cruz

Essential to show difference between American homesteading and planned advance to the West and Brazilian method which to this day suggests unplanned chaos. What factors led to different development? The men, their background, their religion? The climate, the topography? All these factors have to be considered?

Did the Portuguese — despite what Freyre says about creation of a Luso-Tropical “new man” — transfer some of the worst elements of Middle-Age Europe to South America?

For example, the concept of nobles and serfs, here becoming casa grande and senzala (slave quarters,) fazendeiro and laborer. As before, the few held vast estates to which the many were bound for their livelihood. Unlike North America where whole concept, once they'd thrown off the European yolk, was toward the individual, his freedom and a stake in the land. Nothing like that ever happened here. On the contrary, in the 19th century the Portuguese Crown was able to transplant itself to Brazil and extend the age-old system almost to the 20th century.

Classic "Casa Grande" of North-East Brazil
Image: Joaquim Nabuco Foundation

Perhaps Brazil only achieved its equivalent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1930 with Vargas 154 years later. So that in a sense, it is today where the U.S. was fifty years after independence, mais o menos, with emphasis on spiritual and national development rather than material. The latter with 'secondary acquisition of developed technology' can be deceptive.

With what you see and hear in the North/North-East, the greater part of Brazilian 'land,' you come to realize the divergence between north/south. Whether it's Pumaty's casa grande owner or a local laborer, all decry the south for bleeding the north to develop its industries etc. If you accept that then you begin to think of Brazil as a funnel, the north the mouth, the south the thin stem to which all filters down. (But no doubt the South will have its opinion - probably on the vast cost of supporting the North and its “hopelessness.”)

More on land debate: Perhaps nowhere has “colonial” man faced so great a challenge as in Brazil and, perhaps, Siberia — the sheer vastness makes one of the early essentials for development infrastructure i.e. communication, well nigh impossible.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

In Amazonas: Looking Beyond the Hollywood Backlot

2014-10-08T10:55:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 29

The Journey - Amazon River, August 23, 1980
As the canoe moves along, only occasional flash of brilliant color. I think most of the birds have retreated deeper into the forest, as with the monkeys and other wild life, what little there is. I'm surprised by a lack of color other than green, only occasional touch of mauve, yellow or white, but put this down to dry season. During five days, several tropical downpours, short, furious, bursts of rain mainly in the afternoon, a respite from the heat.

Humble houses, pathetic little escolas alongside the tributaries, seem to attest to the impotence of man in this mighty environment. One is aware of the great wounds left in the forest by vast projects: as EMBRAPA pointed out, left to itself the forest can regenerate secondary growth in three to five years. This is not to say there isn't a threat.

The “Hollywood” version of the Amazon jungle is more impressionistic than real. I think many Amazon “adventures” were shot in California backlots showing a density and height that's not right. The greatness of the Amazon lies in its horizontal and not vertical spread; its sheer size and variety is what gives it an awesome aspect. Under the canopy, you can let your imagination drift back to the very beginnings of earth.

If man is out of scale, so are the river fish. Saw a pirarucu that had been harpooned, six to seven feet, like a porpoise with “chain-mail” scale protection, so hard they're used as nail files.

The lianas look like taut cables stretching skyward, sometimes perfectly straight. Walking within forest, immediately assaulted by countless insects. Leaned against a tree and found small maggot-like creatures with pint-point black heads on arm. Think they're chiggers that bore into your skin. Repulsive to “civilized” man.

Walking along shore to swamp, water-logged trees, undergrowth... Picture how it must have been for those like the Madeira-Mamoré railroad workers wading through stench, insects, slimy mud underfoot, near impossibility once you enter area to find clean water.

Manaus, itself, continues to be an enigma, this island-city with its skyscrapers rising suddenly beyond the final hill as you emerge from the forest. The older, almost bizarre-looking architecture, English and French structures, market-place, library, post office, opera house take prize for incongruity. Though surely gave Manaus a special atmosphere during rubber boom days, unique and totally unlike skyscraper skyline of today.

Today's newspaper carried sobering news that Glauber Rocha died, age 43, of heart attack in Rio. (We lived as neighbors in Sintra, Portugal, prior to my coming to Brazil.) Was talking about Rocha last night at film of Getúlio Vargas.

(Some impressions from Vargas film: Depicted era similar to Peron/Bittencourt. First, there was striving for a Brazil independent of foreign dependency, multinational “colonialism.” 2) Genuine attempt to improve “lot of the workers.” Enormous popularism. 3) Many, many military-style parades in late 30s vaguely reminiscent of Mussolini's Italy, youth brigades etc. 4) symbolic flag burning, representing end of state hegemony and move toward national unity 5) Vargas, small, chubby, round-faced, spectacles, often smiling, seemed a genuine honest type. (Whatever the bias of film, I found it incredible to accept his suicide. Suicide note was a forgery to cover up his murder? I wonder. Must put that to sources.)

Almost time to go to the “Rodoviária” again — a word I will never forget. Twenty-one hours to Porto Velho.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

A Meditation on the Great Cathedral of the Amazon Rain Forest

2014-10-01T11:35:00.001-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 28

The Journey - Amazon River, August 23, 1980

August 23 Maybe it was the heat, maybe the “intrusion of tourist types” but the five days spent at Manaus seem the least productive, including entire day wasted waiting for director of INPA, Amazon research institute, from 10.30 till 4. Spent the time in their library. When she eventually saw me, she told me to return the next morning at 9.30. I did and was told a) no one available for an interview b) no one to go with me to the “forest.”

At which point I said to hell with it and sought out my own boat on the waterfront and found a personable navigator — Daniel! Six hour trip to confluence of Amazon and Negro, then into Solimões and through narrow creeks to enter cathedral-like forest. Exactly what I wanted.

Arranged a second trip for yesterday, another six hours, this time north, very different as we went through forest to cachoeira where we swam. God knows what you could pick up!

Perhaps it's the influence of the other estrangeiros who come filled with visions of tropical menace and talk of all manner of ailments but I find myself becoming “health conscious.” Won't dare miss my malaria tablet; bathe open “wound” on my foot a) with antiseptic solution b)powder antiseptic c) cover with Band-aid. Ultra careful with water and absolutely refuse salads.

Words like malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, hepatitis, septic wounds etc. commonplace in vocabulary but perhaps it's something else that calls for caution. In the U.S., in developed countries we have reached an ascendancy of man over Nature, control lies in our hands. The environment has been conquered and controlled physically and spiritually. Here, not so: when you enter the forest environment you are entirely at its mercy. Man is out of scale here, his size nothing against the horizonless, surrounding forest.

Again and again, I think of the entradas: How the small band of Raposo Tavares could have found its way through the jungle is amazing. Deviate for one moment from the mainstream and you enter a maze of water that twists through the forest, sometimes spreading like a lake, sometimes splitting into different streams that take off in several directions.

For an hour on Friday we drifted down a section of the Solimões, engine shut

off, everyone silenced. It was like meditation in a great cathedral. The trees offering every shade of green, the waters of the river colored green with their reflections.

A forbidding environment, gnarled roots of trees exposed on the banks where storm waters have torn away the soil; trees standing in the water, dead twisted shapes awaiting the final thrust of nature, when they will loosen their hold on the soil, fall and be carried away. Clumps of hyacinth stretch out from the banks, sometimes grow like small islands midstream.

Inside the forest, the water is smooth as glass, the area deserted, only occasional glimpse of a canoe with a fisherman sitting cross-legged up front, bow and arrow ready for action. A scene that was the same hundreds, thousands of years ago.

