Prose (37 page)

Remarkable as this achievement is, it does not necessarily mean that Brazil will soon become an industrial colossus. The country has ample resources—its hydroelectric potential alone is the world's greatest: 80 million kilowatts. But Brazilians, it is said, “collect the fruit without planting the tree.” They have a national penchant for skimming off quick profits instead of laying the foundation for solid future earnings. The economic history of Brazil could almost be told in its long succession of spectacular booms. Brazil's economy was dominated by sugar, gold, and coffee in succession, with brief interludes devoted to other products. But the country is today trying to diversify, rather than depend on single crops or industries.

One of Brazil's earliest occupations was cattle raising, and it was necessarily an imported one. The Portuguese discoverers had been surprised to find that the Indians had no domestic animals, or at least no useful domestic animals. The Indians had only dogs, monkeys, and birds.

One of the first, and very difficult, undertakings of the Portuguese was to bring to Brazil all the domesticated animals they were accustomed to at home. In the middle of the 16th century cattle were brought to Bahia from Portugal and the Cape Verde Islands. They were the forebears of the cattle of the plains of the northeast.

Cattle were introduced in the south as early as 1532. The settlers who followed the
bandeirantes
took with them cows, horses, pigs, and goats. Later they drove the descendants of these animals through the one natural passage which penetrates the coastal mountain range and into the open stretch west of São Paulo. Horses and cows were allowed to range freely. As in the early days in the west of the United States, rustling and the roundup of wild herds—for the most part strays from the Jesuit villages—were important aspects of the life and legend of the region.

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Although from the beginning sugar was the principal product in the northeast, cattle were a stimulus to colonization and the opening of new lands. In search of pastures for their herds, cattlemen pushed deep into the northeastern interior. Cattle raising changed from a simple adjunct of the great plantations to an independent activity. From it came the so-called “leather culture” that developed in this whole vast region of Brazil during the first centuries of the country's history. The horse, upon which cattle raising depended, today inseparable from the gaucho of the Brazilian pampas and the
vaqueiro
of the northeast, became acclimated throughout the country. Today Brazil has more than 8 million horses.

In the northeast most of the cattle are descendants of the original herds. They are small and give little milk, but are tough and resistant. Over the years, the government and progressive cattle raisers have improved the stock throughout the country by crossing it with the zebu, or Brahman, introduced from India. This animal is well-adapted to the harsh northern conditions of heat, drought, and meager pasturage, and it thrives where the finest European stock dies off or quickly sickens and degenerates. Zebus, with their high shoulder humps, high-domed skulls, and long, drooping ears, have become common in most of Brazil, adding an exotic yet somehow not incongruous note to the landscape.

*   *   *

At the turn of the 20th century, zebus were imported into the huge section of fine cattleland in Minas Gerais called the “Minas Triangle,” which is now the center of the cattle industry. They became acclimated so successfully that zebu-owning became a passion with cattle raisers; prices soared, zebu buying and selling became a form of gambling, and there was wild speculation. In the 1920s the fever reached such a pitch that a single good bull brought as much as $7,500, compared to an average price of $250 for bulls of European breed.

Outside the beef-raising Triangle, the cattle of Minas Gerais are dairy cattle, and their products, including the white Minas cheese (no longer seen on every table at least once a day), are sold everywhere. Beef cattle need huge tracts of land, and with the rapid and progressive industrialization of the central-southern part of the country the cattle are being shifted to the wilder regions of Goiás and the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, which offer favorable conditions and are also near the biggest consumer of beef, the State of São Paulo.

In Pará, especially on the island of Marajó, the Indian water buffalo has been introduced and seems completely at home. The wilderness and abundant rivers and swamps of the huge island provide the kind of semi-aquatic life this semidomesticated beast prefers, while ordinary cattle, even the zebu, do not thrive there.