Waters deep blue out in the great rivers Amazon and Negro, a turbulent brown and blue at confluence, green in the forest. Brown, too, with soils carried down from the Andes.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

In the Heat of Manaus - Walking with the Ghosts of the Opera House

2014-09-24T10:11:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 27

The Journey - Manaus, August 20 -August 23, 1980

August 20 Docked at Manaus on 17th, 18th interview preparations, 19th visit EMBRAPA, 20th to INPA, Amazonia Research Station. First word to describe Manaus is HOT. Heat that brings tiredness, lethargy and seems to slow down pace of everyone.

Like many Brazilian (and South African) cities tendency has been to knock down the old in boom/bust growth. Interspersed are buildings from rubber boom days, highly ornate structures totally out of context with local atmosphere. European-style buildings transported to the midst of the Amazon jungle. Somewhat typical of many Brazilian cities, this failure to incorporate the local climate and scene into architecture. At least, Manaus is cleaner, less repressive/oppressive than Recife.

First three days sharing hotel room with Englishmen Rod and Mark, fine company, fine hotel, OK at 3200 cruzeiros for three but after they left I moved this morning to god-awful place only 800cr. less. No hot water, five beds in room. Carpetless floor. Practically windowless. Depressing! Reconcile myself as I look at pictureless, grimy walls that I am saving 800cr. a day = meals.

Don't have any real contacts here, so it's a long slog to get something achieved. The usual day spent in presentation and selling of oneself. Saw most of group from boat but realize that I have to distance myself from them, even though the conversation was wonderful.

I'm anxious to move on to Porto Velho but feel that I have to stick it out here until I've had a proper introduction to the Amazon forest. So far what contact there has been lacks intimacy, the feel of the place, but perhaps the excessive contact with “foreigners” adds to the problem Will persevere!

August 20(PM) Manaus is like an island, the darkness out there, this hot night — the unknown, great swards of green as mysterious as the depth of the ocean. The isolation one feels is accentuated.

I see Vicente here (“Vicente Cavalcanti,” a character imagined for Brazil), a tall, robust, bearded and gaunt figure tramping these streets in 1910/1912,feeling a totally alien atmosphere, wanting only to retreat to that “green” ocean, to lose himself in that reality. I see him walking, lonely and frightened, through the Eiffel-designed marketplace with its iron work to the Manaus Opera House and Palace of Justice, past the gaudy little hotels trying desperately to offer some hold to Europe and a civilization far removed.

Don't know how the mind of a Brazilian works but can hardly imagine how a Rio/São Paulo/Brasília person relates this area to “his Brasil,” other than in a possessive-territorial sense, the idea of having this superb national treasure. Posed a question to Mark and Rod as we parted: “Who are the Brazilians?” A mighty one to answer but I know what I'm racing toward.

After thirty days in North-East, feel victim of North-East depression. Somehow, I need to experience something that will show the Hope, the Excitement of Brazil.

For thirty days I have tramped, bused and otherwise moved through the North-East growing increasingly downcast at life in the region. Even the Amazon is drawn in with the sight of downed, destroyed woodland and pathetic attempt to “farm” it — a vision aggravated by fact that farms visited belong to EMBRAPA researchers. God knows how hope-filled people from the North-East face staggering challenge to “produce” something, a livelihood, on such lands. Nothing said or shown by researchers convinced me that they're anywhere near solving the countless challenges.

In my more “mature” attitude to Brazil, keep reminding myself that though Michener wrote about South Africa, he detested apartheid. There are similarities in my approach/attitude toward Brazil. I find the history, the past, utterly fascinating; the present reflected, too often, in the filthy gray pools at my feet.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

Reflections on Slavery and Servitude in Brazil

2014-07-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 26

The Journey - Amazon River, Augusto Montenegro, Belém to Manaus, August 12 - August 17, 1980

August 15- August 16: At one point last night, some of us commented on behavior and service of crew in what is obviously one of the great attractions of Brazil. They're surly, uncooperative, unprofessional, ungrateful. They give the impression of simply not caring, one way or the other. Reflecting on this, a Brazilian at the table said that the difference between them and, say people in the service industry in Europe/U.S. was that here they were an extension of the servitude of slavery.

Interesting point, especially when considered against fact that slavery was only abolished in 1889, less than a hundred years ago. Just as there are many misconceptions or ignorance about the finer aspects of Brazilian history, so, too, the darker side. Brazilians pride themselves on the peaceful, humane liberation of their slaves but I'm beginning to believe that the truth may run somewhat contrary, that they have an exceptionally long way to go to finalize the adjustment between slavery/freedom. “Born free to live in chains,” truly applicable!

Brazilian Slave Ship - Johan Moritz Rugendas
New York Public Library Digital Collection

Elsa, the German girl stayed with a casa grande family in Fortaleza and was convinced there is also a racial element: Her hosts kept reminding her that they were “Portuguese,” i.e. “white” of the best sort. The dona of the house boasted that she had already “sold” six servant girls to the south. Elsa took that literally, though I suspect it's more of the South African way of “selling” — the arranging of girls from the farm “good girls” to go south where they're coveted because they're “honest, reliable,” that sort of thing.

Another subject that came up was the “internationalization” of the Amazon basin, once suggested by a U.N. conference but, predictably, violently resisted by the Brazilians. (In the north, among few expressions of political graffiti: AMAZONIA PARA BRASILEIRO.) A young Brazilian passenger himself suggested that this would be only way to “develop” the area properly. From what I have seen and heard about other “development” projects in the North-North-East, I'm inclined toward agreeing. At the same time, I have to consider the effect of the Tropics on Western Man - Perhaps Gilberto Freyre is too optimistic, idealistic - Perhaps the true Brazilian, man of the tropics, has not yet appeared on the scene or developed sufficiently to cope with the land, the climate and its challenges.

Amazon River settlement near Manaus

Spending time with the two Brits, unfortunately, brings my Brit-background prejudices to the surface and I have constantly to remind myself that this is Brazil and Brazilians are different. Nevertheless, I do find several things disgusting. The spitting. A downright unhealthy habit. At least on the ship the aim is over the side! Also on hygiene, lavatories are often stinking, blocked affairs with horrid little wastepaper baskets for toilet paper, open and exposed.

Then, too, the food: With rare exception, usually in private homes, it's the same monotonous starchy stuff, steak, chicken, potatoes sometimes, rice, farina, beans. The food markets in the Amazon ports are the worst I've seen anywhere. Great, open mounds of freshly-butchered meat, minimal vegetables and little to see of the exotic tropical fruits people rave about. An inveterate traveler, I can stomach a great deal but here even I reach a limit.

Where do you begin to build a “modern nation”? Aren't these basic lifestyles important? Cleanliness next to godliness, says the proverb?

I wonder, though, just how much the negative thoughts expressed here are a reflection of the depressed North-East and the unfathomable “green hell.” How heavily do those weigh on a man's soul? What will the contrast be like in the south?

Also discussed the difficulty of bridging the gap between “moneyed (apparently) estrangeiros” and locals aboard prompted by so small an incident as attitude of barman. One senses his resentment of foreigners' continual ability to go up and buy beers, cool drinks etc...It would be almost impossible to explain to him that every cent of this was worked for year after year. Says the young Brazilian with us: “They think like slaves.” Or is it simply, a “tropical” don't-give-a-damn mentality.

Amazon Voyage 1980

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

Amazon Glory: The Dance of Sun and Moon on the Equator

2014-06-17T15:29:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 25

The Journey - Amazon River, Augusto Montenegro, Belém to Manaus, August 12 - August 17, 1980

August 15-16 Approaching, docking at and passage from Alenquer beyond Santarém late afternoon and evening gave dramatic impression of The Amazon.

The river divided into five channels with ship sailing in one furthest east and, far as the eye could see, these expanses of water separated by low strips of lands, occasionally merging, most continuing their separate way toward some distant meeting point. An hour time change — advance — at Santarém brought sunset early, a magnificent ball of orange, larger than any I have ever seen, going down with surprising rapidity, dancing behind the bank of trees as the ship moved along, sometimes obscured, sometimes appearing full circle in a gap between the forest. At water's edge, herds of zebu-type cattle standing white to gray against the darkening background. Channel narrower than ever.

Zebu cattle at fazenda on banks of Amazon River

Then, within minutes of the sun setting, the moon rising in the east, a smaller, perfect yellowish ball, also climbing swiftly and perfectly marked against the clear sky. Then night and the Amazon closing in — not the towering impression offered in Hollywood interpretation of small riverboat cutting through impenetrable forest but surrounding our ship with its vastness and the knowledge that way out there, only an endless expanse of uninhabited forest.

A scene my characters,Amador da Silva and Segge Proot would come to re-live in the pages of Brazil:

"The constant green and gray and blue was also relieved — especially for Segge — by the dance of sun and moon on the equator. Daybreak and a faint blush in the gray would presage the rim of orange sun behind the trees. The surface of the river would be painted in way no mortal artist would emulate, passing through a spectrum of shades, from soft pinks and mauves to a fiery blaze that turned the waters of the Rio das Amazonas into molten gold.

These changes came with amazing rapidity as the sun climbed above the forest, its intensity giving a man from Europe the impression of high noon, when it was not yet midmorning. At sunset the flaming ball would sink, sometimes seen hovering full circle at the very edge of earth, where there was a gap in the foliage.

After the briefest pause, a small, yellowish moon would rise above the horizon and climb swiftly, the constellations growing pale, the higher it rose. Night would fall, the limitlessness heightened and made ominous by the close, impenetrable world of trees.

At night, we reached Alenquer, a small river port, its dockside crowded with people, sacks of grain... Sounds of countless insects in the marshy land beside the wooden quay. Go ashore for walk through town streets lined with bars. What truly sets the atmosphere is glimpse back toward the ship. Sight of her lying there lit for stem to stern, immaculately white and dwarfing every other boat at dockside. Here, unmistakably, is the picture of the Amazon I have always held.

At Alenquer, I sense a “resentful” reaction to our presence. People on the quay side, mostly young, remind one of scene from Amarcord. It's only twice a month that a large passenger boat comes through and being Saturday night, locals see this as one, if not the only “event.” But they didn't observe us with friendliness, very few smiles, and except two who made “friends” with blonde Elsa, the German girl aboard, not a single wave as the ship pulled away from the dock. Instead some First Class passengers started to throw ice at them and they retaliated with curses and handfuls of grain! Type of incident that does nothing to improve relations between the haves and have-nots.

Aboard, there is absolutely nothing to do but brood, meditate, sweat, drink and talk. Ron and Mark, two Aberdeen University graduates, future grain merchants, provide some worthwhile asides on Brazil. Ron maintains that the Brazilian “miracle,” the dramatic economic development since mid-50s had disastrous effects because it came too quickly for people to adjust to it, socially. “They entered the industrial age without capacity to cope with modernization, jarred from a post-colonial and agricultural phase into era of technology. Adopting the methods of an advanced country to one in which the mass of people still existed in backward phase.”

I agree with what he says and have serious doubts about the theory of Brazil as an emergent super-power. The first forty days contact with the people, admittedly of the depressed North-East, offer little hope for what may be a future “super-power.” Again and again, Bradford Burns's suggestion of so little having changed in five centuries as being key to Brazil appears perfectly true.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

In Search of the Green Fortress: Four Ways to Look at the Amazon

2014-06-05T17:20:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 25

The Journey - Amazon River, Augusto Montenegro, Belém to Manaus, August 12 - August 17, 1980

There's a monotony to the trip, the same riverine line of forest, mile after mile, varied occasionally by a lonely house or small settlement, rarely what could be considered a town. Between leaving Belém and 12.30 today first major town (population 21,000) was Almeirim.

Keep trying to think of what journey must have meant to Raposo Tavares. Even today with only a five-day passage, people complain of boredom after two days. What must it have been like for Raposo Tavares? Week after week, as they passed along Madeira River to Manaus, and to Belém.

Very noticeable to me is complete absence of wild animals at the river's edge, so totally unlike even the smallest river in the wilds of Africa. Here, nothing!

Still find it difficult to come up with definition of "what" the Amazon is — Perhaps better to brood over it for a couple of days. — So many approaches:

1) A hypothetical one, for example: What if the riverine line of forest had only been a narrow one? And the lands beyond open to colonization? Would this not have been the focus of “civilization” in the Americas? Would the Andean cultures have spread into these areas?

2) Perhaps, in a way, the repetitive and boring aspect of this trip is for the very reason I state in my book proposal: The failure to see the whole, to comprehend how infinitely small this ship and its occupants in relation to the River; the failure to appreciate the symbiosis of river and nature.

3) Can see some likely effects the River can have on Brazilian outlook, for example, in reinforcing the knowledge of just how little impression they as a people have made against the vast lands they hold.

4) Serves to reinforce the Contrast, here the limitless land, and in so many other places, the struggle for ownership of the smallest patch of territory. Here is a “land problem” of a very different sort.

Green. Every shade of green possible, the patches of hyacinth floating downstream, the great trees to the water's edge, the canopy of the forest lower than one would've imagined it to be, low and dense, the sameness and yet a difference even to the untrained eye.

Have really to remember just how vast this is to understand what it must've been like for the early discoverers. Almost like being trapped in a tunnel, a water maze. Once you started out upon it, you had to complete the full journey. Penetration of the forest itself as an outlet would be impossible; follow any tributary and you would be led down another blind alley. Once you began you'd be locked into the main river until it reached the Atlantic.

Most memorable of shipboard characters: An old English couple who have lived in Brazil for forty-five years, Alan and Brenda. He was in insurance, came here in the 1930s after Fawcett's disappearance. In the 1940s he flew to Manaus; now retired, he is doing the trip again. Sitting in lounge, Somerset Maugham characters, playing cards after siesta. Brenda's memorable quote the other night was that after all these years she had not become i.e. gone "Brazilian" and went “home” last year. (Returned via South Africa about which they hold typical conservative views.)

Other travelers include noticeably older generation of Europe-style backpackers. They're a decade away from their first trip to Europe, moving into their 30s, too independent to come to terms with the "responsibilities of growing up.”

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

Amazon - I begin a Journey on the River Sea from Belém to Manaus

2014-05-27T20:25:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 24

The Journey - Amazon River, Augusto Montenegro, Belém to Manaus, August 12 - August 17, 1980

August 12 Bus trip ended at 5.15. a.m. when I checked into “Litoral Palace Hotel” next to Rodoviária. On trip, noticeable how the true sertão gradually disappears. As you approach Teresina, capital of Piaui, the caatingas give way first to similar vegetation mixed with small palms, then a more benign landscape and beyond Caxais true African style veld. Green in spite of winter and with denseness that is suggestive of the great Amazon belt that lies close to the north.

I was thinking as we passed through one of the innumerable dusty/poor/

ugly/depressed towns of Piauí/Maranhão that this must be a world away from what the rich of Rio/São Paulo know. I doubt whether one in a hundred have ever been here or seen any of this beyond TV. And if that is the case, how much more aggravated was the difference in the past, without “easy” communication of today?

Windowless room in "Litoral Palace" with giant fan, the size of an old plane prop. Woke at 12 and went to city to learn that the only boat to Manaus departs this p.m. Next one is on September 4 (perhaps.) Decide to Go.

August 13 Aboard Augusto Montenegro, up at 5.30 a.m. to witness spectacular sunrise, faint to deep orange sun rising over line of trees, climbing quickly into sky and by 9.30 making it as hot as midday. Size of River (Para) on approach to Amazon is truly “river sea.” Difficult to imagine impact on early voyagers like Orellano/Raposo Tavares reaching Belém from upstream.