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In a country with few refrigerators, the industry of making
charque,
a dried, salted meat which does not spoil easily and which is usually cooked with the staple black beans and rice, is very important. The industry started in the northeast and was taken by immigrants to Rio Grande do Sul. Although outranked in total number of cattle by Minas Gerais, this state now raises the country's finest beef and is a center of the meat-packing industry. With 72.8 million head, Brazil is second only to the U.S. in number of beef cattle, but not in beef production, primarily because of poor disease control, inadequate transport and refrigeration facilities, and antiquated methods.

The largest herds of sheep—Brazil has some 22 million head—are also in Rio Grande do Sul, and crude wool is beginning to rank as an important export. With cotton, a major export for years, these herds also provide some material for the textile industry, which has grown enormously in the last decade.

The country's immense coastline and teeming rivers should make fishing and processing fish much more important industries than they are. But commercial exploitation has just begun, and fish still represent one of the greatest undeveloped resources of the country. In the States of Pará and Amazonas there is, for example, the
pirarucu,
the “fresh-water codfish,” weighing up to five hundred pounds.

The commercial catch in the Amazon runs to only 90,000 tons a year, largely because fishing techniques used in the river are still primitive, as are those of many of the coastal fishermen. The beautiful, traditional
jangadas
of the northeast are merely rafts made of balsa trunks lashed together. They have one sail, and every object aboard must be tied fast to the deck. The fishermen venture on the high seas aboard the
jangadas,
but the hauls of fish they bring back are usually so small that it has been said that the real place for the picturesque
jangada
is the folklore museum.

Some modernization has been taking place in the fishing industry. Several Japanese firms have formed motorized fleets in the south, specializing in tuna and whale. A whale-processing plant has been built at Cabo Frio, a coast town east of Rio. Whales are abundant, and whale meat is being urged on a somewhat reluctant public in the coastal markets as the cheapest form of meat. Lobster fishing has also been increasing, chiefly in Pernambuco and Ceará. Canning factories are being built along the coast.

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Coffee has been subject to as many ups and downs as any other Brazilian resource, but it has certainly not been troubled by underexploitation. For many years it has been Brazil's best-known product; coffee has been the greatest item of export and the biggest source of income. Brazil produced almost 4 billion pounds in 1960. It supplied the world with nearly half its coffee, earning the country 56 per cent of its total foreign-trade income.

Brazilian coffee had modest origins. Early in the 18th century, a Brazilian stole shoots from French Guiana, where the French had started coffee plantations. The trees were first cultivated in the State of Pará. Later, seeds and shoots were distributed throughout the country. Cultivation remained small-scale until the 19th century, when coffee had its first great phase in Rio de Janeiro and Minas. The cultivation of coffee in these states, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, depended directly on slave labor, and coffee profits made the fortunes of the Rio de Janeiro barons. With the abolition of slavery in 1888 the barons went bankrupt.

São Paulo did not have as much slave labor and was far-sighted enough to encourage immigration. In the crucial years before and after abolition, immigrants—principally from Portugal and Italy—came in great numbers. In addition to this labor supply, São Paulo had its marvelous
terra roxa
(“purple earth”), which according to the Paulistas, God created especially for the raising of coffee. Also coffee, which already had been named “the vampire,” since within a few years it exhausted the soil, had declined in the State of Rio. In the year of abolition, for example, the States of Rio and Minas produced twice as much coffee as São Paulo; ten years later São Paulo was producing much more than both states together. Nevertheless, even with improved methods of cultivation, the
terra roxa
of São Paulo in turn began to be exhausted. Coffee continued its march to the south and to the west; in the late 1920s tracts of the precious dark red soil were found in the wild country of northwestern Paraná. Like a green army, the coffee trees of the planters triumphantly took over, pushing back the virgin forest and driving the wild animals farther into the interior. In the shade of the coffee trees new towns were born. A typical example is Londrina, a modern and prosperous city located where only a few decades ago stood the untouched forest. At present the coffee trees are penetrating into the State of Mato Grosso.