Isolated settlements on river banks, buildings hugging shore line, church, bordered by trees.

Most sobering thought is that their only access to “civilization” is along the river. Hemmed in by forest, somewhat like an island; dozens of island “refugia” between forest and river. At point we're approaching now, water to furthest horizon, brown tinge to it.

Many estrangeiros aboard, international mix, Brazilian, French, Canadian, Israeli, American, English, German, students, retirees, holiday-makers, most with idea of once in a lifetime Amazon voyage. Agree. We're all traveling second-class; there's a First Class deck above and a deck “squatter” passage below and aft.

August 14 Why the Amazon has been called a “river sea” is easily imaginable. The extent of the river is such that glancing to one side, say starboard, you fully expect to be coasting along “offshore,” and if you turned round to port, there'd be the ocean! Everyone encountering the Amazon for the first time finds it larger than they expected. Difficult accepting that for five days you will be aboard a major-sized ship moving along the greatest (by water volume) river in the world. You have a problem seeing that very distant line of trees as the edge of the river and not a vast lake or the sea.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

My Travels with Black Jimi on the Streets of Recife

2014-05-14T12:08:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 23

The Journey - Recife - July 28 - August 13, 1980

And then there was Black Jimi.

I met Jimi Carvalho weeks earlier when he tried to sell me a sixty cruzeiro religious print, asked him to sit down for a beer, and gained a firm friend. Jimi took me around the other Recife, places like Brasília Teimosa. He claimed to be a son of Carvalho, a famous Rio gangster and had been a street child.

When I bumped into him on Sunday, Jimi was sitting on the pavement with two girls in the midst of an artisan fair. One girl was about twenty, an artist, the other a poet who looked about thirteen or fourteen. Rosa and Sandra, the poet, left soon afterwards saying they regretted not getting to know me but had to go “because of circumstances beyond their control.” When Jimi came to say goodbye to me at the Rodoviária (bus station), he brought a farewell poem from my young admirer!

My travels with Jimi underlined the poverty (and racism) in the city. - Until I insisted, my hotel barred Jimi from entry.- Aside from Jimi's jaunty black beret and “Black Power” tattooed on his arm, it's obvious that his racial humiliation is very real.

If he comprehends the meaning of my white SA background, it must be strange for him to contemplate my attitude as compared with average branco here (or, of course, in SA.) Not just my gift of a pair of Americano jeans and 1000 cruzeiros to buy a radio — Was amused to see radio proudly displayed to me at Rodoviária!

What's to become of Jimi and tens of thousands like him, not only black but brown, and dispossessed? I think that Vladimir and others in referring to “land problem” being most serious etc. is catch-all phrase for many more and diverse social ills. Like the land, the dimension of the problem is staggering.

As everyone, though not Jimi's people, says, Recife is different to Salvador. The povo (= people, but with meaning more akin to masses.) in Recife are fechado,I'm told, closed, meaning they don't show their emotions easily. When writing about Salvador earlier, I spoke of the absence of poverty of spirit; that though there was poverty, it was not grinding, resentful.

Here, besides the obvious abandonados, some with childish innocence that hides so much and shows the Salvador spirit, evidence of a “poor and dangerous society” is everywhere, with massive unemployment, the under-employment with people earning an existence by selling envelopes, sixty cruzeiros posters, oranges, single cigarettes (an estrangeiro averages at least half a packet of cigarettes bummed a day), Jimi and his two cruzeiros, all he had in the world...

Add to these images an overbearing military presence: military everywhere, obvious soldiers, also traffic police, ambulance, fire, all possessing a definite military look. I found Recife an oppressive, unhappy town, a feeling not alleviated by my pleasant encounters with the upper tenth. Of course, I have to remember I am looking at the end result, not Recife through the ages, but there is something to understand here.

Recife in 2014 - Towers with Brasília Teimosa and Pina in the background
Photo courtesy Eyes on Recife - News Culture History

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

In the Shadow of the Casa Grande and the Senzala - Meeting with Gilberto Freyre

2014-05-06T17:42:00.005-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 22

The Journey - Recife - July 28 - August 13, 1980

August 11 On bus again! Left Recife last night for 33-hour trip to Belém. Longest haul to date made longer by one hour roadside delay. We've run of gas — eventually bought from a passing truck.

Missed August 8-10 entries. Stayed to await interview with Gilberto Freyre. I was able to bounce most of my ideas off him and with no exception, they were sound. Pleased that some of the more controversial leads I suggest did not put Freyre off — “No evidence of that but not totally unlikely.”

For example, my suggestion that there could be a link between Pernambucanos ("Cavalcantis") and Inconfidência Mineira (Da Silvas). Look to a Masonic link, Freyre suggests. And, for example, the suggestion that there were black slaves present from the beginning, brought from Portugal. He likes the idea though, of course, stressed early importance of the Indians, especially the women.

Professor Gilberto Freyre
Image courtesy Joaquim Nabuco Foundation

At 82, Freyre is a sprightly man, quick-witted, especially against the onslaught of ELU. I see no reason (as some do) of revising his theories, update yes, but if Pumaty is any example, the Case Grande idea holds up today as ever. What criticism I did hear from Freyre was either irrelevant or only related to small issues. [Note: This journal is, of course, separate from my interview notebooks that go into far more detail about my meeting with Professor Freyre and others. In many instances, too, major sources like Freyre were given a copy of my Outline for Brazil in advance and had a good idea of my thinking.]

Keeping this journal is a habit I am beginning to see as indispensable. The images and experiences are so different, so much a shock of the new or the familiar refound — that without recording them it would be impossible to remember all. In Brazil, each new day is one of discovery!

On Saturday night, a 9.30 visit with Amalia and her vast family, ten brothers and sisters, all older, twenty-eight nephews etc. Afterwards to a music bar and home by 4.30 a.m. Looked to quiet Sunday and started out at Boa Viagem beach, then to Olinda but on way back to hotel bumped into my friend Black Jimi and got home 2.30 a.m. Afternoon interview with Freyre and on bus at 6.15 p.m.

Amalia's family represent the ultimate extended family and, with experience of Antonietta in mind, typical of the grand old families of Brazil. Something I need to create for the Cardosos (Cavalcantis) of 1960/1970. Amalia's family is not only a patriarchal but a political unit with connections at every level, federal, state, local. Her references to various members invariably brings up one or another coronel- type connection.

Won't forget entering house and meeting family, seemed to be dozens of them, including Lima Filho. It would've been impossible to remember all their names. Event was the birthday of one of the twenty-eight nephews and nieces. Head of the family is mother, 82, and Amalia at 37 is the youngest child. Amalia's father was a prominent opposition member and owner of five farms, plus Lord knows what more. — All gathered round on patio after dinner for sing song to accompanied by an excellent guitarist.

What some had to say was often directly out of a South African situation: members of a privileged class and their involvement that would fit perfectly into a Progressive Party mold. Some liked to distance themselves from the diamond-bedecked Dona of Pumaty but were really speaking the same language. Too much pobre (poverty) agreed, but as I've seen so many times in Brazil, such social consciousness is voiced in one breath and in the next, they go on to tell you about a) the beach apartment b) the beach house c) the farm in the sertão, replete with many jokes about the people there, not racialistic though in similar vein.

As I told Gilberto Freyre, one of these days someone should do a comparative study between South Africa and Brazil. Could be illuminating.

Brazil, Land of Contrasts - The Sublime and the Ridiculous

2014-04-24T16:14:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 21

The Journey - Recife - July 28 - August 13, 1980

August 7 Missed yesterday's entry: up at 6.30 to travel to Pumaty sugar mill and refinery, back 8 p.m. preparing for interview with Gonçalves de Mello till 10.30 leaving little time for notes.

Started today with visit to the state tourist authority, which for two days has been trying to meet a simple request: to obtain a map of the state. Result. “Is not possible.” Brazil, the sublime and ridiculous, the contrasts!

Where else would you, one day, visit one of the most sophisticated sugar estates in the world that not only grows 7,000 hectares of the stuff but mills it through a five-mill line up and then refines it for export... And the next day, encounter a state tourist authority that is unable to provide a simple map of the state!

Pumaty Engenho, Casa Grande, Pernambuco

Pumaty Engenho, chapel, Pernambuco

Pumaty Engenho, private chapel, Pernambuco

On Pumaty estate, there's a beautifully preserved Casa Grande, the pride of the owner. As I sat with him and his elegant wife, and the social worker they had employed to help their employees, I could not but glance at the wall behind them: dangling from an iron spike, prominently on display, was an slave ball and chain. Oh, the contrasts.

Slavery, relic - Pumaty, Pernambuco

This morning spent at Baptist seminary examining journals of last century Baptist missionaries. Rather simplistic though see that Taylor, one of earliest Baptist missionaries, actually notes occurrence of Canudos with somewhat confused interpretations. But more important was Baptist reports of the degree of intolerance present prior to the coming of the Republic and separation of State/Church. Repeated reports of attacks on missionaries, of anti-Protestant moves inspired by local priests, of Bible burnings etc.

The Baptists get vitriolic in their condemnation of the RC church as idolatrous, pagan etc. with numerous references by Taylor to idol worship in form of saints etc. Today the Baptists have 500,000 followers, as against 90 percent of 120 million Catholic, which shows the progress...

Day 31 of the trip. How far from that evening so long, long ago when I left Sintra and family at the station.

My confidence continues to soar. Today's interview with João Gonçalves de Mello, Recife's foremost historian, was typical. Impressed by my knowledge of Brazilian history. Ran basic outline of my story against him and 90 percent stood up without critique!

Realize that aside from the setting, atmosphere I am getting on the trip and basic groundwork already complete, when I get back I am going to have to read my way into the fine details of every traveler, every translation I can lay my hands on. This can be an ongoing process as the book develops, so that I'll have the background pretty well locked up. And then comes the “imagination!”

Note: TV reporting Bolivia's 195th coup!
BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

When Luiz Gonzaga went to sing for Peace in Exu, Pernambuco

2014-04-17T12:18:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 20

The Journey - Recife - July 28 - August 13, 1980

August 3 - 4 I'm sitting in hotel dining room with omnipotent television in corner. Thought: Has TV replaced the Crucifix on the wall?

There's a report about the "pacification" of Exu. Since 1949 two Exu families, Sampião and Alencar have been feuding. Twenty nine members of both families have been killed.

In an attempt to pacify the situation the Bishop of Petrolina, plus a nationally known singer Luiz Gonzaga and others have traveled to Exu. One of many realties of Brasil 1981. (Throughout my journal, I took to using the local spelling for “Brasil,” a small point indicative of my quest for identity with my subject; here I use the Anglicized “Brazil.”)

Singer Luiz Gonzaga - Brazilian Culture

Among dozens of observations, ideas, opinion that have come my way these past weeks:

A universal concern about the land question. From Ambassador Vladimir Murtinho to opposition politician Lima Filho, to student film-maker Ivan Cordeiro, all express opinion that unfair distribution of land is major problem facing the country.

A surprising, to me, free expression on political issues. I find extensive discussion of politics across broadest spectrum from Communist to right-wing militarist- authoritarianism something akin to excessive political discussion in South Africa. Symptomatic of a politically troubled, divisive land?

Among younger people especially, an awakening awareness of a special Brazilian cultural heritage. Particular emphasis on Indian culture and folklore. [NOTE (to myself): These observations relate to the North-East/Bahia and my be considerably different in the South.)

Pataxó, indigenous people of Brazil, Bahia state

A dramatic degree of poverty, disparity between rich and poor here in the North-East with apparent absence of middle-class.

A growing racial problem not as clearly defined as British or U.S. one, probably more a race/economics problem. Curious to hear, for example, talk of a Brazilian Black Power movement, from Roberto Mattos' friend, Silvio.

Yet, despite the problems, a special pride in Brazil (though not universal — a number of young people talk of U.S.A. as ultimate place.)

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

Finding My Way in Brazil - The Glorious Challenge

2014-04-10T11:38:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 19

The Journey - Recife July 28 -- August 13, 1980

August 3-4 Interview an opposition politician/spend more time poring over photographs of senhor de engenhos/evening with Ivan Cordero and group of young Brazilians/morning of 4th at State Museum/afternoon arranging visit to engenho (plantation)and interview with foremost Recife historian/ tonight to view cultural slides at gallery at 9!

And I wonder why I am occasionally tired? Not so much the physical effort, though extreme humidity can be taxing, as mental absorption of so much detail, especially constant switching from one subject to the next and need to store information under so many categories.

Today is exactly four weeks since I arrived in Brazil, the acclimatization/acculturation is over; what strangeness remains is of a local variety — the change of pace from one city, town or village to the next, the change of contacts with people. Broadly, I am beginning to look at this world around me with a sense of familiarity. Perhaps what brings it that much closer is that people, too, are beginning to repeat ideas and opinions, especially contemporary ones.

Right at the beginning of my trip, I entered into a rather painful debate with Antonietta about friendship, made painful by what she described as a typically cynical “New York” outlook of making friends only so long as there is a need, a “use” for the other person. The No 1 syndrome. I have been aware of this criticism and have consciously opened myself to people bringing a commensurate response at a personal and professional level.

But there are other factors, too: I have changed my own outlook from a narrow introverted one to that which is, once again, open to the world. I feared I'd never regain this after these past years of what I keep calling mediocrity, for lack of wanting to use harsher, perhaps more concise terms. “Regain,” in the sense of getting back to the days when I was a truly active reporter. 'Twas there all the time, waiting for expression, until finally it could not longer be contained and I took the steps needed toward breaking with the past. Courage.

James A. Michener and Errol Lincoln Uys, St. Michaels, Maryland 1979
Covenant - The Secret History of a Best-Seller

One thing I will always remember James Michener for: his essay on wasting time, on the fact that at 37 or so, if one is going to make a change, if one is going to realize so much that has been striven and dreamed about — on looking back it's wisest to take only the positive steps toward that goal, to comprehend how each and every move forward, even though some were stumbling, all contributed toward that achievement. So many things past, not understood at the time, all go toward creating understanding and a full person. Anything from one's liberation from SA racism and a deeper value of humanity to liberation from middle-class materialism.

Post Newspaper, Cape Town, RSA

Just as the past four weeks have offered a return to the real use of my talents of observation, absorption etc, this period also sees a true awakening of the urge to write. Yes, I have for years written thousands and thousands of words in all forms but there never was the sole responsibility, this glorious challenge to write something lasting.

Certainly, I still have a great fear but a healthy one for it isn't negative or nihilistic. It is a realistic fear of the outside forces that challenge one. I can and will do this but people have to realize, especially those closest to me, what a delicate balance is needed to maintain the magic.

BRAZIL - The Epic of a Great Nation

Some thoughts on Racism and Poverty in Brazil

2014-04-04T12:44:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 18

The Journey - Recife July 28 -- August 13, 1980

August 2: Today was spent at a Benedictine monastery, Monasteiro São Bento, in company of Edson Nery, as guest of Dom Basilio Penido and Dom Felix Bruneau. For one who has often stayed a distance from the church, a day in the company of the monks was a deeply moving experience.