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As the mainstay of the Brazilian economy, coffee has suffered various crises, during which the entire national life has been threatened. The appearance of Africa among the coffee producers created one of the most serious of these crises in the 1950s. Although still the coffee leader of the world, Brazil has had to face previously unknown competition, and the competition is constantly becoming more acute. Brazil cannot today sell all its coffee; in 1960 it had an accumulated stockpile of more than 5 billion pounds.

Repeated crises in the coffee market are having the effect of arousing the country to the necessity of agricultural diversification; Brazil is attempting to expand exports of other products like sugar, tobacco, and fruit. The coffee problem has also stimulated the growth of industrialization, chiefly in São Paulo, Brazil's most prosperous state. It had undergone a tremendous boom since World War II. There was no heavy-machinery industry before the war; today there are more than forty-five major plants in São Paulo. In 1959 alone, the state manufactured more than 15,000 machine tools. It produces 53 per cent of the country's paper, 54 per cent of its textiles, and 58 per cent of its chemicals, and it is a major bulwark of the foreign market, exporting more than 1.6 million tons of manufactured goods a year. With the nearby State of Guanabara, São Paulo contributes almost half of Brazil's domestic income.

At the center of this industrial complex lies the city of São Paulo itself. Only 80 years ago, it was a quiet town of 25,000 people. Today it covers 535 square miles and, with a population of 4.8 million, is the eighth largest metropolis in the world. Its traffic problem is even worse than that of New York, and it has a bustling, cosmopolitan atmosphere.

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Unlike the prosperous south, the states of the northeast remain almost wholly agricultural. There sugar, which had its earlier heyday of monoculture before being dethroned by coffee, is still the basis of the economy—although cotton and cacâo are grown in large quantities. Sugar developed even as Brazil itself developed; it could almost be said that the first Portuguese arrived with shoots of sugar cane under their arms. The rich northeastern sugar plantations of Pernambuco and Bahia were major factors in luring the Dutch to invade in the 17th century. Most of the profitable sugar growing is now done in the south, but in Pernambuco, Alagoas, and Paraíba, the cane fields still stretch to the horizon. Great refineries, which are beginning to take the place of the primitive old ones, are improving the product. But the methods of cultivation are extremely primitive, almost semifeudal; and the sugar workers are among the poorest and most long-suffering of Brazilian peoples. There is today a strong movement among enlightened Brazilians for reform of the agrarian situation throughout the northeast. It is indeed a highly explosive area, ripe for Communist exploitation.

One product of the sugar cane is
aguardente,
generally called
cachaça
or
pinga.
A clear, fiery, powerful drink made since colonial times, it is known as “the brandy of the poor.”
Cachaça
is now being exported. There is no Brazilian product surrounded by so much folklore as
cachaça;
a whole cycle of songs celebrates it. The names by which it is called, mostly affectionate nicknames—“the grandmother,” “the little blonde,” “the thread of gold”—show the esteem in which
cachaça
is regarded. When a man takes a drink at the nearest corner bar, he always spits out a little of the first mouthful onto the floor, as an offering to whichever saint he believes to be the donor of the liquor.

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Rubber, too, once played a major economic role. The source of great but brief wealth, Amazon rubber suffered a blow in 1910 when the plantations in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies began to outproduce and undersell it in the world market. The towns that had flourished in the valley of the Amazon were rapidly transformed into dead or dying communities. The city of Manaus, situated near the meeting point of the Amazon and the Rio Negro, was the rubber capital of the world until the collapse of the market. Rich and luxurious, with a huge opera house, it imported troops of singers and dancers. Large ships made it a regular port of call. To the east of Manaus, Henry Ford established experimental plantations, Fordlândia and Belterra, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, but, finding the project unprofitable, abandoned it. Today owned by the government, the project still produces a small amount of rubber.