Monasteiro São Bento

What does one on the outside know about monks, cloisters, liturgy, Gregorian chants? Painfully little, so that you are surprised to find that life is very normal. Started at 10:30 and attended various offices with the monks, 1st at 10 to 12, then vespers at 5:30, mass (1/2 plus communion), then completa at 8.00 p.m.

Was surprised in talks with Dom Penido and Dom Bruneau to find just how involved they were with the world, though still maintaining aspects of the past as in their cells. Took my afternoon rest in a cell prepared for me: traditional monastic term for what is really a large room bereft of worldly possessions, a bed, bureau and two chairs. Deeply moved during various services by the chants, psalms sung by choir, the melodiousness of their voices echoing in lofty 1761 church, the intonations reaching deep within oneself.

Dr. Nery is a wonderfully compassionate, aesthetic man who undoubtedly belongs among the brothers. Somewhat difficult to speak to because it seems he is in process of withdrawing from the world we know and may well enter the monastery.

Today was a great contrast to Saturday's event. First drove with Amalia Correa around Recife and Olinda. I now understand the topography, Tamaraca, Iguaraçu, Pão Amarelo, Olinda, Recife, Guarapes are no longer mere names. I look forward to returning to my books and re-reading material with a deeper understanding.

Saturday night was yet another contrast with Roberto Motta, religious anthropologist and his gay theatre/art friends. They drink like fishes, hug each other fervently, and between this, argue politics.

Silvio, a black man, proves most illuminating. With Roberto, he's off to a Brazil-Africa conference in Rio on Monday, the first of its kind. Silvio makes an interesting point about racism: The world laughed when Emperor Bokassa (Central African Republic) was crowned calling him “a stupid black etc.” But the world rejoices with Charles and Diana...

Ended evening at gay bar in Casa Forte with more political talk, little of which I could follow except to realize that the 25-35 generation of intellectuals in Brazil is seething, all attention directed toward the November 15, 1981 elections, the first democratic elections since 1964.

I'm beginning to see why military presence is so obvious in Pernambuco. There is an atmosphere of rebelliousness about the place.

At so many levels beyond the “haves” and the “playground” people, there is chronic poverty.

A dramatic example of this is Recife Yacht Club: To get to it you drive for miles through “Brasília Teimoso,” a favela that started as a squatter camp at the same time as the new federal capital. The streets are pools of filthy water, no sewers, little lighting, a mix of permanent houses and shacks.

Bridge to God's Island, Recife 2014
Behind the Façade, This Is God’s Island

Keep encountering comments and evidence of racism and color differentiation. As Silvio said, he asked a top general why there were so few black generals in Brazil. Man replied that no more than fifty black people in senior posts in the country.

I wonder how Gilberto Freyre reconciles his interpretation of a “New Man” in the tropics with the reality expressed by so many people I meet of racism in Brazil - of the innumerable “classifications” of color, once relatively harmless and superficial but assuming a more serious nature as jobs get scarcer, poverty worsens and color deepens. This all strikes this ex-South African observer sharply. Brings to mind, too, the confusingly contradictory attitude of the South African Progressive—type.

http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilPage1.htm

Stepping out in the Tropics of Brazil

2014-03-27T16:19:00.002-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 17

The Journey - Recife July 28 -- August 13, 1980

July 30: Not always possible to maintain an enthusiastic “high” - Once in a while, as now, it slips and you feel a real stranger.

Edson Nery, library “scientist” at the Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, a lay Benedictine monk, could not be nicer but has no concept of what it takes to write a book like Brazil. Yesterday was spent poring over museum collection - useful; today was passed in Foundation's library with excellent old engravings, also useful but dangerous:

I have to get out, experience and “look.” U.S.A. has best libraries in the world and when I'm back home I can sit in them for as long as is necessary. Here, I've got to see not pages but people. And the past insofar as one can separate present sights and scenes from what has been.

Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

Edson is a dear librarian of special repute, no doubt, but too close to his books and eleven cats to see the finger-dirtying reality. A contemplative man, he himself says, grown pessimistic about the world and seeking his main solace in Sunday hours spent with the Abbot and Prior of the Monastery at Olinda.

So, though the day was spent in hard research and I got many visual images of use, I'm wary of over-involvement with the Fundação. Maybe they will come up with an engenho to visit and, of course, there's my interview with Gilberto Freyre himself. But I'm determined that these hours shall not be “book-bent.”

July 31: Once again proved that to accomplish things in the tropics you have to step beyond the lethargy so easily induced.

Day started with call to Edson Nery at home complaining very indirectly about lack of cooperation. Well, aside from suggestion that I go back to the library to look at more pictures this morning as planned, Edson showed clear understanding of my needs. A car will be arranged!

And it is: In afternoon my Recife travels begin in earnest. I'm also invited to dinner tomorrow night with anthropologist Dr. Robert Motta and friends

Afternoon visit to Iguaraçu, site of first church in Brazil, built 1535/plus Jesuit church/and third church atop hill. All vital to story since it is vicinity between here and Recife proper that I will place Cardosos (“Cardoso” family later changed to “Cavalcantis.”) Have to find way to move to second locale. Will probably be after Dutch invasion with re-start further away.

Convento de São Francisco - Olinda Vladiney Pimento/Wikipeida

My guide, Amalia Correa, proves as fascinating as the historical aspect. Her brother was Minister of Agriculture under Goulart. Father was federal deputy from Pernambuco representing Bom Jardim to the north. Family is obviously one of the older political ones with classic coronel (Cardoso?)and wide connections.

Memorable anecdote of Amalia's sister who teaches at a favela in the evenings: "Simple things that people will understand like words for food etc. She explained 'meat.' Woman in class responded: 'Oh, I know meat but it is so long since I have tasted it.'"

http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilPage1.htm

"A Life of Constant Humiliation in Recife"

2014-03-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 16

The Journey - Recife July 28 -- August 13, 1980

First impressions of Recife are grim and I suspect that they're not going to be altered as easily as Brasília. - Met my first Brasília detractor, Edson Nery de Fonseca. He lived there for twenty years, was Librarian of House of Representatives and calls Brasília “a crime against humanity.”

What I've seen of Recife seems to earn that appellation. Whereas we in “developed America” flinch at abandoned dogs and cats, here you have to get used to droves of abandoned children, abandoned people. I remember in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) some years ago, remarking on the number of people, young especially, hanging around the streets of Bulawayo during work hours: Here was the real “security” risk.

Recife is a hundred times worse. Hundreds and hundreds of kids, adults, beggars with nothing to do; hundreds of others pathetically trying to make an honest living by selling anything from plastic toy planes to graters, packs of envelopes, sidewalk foodstuffs... Many gravitate to Recife from the backlands seeking a new life and, I suspect, invariably meet disappointment.

As Luiz “Black Jimy” said yesterday: “It is a life of constant humiliation.”

Alongside this cruel, brutal poverty is first real evidence of The Military. In Salvador, Brasília, in countless little villages, you see a few police/militia but here the presence is overwhelming. Traveling out to the Institute (Fundação Joaquim Nabuco) you pass base after base of one or another military establishment.

My immediate response is that this is a manifestation of government awareness of past rebelliousness on part of Recife/Pernambuco, traditionally a point of fire through every regime. Walk the streets and you can easily understand the “nervousness”...

As anyone who knows me will accept, I am not one to creep into a protective shell. I love exploring a new city by day/night, really “exploring” it and its people. Here, for first time, I feel a need for caution. Step out there, let things carry you along, and I sense real trouble. There are thousands in real need and desperate: One lone “American tourist” is a quick mark. (Like the licensed bandit of a taxi driver who charged me 400 cruzeiros for what should've been a 80cr. ride. Made up for it though, with bus ride x 18cr. = 200 taxi trip to Joaquim Nabuco Foundation.)

Difficult to believe that twenty-two days have elapsed since my arrival. Have covered thousands of miles, met dozens of people, many beyond the mere acquaintance phase. Toughest part of the trip is breaking fresh ground each time, going through the long introductory phase, establishing credentials.

The whole day today was spent in this activity. But it's vitally important to opening up a city, situation for research. - Go slowly, let them understand you, above all believe in you, and so win their confidence. - I overheard Nery at lunch telling Fernando Freyre, Gilberto's son, “He is a serious student of Brazil.”

Got my first glimpse, at Museum of Man in the North-East, of artifacts of the sugar plantations: sadly impressive preponderance of equipment to keep slaves in their place. Worst was a device called "The World Turns” which would make a man into a ball-like figure binding leg and arms.

From the collection, The Atlantic Slave Trade and Life in the Americas

James S. Handler and Michael L. Tuite Jr.

Edson Nery liked my description of Brasília as the ultimate "fazenda" and example of the coronel/latifundia way of life.

"Anna"(not real name,) a guide at Museum is from one of old families with an engenho (plantation) to the south. She expressed to this stranger all manner of statements about the poor summed up by: “It's the will of God.” The same is said by others in so many places...

Things like that make me realize just why all my traveling in the past is so important: To write a book for the world you have to know the world. You have to have a comparative base to work from, a benchmark against which you can “rub” your opinions and see how they come up.

Prosaic note: Lord, the food is monotonous: Steak ABCD/ Frango (chicken) ABC/Fish ABC/ That's it, day after day. For a week now I've had file (fillet)/contra file + beer + coffee!

http://www.erroluys.com/BrazilPage1.htm

Canudos: Visions of a Hill where God's Thunderer Roared

2014-02-26T12:57:00.004-05:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 15

The Journey: Uauá and Canudos, July 25 — July 27, 1980

Arrive at Uauá to find contact arranged via Antonietta out of town for a week but within minutes his wife arranges for a family friend to take me to Canudos tomorrow.

Amusing introduction to Uauá in Hotel Gonçalves run by a mother and her five daughters. As word spreads, I find myself seated at table with twelve women of the town come to observe estrangeiro.

Hotel floor is divided into cubicle-like rooms with walls open at the top, the occupant of the room next to me snoring away happily all night.

July 25 - July 27. Two and a half days with no journal entry, through lack of time and place. Earlier efforts on bus inadequate/difficult and besides, observations in the sertão grow predictably similar. Which, in a way, is the point about the sertão: vast, repetitive, soulless backlands, mile upon mile of caatingas, close-packed, mind encroaching. Step into it a few meters from the side of the road and you are lost. It enfolds and absorbs you.

A brief visit to Canudos on Sunday provided as much as I wanted from the "present." There's a danger of getting put off track by too much modernism. I have strong impressions and ideas about Canudos/Antônio Conselheiro and my mind relates them to the 19th century. — What I behold in the 20th is a distraction and can only water down those impressions developed from reading and thinking. Preconceptions, if you will.

Curious aspect of Sunday was “Manoel” from Mozambique and left after independence. Within minutes of meeting him, he begged me not to mention “Moz” because, hand on heart, “it was too much for him,” and “all because of Samora Machel.” Manoel sells jewelry in the Brazilian sertão after “Moz” and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe,) where he was a linotype operator.

I don't know how many Manoels there are in this country but cannot see them doing anything to improve race relations Brazilian style. Though first he wanted to avoid the subject, Manoel had more and more to say as the day progressed. Stories like the man who disowned his mother because she wrote from Portugal saying that he should come back to the motherland, but “bring nothing that you took from the blacks.” According to Manoel, the man wrote back to Senhora X saying from that time he did not consider her his mother. Manoel personally does not wish to tread the soil of Portugal because of the “traitors.”

Even as I traveled toward Canudos I had visions of this barren, wasted sertão where a mystic's most fervent ramblings could take easy root. Interpretations of Glauber Rocha aside, the site of Canudos today lies beneath a barrage! A placid backwater with a small island where a few goats and sheep are rowed across to graze.

Locals suggest that the flooding of the valley was a political move, but I'm skeptical. It was, so far as I know, commenced in 1953. At that time, the kind of political consciousness/reappraisal/revisionist tendency we have today was in its infancy. Few outsiders would have taken symbol of Canudos seriously.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that 20,000 people died in this small valley, nothing to bring back the echo of the small cannon from a nearby hill or roar of "God's Thunderer" from the larger hill beyond....

Canudos refugees, 1897

Anyway, I got what I wanted, a soul-filling understanding of the terrain, of the small towns of the time, of the people. Was surprised by Mrs. Gonçalves (of hotel) reciting word for word a prayer said by an old man who'd survived Canudos. Though few beyond the area remember it, Canudos is very much part of local folklore...

On the Road in Brazil - "Lady Di" of São Raimundo Nonato!

2014-02-19T15:00:00.000-05:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 14

The Journey to São Raimundo Nonato July 22-24. 1980

July 22 The start of 2500-kilometer bus trip from Brasília to São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí and then to Uaúa near Canudos:

Within an hour of leaving Brasília, it begins to hit the senses, this “openness” with only the smallest dents of civilization on it. It's curious that with so much land, there should be a chronic possesseiros problem...

Road is hard-top with “breaks” of red dust. Bus takes them at 50/60 km/h. Overtaking on blind rises, corners, banging across rough stretches: amusement of some passengers, terror of others. Cars with lights on. Vegetation is deep, dusty red, every leaf, tree trunk. Dust curtain for a hundred yards on either side. Windows closed because of dust. Hot! Deviations (Desvio!) left and right. Telephone lines draped on tree branches. Vast ranches. Dust covered Brahmin-type cattle. Road workers waving. Passing vehicles hooting. Long red vein to horizon. Strikes me as one of areas of “last great adventure."

You don't know Brazil until you have sat with its people hour after hour, banging across dusty roads, nose blocked, throat parched, on and on through the day and night. Poverty stricken worker next to me. Says little. Half a tooth on upper jaw. Dust-stained white linen bag with possessions. Dress of same material.

July 23 7 a.m. “Asfalt!” Acclamation through bus after night on dirt. Road still primitive. Drifts, no bridges, taken at healthy speed. Remote “All Night” road stop. Ghastly meal. Outside, incongruous sight of attractive girl, a fazendeiro's daughter and his sons with brand-new tractor that won't start.

Old man in pink trousers and grandson sit next to me.

8.15 a.m. Start of true sertão. Green now but you can easily imagine it in a drought. Flat-topped table hills, eroded, red sand. Simple house of mud and palm thatch.

12.30 p.m. Looks as if trip to first point shorter than expected. A mere 24 hours! Delighted by prospect since glance at motorista in his rear view mirror shows him battling to stay awake. Madre Deus!

São Raimundo Nonato - Photo: Blog do Francisco Evangelista

July 24 And now for something completely different. Arrived at São Raimundo Nonato at 5 p.m. yesterday. Palace Hotel room = something like old stable, no glass window, overlooking morass. Realize that I've been awake/traveling for 48 hours. Go to buy pen at shop. Owner refuses to take my money. Say thanks and go down street. Followed by car.

It's the guy who gave me the pen. Asks if I want to have a beer. Joined by João Raimundo, fourth year law student who speaks perfect English. Sit talking at outside table, watching people begin to gather outside Palace Hotel. Suddenly town lights fail and we sit in darkness. Lights come on and reveal crowd outside hotel entrance.

The reason: “Lady Di” has arrived from São Paulo coming to sing for the locals!

They wait eagerly and so do I until midnight when at last “Lady Di” appears at hotel entrance and walks grandly over to next-door disco for her performance.

The “disco” is open, unroofed, more like a basketball court with three hundred people jammed into a hundred-by-fifty foot space. Chaos.

"Lady Di" sings to the packed crowd. She could've been the real thing, so swept away were they. Her concert over, she is followed back to the hotel entrance by adoring fans. I also make my exit.

As I write up these notes, the live disco band is belting out a tune. God knows what time this will go on till. I fear "Lady Di" will make a second appearance at 2 a.m.

If these people can be so easily swayed by their great "Lady Di," how much more by an Antonio Conselheiro!

I pray the lights fail in the next ten minutes. (They don't.)

Brazil - The Epic of a Great Nation

A Giant Leap of Faith in Brasília

2014-02-05T12:18:00.000-05:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 13

The Journey: Brasília - July 18 - July 22, 1980

Curious that I should move from the start of my book to the end - from the shores where the Portuguese landed to the Brazil of tomorrow.

The impact is a sensual shock - from vibrant, dynamic, historical Salvador to this futuristic fantasia. Impressions rush at you. This is not Brazil? An attempt to outdo the U.S.A.? It doesn't represent natural outgrowth or mobility of traditional Brazilian society? Orwell's 1984? Kubrick's 2001? A giant leap of faith? Indication of a future Brazil, its spirit homogenized, sanitized?

Brasília Pilot Plan

First “experience” was seeking house of Ambassador Vladimir Murtinho. City is divided/sub-divided/sub-sub divided into quadrants, nothing so messy as telling, colorful street names. You live in Quad X, Block Y, House Z. Planned, no doubt, for easy reference. To my amusement,we are unable to find the house. It's in the Ambassador's Quadrant, No 6. House numbers go 9, 12, 6 ???

Marie Eugenie who is driving me around tells of serious social problems of Brasília. High suicide rate, high divorce rate. She has been here three years (from London; husband a banker) and finds the city with the widest open spaces of any to be claustrophobic. Living in this isolated spot in mid-South America with thousands of “functionarios,” government officials. “Two and a half hours' driving to the nearest proper town,” she says!

A modern-day colonization scheme with first-generation immigrants from other parts of Brazil setting up here and having all problems of first generation in a foreign country. Though these arrivals from Rio etc. find it difficult, Marie Eugenie says their children love Brasília. In a generation or two it will have people knowing no other place, no other life style and they will give it spirit.

Yesterday, first work day in Brasília once again showed tremendous response to ELU and Brazil. Dr. Aloisio Magalhães (Secretary of Culture) provided a great reception via members of the Madeira-Mamoré project. After morning with them, Marie Eugenie (Magalhães's secretary) took me over to Ambassador Vladimir Murtinho at the foreign office.

Lunch with Ambassador Murtinho. — My “da Silva” family at their finest! - Magnificent home on shore of Brasília's artificial lake built to change excessively dry climate.

Murtinho has been involved with Brasília since its foundation. He is an ardent supporter of the concept and believes that it represented a turning point in Brazilian history. Provided nation with move/incentive/drive toward modernization of the country - from this massive symbolic act everything else has flowed. (Good point, but need to have his opinion on millions left behind by modernization.)

At a pool party two days later with two visiting artists and Vladimir's brother, Brazilian ambassador to Ecuador.

“Yes the people are poor, but it's because they're lazy. They don't care about improving themselves,” a guest comments.

Think I've mastered the way of working here: a 24-36 hour “introductory” process before acceptance “in.” My burgeoning list of contacts who genuinely want to help is such that I'll soon have too many to handle. They're amazed that anyone could attempt so vast a project. “No Brazilian would dare.” - They probably think I'm either a genius or a madman. A little of both? As has been case since arriving, my optimism continues to grow.

Brazil - The Epic of a Great Nation

A Walk on the Beach with Pedro Alvares Cabral

2014-01-30T11:41:00.000-05:00

Brazil - The Making of a Novel - Part 12

The Journey: Porto Seguro/Salvador July 12 - July17, 1980

Thirteen hour overnight bus ride, Salvador to Porto Seguro.

Nothing on earth could make me believe this could be true: Here, in Porto Seguro, I meet Iva Lee Hartman ex West Virginia, ex-Bryanston/Three Vikings/Bryanston Country Club/Ciro's/my godfather's nightclub, Diamond Horseshoe (places Iva frequented in Johannesburg, South Africa.)

Iva now lives in Porto Seguro like a decadent aristocrat as owner of “Campo Gringo” resort and “Engenho do Duque.” From three to nine p.m. spent in company of this lovely/sad/lonely/exotic figure, as memorable a meeting as anything yet in Brazil!

I'm working on Porto Seguro contacts: Senhor Benedito, “town crier” promises meeting early hour tomorrow. As I write I realize that I've not slept since 8.00 a.m. Sunday 12th; now 10 p.m. Monday 13th = 38 hours. Good night!

The beach at Porto Seguro, Brasil

Curious thing about Porto Seguro is that though this is where Pedro Álvares Cabral landed, scene of the “discovery” of Brazil, there is little to mark so momentous an event for the people of Brazil.

There is a Cross, several in fact, at the alleged landing spot - stark, little adorned, no more. A decadent Indian village - Patachos - around the Cross, selling necklaces, feathered arrows, other trinkets.

Craig Hartman tells me some local townsfolk wanted village moved. I wonder whether they saw irony of the Cross and the ruined people at its feet.

The Cross as symbol of the advent of the Portuguese; the curio-selling favela as symbolic of what the Indians who welcomed Cabral inherited.

Errol Lincoln Uys at the Cross, Porto Seguro

Sixteen kilometers away from Porto Seguro to the south is Cabrália Santa Cruz, which claims to be site of first landing.

Who is correct? I'm told by Antonietta that accepted historical view is Cabrália, not Porto Seguro - which must irritate the hell out of its people, for it's truly depressed compared with Porto Seguro. Cabrália also seems far more noted for relics of an ill-fated French vessel which foundered on its reef. Its “restaurant” decorated with the ship's hawsers, ventilators, life belts etc.

A reflection on the days of Cabral... Porto Seguro

Can hardly imagine reaction of the Portuguese who got here first. The magnificent beaches, the groves of palm trees, the hills in the background leaning toward the shore, their heights offering special defensive positions.

Landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral, Oscar Pereira da Silva,
Museu Paulista , São Paulo

First Mass in Brazil, Victor Meirelles,Museu Nacional de Belas Artes

I'm increasingly impressed with outgoing friendship of the Brazilian people. Group at supper watched me eating alone and invited me over. Two couples from São Paulo, who afterwards asked if I would like to go for a walk. They share their spontaneous enthusiasm for Brazil, the future of their country - We talk of African/Indian folklore, its fundamental force behind Brazilian culture.

(Back in Salvador) After all my worry about visas etc., Antonietta says I'm fortunate having a South African background. Brazilians do care but know little of apartheid. Show that you do not support that insanity and they're likely to be far more receptive to you than they would be to a North American.

Antonietta is, of course, first major contact and there'll be other opinions, but she speaks of underlying resentment toward the U.S., its multinationals, its prejudice toward Brazil.

I've been here ten days and my sense of identification with the Brazilian people grows. They're vibrant, friendly, energetic - a nation imbued with the pioneer spirit. They have a vision that theirs is a nation going places, though the direction is not always clear.

The contrasts between rich and poor, old and new, were initially staggering to me and remain so. But even among the poor, there seems no utter wretchedness: even they have a sense of the potential of Brazil, and thus, hope.

I see this hope in a small self-help program at Porto Seguro and Cabrália: the townspeople have tackled the problem of the abandonados by giving the youngsters jobs as tourist guides. They're taught to lead visitors through the old parts of town. Twenty years down the road, I'll lay a bet, one of them could be running his own tour operation.

Brazil - The Epic Novel of a Great Nation and Its People